JoJo is 13, going on superstar

Yes, the liner notes of JoJo's debut album, coming out tomorrow, may look like the scribblings in the back of your junior high yearbook, liberal smattering of exclamation marks included.

To Balewa & Sly: "I love sushi now! Thanks for opening my mind!"

To Charlena: "My best friend ever!"

To "MY FANS": "I love you all sooooo much!" That's "so" with five o's, mind you.

But that's just about the last time you'll hear JoJo sounding her age, which, for the record, is 13. Her first single, "Leave (Get Out)," is directed at a cheating boyfriend, not Ma trying to interrupt a sleepover, and the voice of the former Foxborough girl conjures a soul singer with many more years in tow. It's a voice that has Teen People calling her the "female Justin Timberlake," and even has her second-grade teacher back at Igo Elementary flipping to MTV's "Total Request Live," where JoJo peaked at No. 2 last week and will promote her CD tomorrow.

Brian Beckenstein immediately recognized his former student who hummed nonstop, loved "Cats," and played a tree in the class play "Freddie the Fungus," just six years ago.

"I'm like, `Yep, that's Joanna. Just taller," he said. "Same face, same smile."

And a whole lot more makeup and post-breakup angst.

Prepubescent or not, on the phone from her beachside hotel in Marseille, France, JoJo's got this interview thing down. She's got to get out the door right now to go to her concert -- she's opening for Usher's European tour -- but says to call her back afterwards, "that's 3:45 your time."

But first she defends her song, saying yes, she has had a boyfriend and a nasty breakup. (No worries, she says it was a boy from New Jersey, where she now lives, not Boston.)

"I don't think I know a 13-year-old that hasn't had a [boy or] girlfriend," she said. "Boys and girls of all ages aren't faithful and don't feel they need to be with just one person. All the songs I can relate to. I don't feel comfortable singing lyrics I can't identify with."

In one of three tracks she wrote on the album, "Keep on Keepin' On," JoJo draws inspiration from her own childhood. Then, she was Joanna Levesque (pronounced La-veck), who was embarrassed to explain why she ate reduced-price lunches or ask wealthier classmates over to her one-bedroom apartment with duct tape on a cracked window and paint peeling off the walls. She shared a bed with her single mother, Diana, who cleaned houses while JoJo was in school and sang at weddings and funerals on the weekends.

Vacations were few, and the two shopped at Wal-Mart and Kmart, and relied on hand-me-downs from friends and relatives for their wardrobes. (JoJo remembers one particularly hideous spandex jumper.)

But from the moment JoJo first started riffing off Aretha Franklin albums when she was 3 or 4, her mom knew "there was something really special, abnormally special" about her daughter's pipes.

Julia Haney, JoJo's first-grade teacher, remembers other girls wondering why their post-recess renditions of Spice Girls songs didn't attract the same praise as JoJo's verbatim, on-pitch beltings of "Respect" and "Old Time Rock & Roll." Haney intentionally didn't give Joanna a lead role in the spring musical so as not to draw uncomfortable attention to her, the same reason Joanna dropped out of choir in fifth grade.

"You could see that very early on that the girls wanted to be like Joanna," Haney said.

By second grade, JoJo was chosen to perform on "Kids Say the Darndest Things on the Road in Boston," hosted by Bill Cosby in Faneuil Hall, followed by a spot on "The Oprah Winfrey Show." Resentment at school grew.

"They were pretty much hatin' on her because she had talent and was on TV shows," says the aforementioned best friend, Charlena Kennedy, who went to Igo Elementary with JoJo but now lives in Florida. "One time I went to a sleepover and a girl said, `Do you know Joanna Levesque?' and I said, `Yes, she's my best friend,' and she said, `I hate her. She's such a drama queen, and just 'cause she sings good she thinks she's all that.' "

By fourth grade, Haney, who befriended JoJo's mother and is still in contact with JoJo, says Joanna would call her crying, saying she wanted to move, yet at school she presented a confident front. Haney heard in the teacher's lounge that Joanna wrote in a textbook, "Keep this, I might be famous one day." JoJo says her self-assurance came from knowing things couldn't get any worse.

"I thought hopefully God would take me out of this situation," she said. "I thought it couldn't be bad for so long."

After hooking up with Destiny's Child producer Vincent Herbert following her 2002 appearance on "America's Most Talented Kids" and eventually signing with Da Family Entertainment and Blackground and Universal Records, life has quickly improved. Choices now are between Adidas Samoas or hot pink Air Force Ones, not hand-me-downs or superstore specials. Girls come up for autographs at the mall in New Jersey, and some former classmates have pulled the quintessential, "Ohmygod, JoJo, we should have hung out more often."

Abroad, Europeans who know little English sing along with "Leave (Get Out)," and JoJo treks from city to city in a double-decker bus. Last Tuesday, she said, she stepped out of a taxi at her hotel in Munich to greet 10 fans she knew were there only for her since Usher was staying elsewhere. Later, her mother received the message on her PDA that JoJo was No. 3 on "TRL," and JoJo started screaming. It was at that moment, JoJo realized, "It's really happening" -- she had harnessed the fame she once was ridiculed for dreaming of.

So perhaps she feels entitled to the excessive punctuation in her liner notes. Consider this one: "Also, thanks to everyone who has ever said I wouldn't make it, or made fun of me because you only made me stronger!!!"

Yes, that's three exclamation points.