Whatever you do, don't call Justin Randall Timberlake "the next Nick Carter." He'll only mutter, "I don't pay attention to stuff like that." But there are undeniable similarities. At 17, 'N Sync's hi-hop-loving heartthrob is, like Backstreet's, the younger and the tallest. And Justin's mom, Lynn Harless, like Nick's mom, Jane Carter, manages pop singers. (Lynn even named her management company after her famous son: Just-in Time Entertainment.) His stepfather, Paul, is a Memphis banker who flies to Orlando on weekends to be with the family. Justin also has two half-brothers, Jonathan, five, and Steven, eight months, who live with his father and stepmother in Tennessee.

Lynn never had to coax her son into the spotlight. "I've been singing since I was two," Justin says. "If I could talk, I could sing. I was [always] performing for somebody." Uncle Jimmy nods in agreement: "Whether he was telling a joke or dancing in front of everybody at Christmas, Justin was always an entertainer, he says.

Justin's first taste of fame came on the Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Club, on which he sang, danced and acted in various sketches from 1992 to 1994. At 13, he left to return to school, to be, as he puts it, "a kid for a second." But the classroom wasn't for him. "Igot so bored and really down about everything," he says. "I started to get a little rebellious. I didn't really get into trouble, but I wasn't focusing like I could. I didn't have the inspiration that music gave me, and it hit me: That's my place in the world. That's where I belong."

So he runited with another for MMC member, JC, in hopes of starting a singing career. The duo had been recording demos for three months when Chris called with the idea of forming a group. "I was fate," Justin says of his return to music. "Not a lot of people know what their love is before they're forty." And he may not be the only one. As Uncle Jimmy reveals, "Justin's got a [half] brother [Jonathan] who watches all the videos and mimics everything they do." Just don't call Jonathan the next Aaron Carter.