Sean Kingston “Sean Kingston”

"Beautiful Girls," the summer anthem that laces Ben E. King's Stand By Me with suicidal fantasies, has made 17-year-old singer Sean Kingston an overnight sensation.

In fact, Kingston's rise to the top of the charts began not too long ago, when the Miami-native sent hundreds of messages to the MySpace account of J.R. Rotem, the multi-platinum producer of such talents as 50 Cent, Britney Spears, Destiny's Child and Rihanna. Eventually, Rotem heard one of Kingston's tracks and invited the then 17-year-old to Los Angeles for an audition. The meeting was more than fruitful: the once-homeless Kingston got a contract and Rotem, who had just launched his own label, Beluga Heights, got his first artist.

Lucky them. Last week, Kingston's candy-coated "Beautiful Girls" became the most downloaded track on iTunes and, most likely, the breakout hit of the summer. Released as the first single on his eponymous debut, the track's music, lyrics and video are an apparently welcome throwback to kinder if not quite gentler times.

Sung in a sweet Jamaican accent – Kingston and his troubled family spent many years in Jamaica – and propelled by a crisp snare beat, "Beautiful Girls" glides where other sample-heavy songs have plodded. (In an period where most riffs are driven home by razor-shaped synthesizers, the song's main melody is underlined with a xylophone.)

Despite the song's novelty, Kingston, who has sworn off on cursing, does not appear destined to be a one-hit wonder: the album's second single, Me Love is about to enter the same iTunes Top 10 chart. A more recognizably reggae pop number, "Me Love" is a boisterous, up-tempo love song with the drums mixed up and the guitars low.

Built on the Led Zeppelin classic D'yer Maker, the track zips along with a boyish chorus and lyrics that likens heartsickess to drowning
in the ocean. Kingston, who is the nephew of dancehall star Buju Banton and the grandson of legendary reggae producer Jack Ruby, is also producer Rotem's project for 2007 and the rest of the album, while unmistakably Jamaican in flavor, is entirely American in composition.

On There's Nothin', his duet with fellow child prodigy Paula DeAnda,
a strong piano line, string and flute fluorishes as well as a short rap are just a few of the standard R&B elements that make this a pleasant placeholder.

The cool club track "Take You There" features a sometimes breathless Kingston extending his hand to the ladies over synthesizers big and small and a tropical house beat. But the real banger is Got No Shorty, a crunchy, spare track with giant hand claps, a subtle organ hook and a cartoony vibe reminiscent of OutKast's Hey Ya.

Those who like their hip hop slower and seemingly meaner should enjoy "Drummer Boy" which has bombast aplenty even if the lyrics – "this ain't a movie and I ain't pretending" – are as innocent as on his love songs. As on other tracks, it's hard to fault Kingston for being naive when the music is so damn mature – in "Drummer Boy," a hypnotic organ line imitates the up-stroke beat of a reggae guitar and the vocal chorus deftly incorporates the Little Drummer Boy's "pa rum pum pum pum."

It's Kingston's "bilingualism," his ability to rap in American and sing in Jamaican, that makes "Kingston" – which happens to be the capital of Jamaica – a small surprise, especially if you're willing to suppose that Kingston the rapper's style might owe some of its cadences to Detroit's Eminem.

In a time when albums rarely sell half as well as singles, Kingston's debut album is likely to triumph. There's a half-dozen hot singles on Sean Kingston, meaning the summer of '07 will probably extend late into the fall – not because of global warming but because we'll be getting a steady trickle of his caribbean charm long after the leaves have fallen.