Talking to Tamia Washington is a lot like meeting with mob princess Victoria Gotti: She's as guarded as she is connected. Quincy Jones, who is founder and chairman of VIBE, is her musical mentor. Grant Hill, the Detroit Piston, is her man. Brenda Richie, who once worked behind the scenes with the Commodores but is probably best known for waxing husband Lionel's and the Other Woman's ass, is her manager. And her mom?

Mom is 40-year-old Barbara Peden-Washington, a former assembly-line working who still lives in Windsor, Ontario, Canada and most definitely keeps it real. How real? "let me put it to you this way," Peden-Washington says, "if all the other kids had luncheon mean or ham, then Tamia had Spam."

Today, though, her days of eating man-grafted flesh are gone. Now Tamia counts her blessings, which started pouring in during 1994, after she performed at a multiple sclerosis benefit in Aspen, Colorado. Brenda Richie, who was cosponsoring the event, introduced herself to Tamia after the show. "Like everyone else," Richie says, "I was taken with her. She had this beautiful, angelic voice. When you see her sing, there's a light. You know His word is coming through her."

A few months later, Tamia, who was being courted by Warner Bros. Records at the time, called Richie to say that she was coming to L.A. for a photo session. "I came with a pair of jeans and an overnight bag," admits Tamia, who's downing echinacea and water at Pageant, a low-key lounge in New York's East Village. She's two days into a 10-city tour doing groundwork for her playful debut, Tamia (Qwest/Warner). "[Back then] I thought I would come to L.A. for a couple of days, stay with Brenda, and it would be cool. Then," she says, "everything started happening." A few weeks later, Tamia talked with Jones at an awards ceremony in Las Vegas; Richie became Washington's manager.

Soon after, Tamia's stirring "You Put A Move On My Heart" from 1995's Q's Jook Joint (Qwest) flooded airwaves and received lots of critical acclaim. Sales of the single were not phenomenal, but the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences was impressed with the 19-year-old singer. The aforeentioned tune, along with "Slow Jams" (also from Jook Joint) and "Missing You" from the soundtrack to 1996's Set It Off (EastWest), was Grammy-nominated in 1996. Ballads are her thing.

In 1998, for Tamia, the singer has called upon the likes of Jermaine Dupri, Mario Winans, Stevie J., and Daryl Simmons--a motley crue of producers who have worked with the Brandys and the Tonis and the Marys--to create a broad palette of youthful sounds (as opposed to the more sophisticated feel of her earlier work). The result is an at times overproduced, hip hop-tinged pop album; sort of like a hybrid of Mariah Carey and the Clark Sisters. If you can imagine that.

"I got to be real," says southern fried funk-maestro Jermaine Dupri, who explores Tamia's coy side on the album's first single, "Imagination." "When I first saw her, I was like, Damn, she's bad as hell. Then I found out she was shy and that she could dance. I was like, She could be the next Janet Jackson."

Perhaps. But unlike Princess Jackson, Tamia is a round-the-way girl from the small factory town of Windsor. In 1976, she was born to a then single, 19-year-old mother. Tamia was raised in the Glengarry projects until she was 12 and doesn't know her biological father. Her late grandmother Marilyn Rhue helped raise Tamia; Rhue died in 1983. "It was hard on Tamia," says Peden-Washington of her own mother's passing, "because when I wasn't around, there was always Grandma. They used to sing around the house together."

At 10, Tamia started exercising her siren onstage at an aunt's church. At home, says Tamia, "I would make tambourines out of paper and plastic, put rice inside, and stable the edges together. I would sing so loud that my mom would be like, 'Tamia, please, I can't think!'" Still, Tamia sings--not just in the studio or in the shower, but in elevators, limousines, and walking down the street after hanging out (on the air) at New York's HOT 97 with rapper DMX.

Her talent touches admirers outside the realm of hip hop and R&B. Case in point: In a hotel hallway in Las Vegas four years ago, Tamia's rendition of "Jesus Loves Me" caught the attention of country singer Naomi Judd. Tamia's door was ajar, and Judd, walking by while Tamia was singing, heard the majestic notes and knocked. "I opened the door, and she had tears in her eyes," Tamia says. "Late on, she sent me this beautiful ceramic night-light with an angel and a promise book of God's promises. She wrote in it, 'My mother gave me this book when I started out. I hope this book is of some inspiration to you.'"