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"  Joss Stone is expertly making her way through a downtown flea market in New York City. &amp;quot;I love this place,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve been coming here since I was 14.&amp;quot; Today the 18-year-old British soul sensation is on a mission to buy a ring for her mother and a necklace for her sister. Oh, and some nose studs, because she keeps losing hers.  She stops at a booth piled high with hats and sunglasses. The vendor spots her and hurries over to give her a hug. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;ve been here forever, man,&amp;quot; Stone says. &amp;quot;You sold me some sunglasses that broke.&amp;quot;  The vendor, whose name is Michael, takes her hand. &amp;quot;Come, come, come!&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;I have sunglasses for you!&amp;quot; As he gives her a pair, he squints at her. &amp;quot;I know you from somewhere,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;What do you do?&amp;quot; Stone is dressed casually in cream cargo pants and a light-green tank top, but with her cascading blond hair, lustrous skin, and willowy frame, she is attracting discreet looks from everybody in the place.  &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m a hairdresser,&amp;quot; she fibs, putting on the glasses. &amp;quot;Oh! I like these.&amp;quot; She lowers her voice. &amp;quot;Give me a really good price.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;Fifteen,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;But for you, 10 bucks.&amp;quot; Sold. We move on as the vendor stares at her, eyes narrowed. He is not convinced she does hair for a living.  Stone is, of course, the teenager from Devon, England, whose extraordinarily rich, old-soul voice has a gospel power that has earned her comparisons to Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin. Since she amazed listeners with her 2003 debut, The Soul Sessions, primarily a collection of obscure R&amp;amp;amp;B covers reworked by Stone and a troupe of veteran soul musicians, she has twice performed in concerts attended by the President, landed a Gap campaign, garnered three Grammy nominations, and seen both her albums reach gold status. Stone&amp;#039;s startlingly precocious voice suits her choice of music. She has studiously avoided the bubblegum sound of contemporaries like Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson, opting instead for the warm, timeless feel of the R&amp;amp;amp;B radio hits of the &amp;#039;70s.  &amp;quot;Joss is in a category of one,&amp;quot; says Steve Greenberg, the president of Columbia Records and former head of S-Curve Records, which signed Stone in 2002. He recalls Stone&amp;#039;s audition in S-Curve&amp;#039;s New York studio. She was 14 and had been flown in from Devon with her parents. &amp;quot;She didn&amp;#039;t have any demos, so we downloaded some karaoke tracks and had her sing to them,&amp;quot; Greenberg says. &amp;quot;The first thing she sang was &amp;#039;Midnight Train to Georgia,&amp;#039; and it was so brilliant that my reaction was to double over in laughter. It just didn&amp;#039;t make any sense whatsoever. Part of me wanted to look around the room for the hidden tape recorder that was really doing the singing.&amp;quot;  Patti LaBelle, who dueted with Stone on the soundtrack for Chicken Little, says, &amp;quot;I first heard her before I had seen her, and I said, &amp;#039;Where is that black girl from?&amp;#039; She sounded like a black girl! No, no, not a girl\u2014a black woman.&amp;quot;  Stone&amp;#039;s powerhouse performances\u2014during which she strolls the stage barefoot\u2014have attracted a flock of famous fans. Elton John enlisted Stone to sing at his Oscar party. &amp;quot;She brought the house down, and that&amp;#039;s a tough crowd to play,&amp;quot; John says. &amp;quot;This white girl from England with an amazingly mature, soulful voice. For me, the fun of the party is having new acts perform and then getting up and singing with them.&amp;quot;  Tom Cruise invited her to his home after the two exchanged mutually admiring e-mails. &amp;quot;Tom&amp;#039;s really nice,&amp;quot; Stone says, sifting through a tray of turquoise rings. &amp;quot;I wish everybody would stop being so mean to him.&amp;quot; She tries one on. &amp;quot;I have massive hands,&amp;quot; she moans. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re like man hands!&amp;quot;  Stone prowls flea markets and vintage stores, constantly on the lookout for something new. She eschews all trends. Nothing on her is a recognizable brand, from her macram\u00E9 purse to her grass-green sandals to her dangly, intricately embossed earrings.  Suddenly Michael the vendor runs over, clutching a camera. &amp;quot;I got it!&amp;quot; he says triumphantly. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re a singer! I saw you last week on TV in the morning with no flip-flops, singing!&amp;quot; (That would be her recent stint on the Today show.) &amp;quot;Can I have a picture?&amp;quot;  She sighs good-naturedly. &amp;quot;You got me,&amp;quot; she says. For the moment, Stone&amp;#039;s level of fame is still manageable. &amp;quot;I walk down the street perfectly fine,&amp;quot; she says as we head up Broadway. The spotlight can occasionally overwhelm, however. Before she played last summer&amp;#039;s Live 8 concert in front of a London crowd of more than 200,000 and a global television audience, she was so sick with fear that, she says, &amp;quot;I couldn&amp;#039;t look at anybody.