Ginuwine In The Wilderness Vibe Issue March 2001 Written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda Ginuwine slips into the Manhattan Center Studios (a place that feels like a Kentucky log cabin that somehow landed in Midtown) wearing a baseball cap and a full-length beaver coat and smelling seductively like Christian Dior's Fahrenheit cologne.  Although he could have dined anywhere in New York, he's only in the mood for the Popeyes takeout he carries in his hand.  He's keeping real things simple and trying to stay focused, because he's late in finishing his new album, tentatively titled Ginuwine: The Story.  Once he's done, he can get to the really fun part where he creates his live performance.  As any Ginuwine fan knows, this young R&B performer's a star, the kind whose life is filled with talent and pain, and whose future is dotted with question marks.  The sort you read a story about 20 years ago after the fact that tells what you're about to hear. Elgin Lumpkin's life changed on May 25, 1983.  The 13-year-old boy from Washington, D.C., didn't want to become an astronaut, but he did want to walk on the moon.  After tuning in to Motown's 25th anniversary special and watching Michael Jackson perform "Billie Jean," he was sprung.  "That was it," he says.  "The next day, I ran home from school and started practicing the Moonwalk." In 1996, Elgin, who'd use the three letters of his first name to build his stage name Ginuwine, was the first of the artist enclave that included Timbaland, Missy Elliott, and Magoo among others, to break onto the scene.  "At one point, we were all living together in a house in Teaneck, N.J.," says Ginuwine, 27, of the group handpicked by Jodeci's DeVante Swing. "Me, Missy, Tim; it was crazy.  We'd all retreat to our own corners and write.  We all promised each other whoever made it would look after the others, and we stuck to it." An ugly split with DeVante didn't stop Ginuwine from making his sweet-smooth 1996 debut, Ginuwine...The Bachelor.  That album paved the way for a new sound in R&B, with Timbaland's stony production style giving the genre an entirely new beat backdrop.  The sexy hit single "Pony" had lovers doing it side-saddle coast-to-coast.  Although his music, much of it is cowritten with Timbaland, was in  the sex-you-up vein, he held the cheese.  And he could dance his ass off.  Switching effortlessly between Gene Kelly and a loose-limbed James Brown, Ginuwine developed his own sense of style, pouring everything into his live performances.  "I never really looked at myself as a singer," he says.  "More as an entertainer.  I like show-stoppers.  I want people to leave saying, 'Damn, how did he glide like that?  How did he flip like that?  How'd he do that?"  He turned to such diverse artists as Charlie Chaplin and Garth Brooks for inspiration.  "Garth gets people standing up, clapping, waving, crying, jumping, everything-without even telling you to do it.  He can just take control of an audience." Ginuwine's 1999 follow-up, 100% Ginuwine, captivated critics and fans alike and produced "What's So Different?" one of the year's best and most slept on singles.  He also challenged himself to deliver a heartfelt version of "She's Out Of My Life," paying his King of Pop mentor the greatest compliment by tackling one of his most difficult songs. Although such hot singles as the dreamy "So Anxious" and "Same Ol' G," which also appeared on the soundtrack to Dr. Dolittle, garnered him and millions of fans and a budding acting career (Moesha, Martial Law), his latest album, The Story, goes deeper, telling love tales while still chasing tail.  On the sweet confection "When Boy Meets Girl," you can feel the singe of new romance.  The first single, "There It Is," is really "Bills, Bills, Bills" from a man's point of view.  In everything he does, Ginuwine distinguishes himself by being multitalented and well rounded.  "He's up on some Michael Jackson shit, on that level," Timbaland says. Though fiercely guarded about his private life-necessary for anyone whose day job includes "ladykilla" in its description-stories of Ginuwine's connection with Sole`, 28, who appears with him in his video for "None Of Ur Friends Business," have surfaced.  Sole` has gone on the record saying she and Ginuwine are buliding a home together in Maryland, that she is pregnant with his baby, and they're engaged.  Ginuwine confirms that he and Sole` are in a relationship, but he won't kiss and tell.  He wants their privacy respected. Women seem to be the furthest things from his mind right now.  While putting the finishing touches on The Story, the singer is in a dismal holidaze.  