The Akron Wonder

Jerome Childers is sitting in the living room of the house he's lived in his entire life. Encyclopedias and his mother's paperback romance novels line the bookshelves; the mantle is crammed with bowling trophies.

"Your video's on," calls a voice from the next room.
Jerome smiles.
"My video's on," he says.

He lets out an embarrassed laugh and moves slowly to the other room, a sliver of space nearly consumed by a jumbo-screen television. His father, Stanley, is reclining on the couch, remote in hand. There, on BET, is Jerome. In a convertible. With Noreaga. Singing.

A twelve-year-old kid from Akron who wanted a vocabulary-improving tape for Christmas is the latest protege of Sean "Puffy" Combs. His full-length CD won't be released until March, but Jerome's single "Too Old for Me" has appeared on a Bad Boy Records greatest hits album, been remixed six times, and stretched across two videos. In the first clip, Jerome was shooed away from Keisha, a singer with the group Total and fellow Bad Boy artist, by hoopster Penny Hardaway. In the sequel, Noreaga rolls up to console the love-struck puppy--and, of course, rap over dusky beats.

"It's like a moment captured in time, and it's shown all over the country," he says when the video is over. "It's really a dream come true."

Combs, Bad Boy's CEO and founder, called the Childerses in 1996 to invite them to New York so he could hear Jerome's voice in person. He was intrigued by a videotape of Jerome performing at a showcase. The voice was smooth, flexible, and plaintive. This wasn't a kid who whacked "The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow" with a mallet. He had longing.

In New York, the family--Dad, mom Karen, sister Nechelle, and Jerome--rode in limousines and stayed at a swank hotel. Puffy wasn't yet the yeh-yehing impresario of hip-hop. "He had just released Biggie's album," Jerome says, "and that's why I really wasn't that nervous about performing for him, because he wasn't that known." Jerome sang five songs for Puffy. One was a Nat King Cole song, another a Stevie Wonder number. Puffy signed him.

Puffy's family, which includes Mase, the Lox, 112, and Faith Evans, doesn't sit around and wait for attention to be delivered like a steaming pizza. This month Jerome was scheduled to do a fashion shoot with Tommy Hilfiger. Rolling Stone put him in the class of the "next wave." He's watched polo matches in the Hamptons, traveled to Atlanta and Las Vegas, and mingled with Jay-Z, Mariah Carey, Timberland, and Clive Davis. "I'm not really star-struck as much as I was at first," Jerome says. "There are a couple of people I'd really like to meet that I haven't met yet: Whitney Houston, Stevie Wonder. Brandy, I've never met her."

His activities are supervised by his father, who quit working as a carpenter to manage him. Last fall, the two found an apartment in New York so Jerome could record his album with producers Mario Winans and Heavy D and songwriter Kelly Price. He withdrew from Miller-South School of Visual and Performing Arts in Akron and is enrolled in a school in New York for children who work in show business. His mother keeps up the house in Akron and manages the paperwork.

Jerome talks about recording ("I didn't know what I was doing, but now I do"), hanging with Puffy ("He's a nice guy"), and the reactions of his friends ("They're pretty excited about it. They ask me about things that I do and stuff") as though this were a phase, like clumsiness or chicken pox. Eventually he wants to act, write, and produce. He's already targeted his college (Howard University) and his agency (William Morris). Through his alert, brown eyes, the world looks like a ball he could spin on his finger.

"I pray and stuff. I'm very religious. So I just work for it and pray for it and make sure that I don't get out of line or a big head. Mom and Dad are there for me, to keep me grounded."

Jerome polished his gift in the basement of his house on Akron's east side. He and his older sister, who is now sixteen, sang into a microphone rigged through a Fender amplifier. Their parents eventually surrendered to their habit of falling asleep with the radio on.

Nechelle had a singing group called the Four Shades of Ebony, and Jerome often tagged along to their performances. Watching the audience react to his sister triggered his desire to perform. At age eight, he made women at a day-care center weep with his version of "Silent Night." He didn't just learn the National Anthem; he learned to sing it like Marvin Gaye. "He would walk up to people who were talking and say, 'Can I sing for you?'" says his mother, who works in accounts payable at First Energy. "We would get kind of embarrassed and tell him, 'No, Jerome, don't sing.' But they would listen."