&amp;quot; After her Today appearance, during which Matt Lauer remarked on the four-carat diamond &amp;quot;promise ring&amp;quot; (as Stone calls it) that her boyfriend, producer Beau Dozier, gave her, rumors flew that she was engaged. &amp;quot;I am a child!&amp;quot; Stone says. &amp;quot;We are in love, but I am not getting married.&amp;quot; She looks indignant. &amp;quot;Apparently, it was all over the Internet that I&amp;#039;m the one who proposed! Which, I would like to say, I would never do.&amp;quot;  Controversy, Stone is learning, can swirl around the most innocuous comment. Earlier this year, she was signed to succeed Sarah Jessica Parker as the face of the Gap. It was an easy choice: Stone is a burgeoning style setter with a deft hi-lo mix of thrift, hippie chic, and newfound interest in designers such as Alice Temperley and Roberto Cavalli. All was well until the Los Angeles Times quoted her as being upset that the jeans-clad tuchis that ran in the ad was not hers. As Stone tells it, the commercial, which features her singing, surrounded by dancers, played on a nearby television set during her interview. &amp;quot;I was joking to [the reporter], saying, &amp;#039;That&amp;#039;s not my ass, that&amp;#039;s the other girl&amp;#039;s.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; She adds, laughing, &amp;quot;I would never have a butt double.&amp;quot; She hastens to say that she loves the Gap. &amp;quot;They made me a nice skirt, and I got to keep it too!&amp;quot;  Stone, perhaps the least jaded famous person in the Western world, is genuinely excited about her freebie skirt. She is relentlessly upbeat as we walk, marveling at the architectural detail on a building and demonstrating her new Lauryn Hill ringtone. She sometimes sings softly to herself. Even at a low volume, it stops you cold; it&amp;#039;s like a silk ribbon unfurling.  A gaggle of preteen girls point at her. &amp;quot;Hey, Joss Stone!&amp;quot; they holler.  &amp;quot;Hello!&amp;quot; she carols, waving.  &amp;quot;Nice legs,&amp;quot; a passing man remarks.  &amp;quot;Thank you!&amp;quot; Joss calls to him. She frets about an autograph-seeking fan who was angry when her car didn&amp;#039;t stop after a recent taping of Live With Regis and Kelly. &amp;quot;I felt really bad,&amp;quot; she says. At the time, her driver pointed out that the guy lingered in front of the studio every day, clearly to glom autographs to sell. Still, it bothers her.  She brings it up again the next day at lunch. &amp;quot;I just don&amp;#039;t like to be mean,&amp;quot; she says, settling into a chair at Tea &amp;amp;amp; Sympathy, a cozy British restaurant in Greenwich Village. &amp;quot;Some people get so above themselves,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;They forget that everyone else is a person.&amp;quot;  Singer John Legend, who appeared with her at VH1&amp;#039;s Save the Music Concert in the spring, predicts that this will not happen to Stone. &amp;quot;Joss is the opposite of a diva,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Most divas are bitchy because they&amp;#039;re really insecure, but she seems very comfortable with herself and her talent, and that makes her a joy to be around.&amp;quot;  True to form, the low-key Stone debunks splashy industry parties as &amp;quot;so not fun. Everybody picks up magazines and thinks, Omigod, they&amp;#039;re having so much fun, but let&amp;#039;s be real,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;These people had to get ready for four f--kin&amp;#039; hours, they&amp;#039;re in high heels that really hurt, talking to people they don&amp;#039;t know, having pictures taken every five minutes. To me, that&amp;#039;s not a party.&amp;quot; She shrugs. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not a good partyer. Every time I go out, I get tired. It&amp;#039;s like I&amp;#039;m old or something.&amp;quot;  Stone got her practical nature from her parents. Her father, an importer-exporter of fruit and nuts, and her mother, now her manager, raised Joss, her sister, and two brothers with a healthy work ethic in their hometown village of Ashill. &amp;quot;If my dad came home and we were watching TV, we&amp;#039;d get the bullocking of our lives,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;We had to be cleaning the kitchen, Hoovering, washing the car, something. At the time I was like, He&amp;#039;s such an asshole, I just want to watch Friends. But if I were allowed to be as lazy as I wanted, I wouldn&amp;#039;t be here right now. When children are mean and horrible, I blame it on the parents. Mine raised good people, and that&amp;#039;s such an achievement.&amp;quot;  Stone&amp;#039;s drive didn&amp;#039;t apply to school, though. A middling student, she would cry in the morning while getting ready. Few of her classmates even knew she could sing. She generally had small roles in school plays and has never had formal voice training. &amp;quot;You know how in school there was one girl who was the singer?&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Mine was Michelle Stoneman, who had a voice like C\u00E9line Dion. When somebody else is standing on the tabletops singing, you don&amp;#039;t want to be like, &amp;#039;I can sing too!&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Making matters worse, Stone has always been self-critical. &amp;quot;My whole family makes fun of each other, and that&amp;#039;s the way I am,&amp;quot; she says. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a9235/rolling-stone-19468/>