It's the beginningof December, and he is trying to "live" through Christmas. For now, though, Ginuwine is a soul survivor.  He was still grieving over the 1999 suicide of his father, James Lumpkin, 78, when his mother was diagnosed with cancer.  Then in August 2000, Sandra Lumpkin died while Ginuwine was on the set of Juwanna Man, a film in which he costars with Tommy Davidson and Vivica A. Fox, due to be released this month. "You can imagine now how I was hurting," he says.  "I was going crazy, hitting depression, I was gonna kill myself."  He knew she was sick, but he had hope.  She was the one who encouraged him to get a paralegal degree from Prince George's Community College in Maryland to give him something to fall back on.  She was also the one who encouraged him to go all the way with his entertainment career. "I feel like I'm in jail, on death row, and my day is coming," he says.  "That's how I'm facing Christmas." "I did drink for awhile.  And waking up sick every morning wasn't the way I wanted to live.  But I was lost, and I was trying to find my way.  I was trying to forget it by drinking, but that was only temporary.  Because after that's gone away, all your pain, all your hurt, comes right back."  He says things had gotten so bad, his friends had to pull him out of bed and drag him into the studio.  After returning to his music, he poured his agony into his songs. That's precisely why this album means so much to Ginuwine, and why he wants everything to be perfect.  He sits with his back to the wall, pounding his fists on the table to the beats created by Timbaland and the Big Dog production team.  He doesn't like letting anyone hear the product incomplete.  "I don't like all eyes on me,"I get nervous a little bit when I have a mike, I get kinda shaky." He listens to the music and it's good, 100 percent genuine.  When asked if he's gonna write a song for his mother, he shakes his head.  "I don't think I could complete a song if I wrote one," he says.  "It would probably take me a year, because every time I'd go in there, I'd cry.  When I cry, I can't sing." You can almost hear the doves in the rafters. An executive-power powwow has been called by Sony in Connecticut, and Ginuwine has been summoned to attend.  He's the only celebrity on the list.  In the back of the limousine en route, he scribbles lyrics on a yellow, lined notebook in the near dark, finding ways to make the Latin-inflected "The Show After The Show" evem freakier.  He drapes his words with so many musical metaphors, guitar strings begin morphing into G-strings, and clearly, his internal bass is slap, slapping away.  "My Cherie, come get with me, he sings.  "Do you wanna roll with me / Say you wanna roll with me / Cause if you wanna roll with me, c'mon." He talks about his 9-year-old son, lil Elgin, who's one of the main reasons why he won't let himself hit bototm.  He doesn't want to follow in the footsteps of his father, who took a gun to his head to end his own pain.  "I  don't understand why he did it," Ginuwine says of his dad.  "That's something I can never get over.  That's why, when it got to that point with me, I though about my son.  I thought about my family, how much I would hurt them.  Sometimes things get rough both physically and mentally.  Certain people just can't take it, and I guess he couldn't take it." He arrives at Valbella, a restaurant in Riverside, Conn., and even though he's been dreading the meet-and-greet spectacle, the transformation begins as soon as he exits the limo.  Clearly, Ginuwine's a professional player who can steel himself before the game.  It's an awesome thing, seeing him work the crowd and how they respond to his magnetism.  As quickly as he arrives, he's ready to leave.  He just wants to get back in the studio, back to the place that takes his pain away. As he slides into the limo, he syas he's made a decision.  He's going to create a freestyle tribute to his mom.  "I'm going to put a poem on the album.  I'm gonna try," he says.  "I'm gonna get everybody out of my room, even the engineers.  I'll tell them to start the tape, and I'll just talk.  I'll talk to her, and I'll talk to my dad.  I don't wanna write nothing down, I just want to see what comes out." It seems his chosen name is perfect.  He's a man/boy who wears no masks, doesn't flinch at the hard questions, and appears at times like quite an old soul. "My momma used to tell me that", he says, staring out the window.  His look is wistful and strong, his heart plainly in view.  You can't reach out and hold him, so you just let him have his moment.  And quietly hope this will be one story with a happy ending.