Perfecting His Pitch

Vines met DeVaughn while he was managing the Baltimore-based quartet Dru Hill and asked him to write a song for the group. Vines helped get him the Jive contract, but says: "Even though they signed him to a deal, they still didn't understand him. It took them from 1998 to 2005 to put out the record. I felt like they weren't doing the job, so we had to do it ourselves."

"The Love Experience" sold about 250,000 copies and spawned some big singles, including "Believe" and "You." Still, the work didn't quite make DeVaughn a star. While promoting the album, he took to wearing a crown and cape at shows -- another of his marketing ploys designed to make him stand out. He started calling himself the "Underground King."

Around that time, DeVaughn also started wearing another disguise of sorts: He began showing up at different shows in D.C. with artists such as W. Ellington Felton and rapper Asheru of the Unspoken Heard, hiding his face behind a hooded sweatshirt and singing and rhyming under the name Chronkite. Despite speculation that DeVaughn assumed the alias so that he could perform material without bumping heads with his label, Felton says the alter ego was created for reasons more complicated than that.

"Chronkite represents that part of every artist who started what they're doing singing in front of a mirror as a child with a brush in their hand," Felton says. "At that time, it was based on the love, the initial attraction that draws you to music. In this business, unfortunately, your passion, your love, your individuality as an artist, can be stripped away the further you get into it."

Although, during the making of "Love Behind the Melody," DeVaughn hung out on producer Scott Storch's yacht, hit New York clubs with the women of Floetry and became one of the few people to see Alicia Keys's pedicure up close ("Beautiful," he says of her feet), he's still viewed as a sort of people's champ in the Washington area.

"No one says, 'He's got the number one record; he don't mess with us,' " Vines says.

"I built my movement here," says DeVaughn. "I've shown that you don't have to leave D.C. to do it."

"Love Behind the Melody" sold 45,000 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 and No. 1 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart -- a perfect setup for DeVaughn's nationwide tour with Jill Scott, which kicked off Feb. 4 and includes four dates in March at Constitution Hall.

Whether or not he wins a golden gramophone on Sunday, the nomination for best male R&B vocal performance will likely provide a career boost. But there's still more work ahead. DeVaughn wants to record two more albums this year (including a Christmas record); there are more mix tapes to create, more shows to book, more video phones to sell -- and fame to court. Even though none other than Jamie Foxx recently declared DeVaughn a star whose stock is on the rise, he's still not the sort of artist who is gawked at in restaurants or mobbed on the street.

DeVaughn is open to that level of celebrity, though -- and sees it on the horizon -- and he just has one request for the fans who may soon be mobbing him wherever he goes.

"If you see me in the bathroom, all I ask is that you wash your hands first -- and let me wash mine," he says.