Now that he’s catapulted himself to movie star status with the quiet character piece 2 Fast 2 Furious and remained there with recent work in Four Brothers, singer-turned-actor Tyrese Gibson is taking center stage in Rogue Pictures’ action flick Waist Deep.

The oft-shirtless Tyrese will play a highly oxygenated ex-convict named O2 who wants to go legit but finds himself once again with gat in hand when his son Junior is taken hostage by a crime lord named Meat.  O2 can’t rely on his shifty cousin Wanna Be, so he enlists a sassy streetwise chick named Coco.  Someone’s about to get leaded, yo.

I realize this is an “urban” action movie, and the phrase is now synonymous with “black” or “African American” or whatever the PC terminology du jour is, but the plot and naming conventions really sound like something a white dude came up with after he drove (hastily) through Compton once.

Nevertheless, Vondie Curtis Hall (who did Tupac justice with Gridlock’d but not the same for Mariah Carey with Glitter) is directing the thing after his own rewrite, and he’s got Larenz Tate (Menace II Society), D.E.B.S. hottie Meagan Good, and platinum hip-hopper The Game, who under no circumstance is to be confused with a WWE wrestler, as the villain.

Wonder why you can’t sell a script on our message boards!