HE’S THE KING: ASK HIM

When people call Jay King--the leader of the soul group Club Nouveau--a cocky, arrogant egomaniac, it’s not really fair.

The description is too mild.

King, 24, is small and slight, but he comes equipped with a king-size ego. Remember young Muhammad Ali and his ‘I’m-the-greatest” rap? Next to King, young Ali seems shy.

King was headquartered at the Sheraton Universal during a recent trip from his hometown, Sacramento. He’s the king of the music business right now. Just ask him. He’ll tell you.

“I’m the best,” King boasted casually, as if he were merely stating the obvious. “Club Nouveau is the best group around. We’re the hottest group around. Who’s hotter?”

U2, of course, but that’s about all. Club Nouveau’s debut album, “Life, Love & Pain”--on Warner Bros. Records--is in the Billboard magazine pop Top 10. What’s made the album such a smash is a single, “Lean on Me,” a remake of the 1972 Bill Withers hit, which rocketed to the top of the pop chart a few weeks ago. Couched in a smoldering, medium-tempo, funk/reggae dance beat, the Club Nouveau version is actually an improvement over Withers’ superb single. To me, the Club Nouveau remake is one the best singles of the last few years.

King, of course, thinks so too.

He’s also high on the album. This is its future, according to King: “The album will sell 3 million copies. We’ll be nominated for five Grammys. We’ll win three. There’s no doubt in my mind.”

As you might imagine, some people argue that King is an insufferable creep. Actually, though, he’s quite likable. He may be the most charming egomaniac around.

You might expect him to take credit for everything Club Nouveau has done. No--for almost everything. He acknowledges that Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy, two of the group’s members, are the brains behind “Lean on Me.” But King, a vocalist, said he had a key role in shaping that single as well as the other songs on the album.

King, of course, is the leader of Club Nouveau, which also includes Samuelle Prater and Valerie Watson. He listed his other contributions: “I’m in on the writing, the producing and in all the creative aspects of what the group does. I also manage the group. I market the group. I do it all.”

King proudly admitted that he has no training for any of this. “I just did it. I got into music because I like it. I have no background in any of this.

“Musically, I know how to tell people to play what I want. I can’t play a bass line but I can tell a bass player the bass line I want. I can tell you when you’re doing something right or wrong.”

In the business realm, what he lacks in skills he makes up for in self-confidence. “I just believe in myself,” he said. “I believe I can do anything. I’m an entrepreneur. I have a head for business. I’m not trained in it, but I can do it. And if I can’t do it myself, I know how to go about getting it done.”

Is there anything King can’t do?

Undoubtedly there are a lot of things--but just don’t mention them to him. “I hate it when somebody tells me I can’t do something,” he said. “I have to go out and do it and prove them wrong.”

You don’t get to be a nail-hard, street-smart shark like King through a conventional middle-class background. King proudly admits that the streets were his training ground.

“I left home when I was 14,” he recalled. “I had to be on my own. I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to do something great. I had to be prepared. Being on the streets prepared me for what I’m doing now.”

He learned the hard way, by trial and error. “Since I was 14, I was dancing and being an entertainer. I had some hard knocks. I was cheated and ripped off and conned and outsmarted by everybody at first. I learned by making mistakes, by not being paid for things I should have been paid for and not understanding things I should have understood. But I learned. Now I’m tough. People have a hard time getting the best of me now. It’s probably not even possible.”

Love him or hate him, you have to admire King for one thing. He says what he thinks. Many of his opinions are scorching. Most aren’t printable.

“I say what’s on my mind,” said King, who’s detractors refer to him as Mighty Mouth. “It’s a free country.”

He’s learning the hard way that you can’t say what you think without consequences. Rapping a rival in a San Francisco newspaper article resulted in lawyers from both sides discussing a libel suit, which was not filed.

His rival is associated with the group called the Timex Social Club, which comes from an area not far from Sacramento, King’s home town. After King called this band every nasty name he could think of, he explained the conflict.

Apparently he reworked a raw version of a song called “Rumors” and, as a producer, turned it into a No. 1 pop single for the Timex Social Club in 1985.

“They didn’t even like the record,” he recalled. “They thought I had changed too much of it. They hated the mix. See how much they know?

“But I believed in it. I put it out on my label, Jay Records. I had to sell my car, my furniture and everything to get money to put it out.”

But after the single’s success the group left King, supposedly for greener pastures. He’s still livid about it. However, he’s had the last laugh. The Timex Social club faded after that one song, but King parlayed it into a Warner Bros. record contract for Club Nouveau, a group he assembled.

“Lean on Me,” incidentally, wasn’t the first hit single from the album. “Jealousy” and “Situation” were hits too, but only in the soul market. King is still angry with Warner Bros. Records, which he blames for not pushing those singles hard enough to make them pop-market hits.

So far, Club Nouveau has only done a tour as an opening act for the young soul-singing group, Ready for the World. The way King tells it, Club Nouveau was consistently superior to the headliner: “We wiped them out every show. They couldn’t top us. We were unstoppable.”

Club Nouveau was certainly good enough to attract Madonna’s attention. The band will be her opening act when she starts touring in June. ‘That will be great exposure,” King said, standing up to pace around the hotel room as he began a long rap on the excellence of Club Nouveau:

“Man, the world will soon know how great Club Nouveau is. They’ll know about Jay King too. They’ll know that we’re the greatest, the best, the top, that we can’t be beat, that we. . . .”