The new Michael Jackson

Last Sunday, the No 2 single was a new entry, Run It! - Chris Brown's infectious slice of new-millennium R&B. Chances are that most Culture readers have barely heard of Brown and might reasonably dismiss him as another one-hit shooting star, blazing across the pop stratosphere before disappearing back into obscurity. But Chris Brown may just be the real deal.

Brown is a precocious talent who is still only 16. He doesn't just tick the right boxes, he jumps right out of them. He has a classic soul voice in urban guise, has co-writing credits on five of his album's 14 tracks and comes up with his own video concepts. His dancing, meanwhile, is both exhilarating and exhausting to watch. In America, both Run It! and his debut album were No 1 records, prompting Vibe magazine to put him on the cover as "the future of R&B". He is regularly compared to Usher - and Michael Jackson.

"A lot of comparisons are gonna be made," he says, "because when you dance and sing, everybody's gonna compare you to Usher or Michael. I see myself as a totally different artist, equally unique."

Bold statements, certainly, but Brown talks with a confidence and certainty that command respect. A gangly 6ft 1in, with the makings of a moustache, he is not a surly, monosyllabic teenager. Nor does he rely on the arrogance, bragging and bluster that seem to accompany rap stardom. His bling count is way down, limited to some seriously big diamond studs and a huge watch. He is dressed in a cool dragon-motif warm-up jacket and a pair of limited-edition snakeskin Nikes. He may hate me for saying it, but he's a nice, sweet kid.

Perhaps it's because Brown has sprung not from the big city, but from small-town America. His home town, Tappahannock, Virginia, has a population of 2,000. His mother was director of a daycare centre, his sister works in a bank, and his father is a corrections officer at a local prison. "He was a hard-ass towards the inmates, but to me he was always real lenient, letting me get away with a lot of stuff," laughs Brown.

Nobody else in the family sang, but his mother, Joyce, loved Michael Jackson, and from the age of five, Brown was dancing in front of the television. In third grade, he took the lead in the Christmas play, Elfis. "I knew all my lines," he smiles. Otherwise, Tappahannock remained oblivious to his talents. "I'm not going to lie: it's a boring town," he says. "They don't have talent shows, they don't have community fairs. Basically, all you can do is play basketball and hang out. I played sports. I did my music underground. My friends knew I sang. They didn't know the extent of it until my song started playing on the radio."

In school, Brown was an excellent basketball point guard, and he believes he could have made it to the NBA, like his idol, Allen Iverson. He started playing at seven: "I was garbage. I sucked. My cousin was the high-school basketball star, and every day after school, I rode the bus over to his house and I'd practise, practise, practise. After I went to basketball camp one summer, I just started developing skills on my own."

It was, he says, the same with his music. He worked away at it, singing to girls and in the shower, developing his own style. Then his father put him in touch with a local production team who had connections in the Big Apple. At 13, Brown moved to New York.

"I stayed there for the next two years, but I was back and forth, balancing school every other day," he says. "My mom insisted I keep my grades up." Schooling is still part of his life. On the road, he is accompanied by a tutor and has a daily teaching schedule that no promotional activity is allowed to interrupt.

Most singers spend half their life trying to get a record deal, but Brown has never had any doubts. "I always had a vision that I was going to get signed, not in a cocky sort of way, but I believed in myself." In August 2004, soon after his 15th birthday, he auditioned at Def Jam records for its A&R boss, Tina Davis. He had only two songs, a breaking voice that kept going hoarse and a bagful of nerves. She gave him a cup of tea and some advice - "Act like you want it " - then took him in to see the label's supremo, LA Reid. Says Brown: "I went in there, no holds barred, and he was like, 'Okay, perform for me.' I danced, I sang. Then I performed my big ballad and sang my heart out."

Reid offered to sign him on the spot. Then record-company politics took over. Restructuring left Davis out of a job, so Brown asked her to become his manager. She shopped him around and he signed with Jive - the home of Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and R Kelly - which has a brilliant track record in breaking urban artists into the pop mainstream.

He signed on Christmas Eve, 2004, and started recording the following February. By May, there were 50 songs in the can.

"I chill," he yawns, "by watching TV, laying back, taking my shoes off, playing video games and dancing all the time: not practising, just having fun. I krump - that's a new style, more aggressive dancing, releasing anger, releasing stress." The best place to see his krump moves is in the video for his second single, Yo (Excuse Me Miss), which he also co-directed.

So, is Brown in it for the long ride? He's got the moves and the pedigree, he loves classic, sweet voices and he's smart. Michael Jackson may be his inspiration, but Brown's real role model is the rapper-turned-movie star Will Smith, another tall, good-looking boy with huge ambition, confidence and commercial savvy.

"I'm definitely following Will Smith," he says, "getting into acting and being able to maintain my music career. In 10 years' time, I'll also be making movies, owning my own company and my own clothing line."

Don't bet against Chris Brown. The really scary thing is that in 2016, he'll still be only 26.