She's the pretty but quiet girl in school who sits in the back of the class and rarely raises her hand. She's the mysterious teenager whose eyes warn of a fiery determination deep inside. She's the shy girl you least expect to be the center of attention. But when 19-year-old Mya Harrison steps on stage or behind a microphone or even when she auditioned two years ago in her own living room to earn her recording contract, she doesn't just blossom, she ignites.

"I'm a totally different person," says Mya. "I really like to shock people with what I can do. There's no reason for me to flaunt it. I learn a lot from just listening and watching. Then when it's time, it's time. Then I let it all out and I can do anything."

On her self-titled debut album on University Music Entertainment/Interscope Records, and its first single and video, "It's All About Me," Mya is both the girl who wants and the girl who gets-a role model for an entire generation. The smooth R&B grooves of Mya recorded in New York, Philadelphia, and Atlanta are "about relationships," she says, "being young, throwing parties, getting hurt for the first time, losing your virginity, hating someone for leaving because it hurts so much, about all the things you go through for the first time when you're my age-or the second time or third time as you grow up. The album's about taking control, saying goodbye and moving on when you're down. It's about not being afraid."

"It's All About Me," featuring Sisqo, singer form the multiplatinum University Music Entertainment labelmate Dru Hill, was co-written by him and producer Darryl Pearson (the multiplatinum producer for the Love Jones soundtrack and R&B group Jodeci). The much-acclaimed Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds and Diane Warren co-wrote "My First Night with You." Mya wrote and co-produced "What Cha Say," and co-wrote "Bye Bye" featuring Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott and "We Goin' Make You Dance," the latter with Dru Hill's Mokio (who wrote "If You Died I Wouldn't Cry Cause You Never Loved Me Anyway" with Raphael Brown, who penned "In My Bed" for Dru Hill). The executive producer for the album is A. Haqq Islam. She'll also be heard on "Ghetto Superstar" with Fugees' Wyclef and Pras, and Old Dirty Bastard of Wu-Tang Clan on the soundtrack to Bulworth, starring Warren Beatty and Halle Berry.

Yet it was dancing, not singing, which encouraged Mya to bloom. Born in Washington, DC, Mya (she says she was named for Maya Angelou) was two years old when her father stood her in the Reflecting Pool between the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial-and she danced. She started ballet classes immediately, then tap and jazz, but lost interest when she was eight. At 12, she found herself watching videos of her dancing and her desire suddenly rekindled. She studied tapes of Savion Glover, the tap dance prodigy now best-known for the Broadway hit Bring In Da Noise, Bring In D Funk, until she learned his routines and then joined the group T.W.A. (Tappers With Attitude). She went solo before heading to New York to study with Glover in a residency with the famed Dance Theater of Harlem. Soon after. She earned a reputation for improvisation and an impressed Glover gave her a solo spot during a Kennedy Center performance. Mya has subsequently appeared on BET's "Teen Summit" and has taught dance to children ever since she herself was 14: "1 teach them there's no limit to their dreams." She's also taken violin lessons since the fourth grade, and has begun to learn to play the drums. Singing, however, was a different story. "The first time I went to my grandmother's church it was the night before Easter. I was eight and my father was rehearsing to sing 'I Wanna Thank You God' the next day. I really wanted to get up and sing too so I learned the song by myself that night. But I was too shy to say anything." The same was true throughout her school years, whether it was talent shows or Christmas pageants. "I really wanted to audition but I never had the guts to just go ahead and do it. I don't want to do anything on stage unless I'm good. One day, I asked my mom, 'Can you listen to me sing and tell me if I can't My father didn't find out I could sing until I was 14."

Her father performed in R&B bands, her mother was an accountant, as Mya grew up in suburban Maryland the oldest of three children and the only girl. Her strict upbringing emphasized the value of school and working hard to get good grades. But when her father finally heard her sing, he had her record a couple of demo tapes and took them to a club where he was playing. There he met Haqq Islam, President and CEO of University Music. Islam listend to the tapes and agreed to come to Mya's home, where she sang him two En Vogue songs. "That the head of a record label would take enough interest to come to my living room to hear me sing," says Mya who had just graduated from Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt at the age of 16, "was incredible. I was tense at first but once I was singing, I relaxed. I was determined, and now when I'm determined to do something, I do it."

Though signed to a deal, she later enrolled in the University of Maryland in speech communications. But preparations for the album were taking too much of her time and she left after one semester. "I always had the feeling I'd be in the business. It's what I've always loved. It's not about being a star. I'd still be singing, dancing, writing songs, if this had never happened. Being around the entertainment business, I've learned not to say 'I'm all that.' You take your talent and do your best and give it to people. I just want to make people, and myself, happy. I never dreamed of a record deal, especially living in the DC area which is not big in the record business."

Nor is nearby Baltimore. But little did Mya realize when she first met Baltimore natives Dru Hill at a Grammy party in New York in 1996, before their first album was released, that they'd be so instrumental in her career. "It's great being around them because they bring a really creative atmosphere. That gives me something to live up to."

Most important to her for her debut album was, she says, "that I wanted to sound different musically and vocally. I want to be myself, not like anyone else. It was also important that the songs mean something, no bubblegum songs, but songs that relate and reach and bring people together. It's a people thing, not male or female, not one race, but what everyone can relate to.

Mya is many things-singer, dancer, songwriter, choreographer (including her "It's All About Me" video), even clothes designer (the provocative red outfit she wears in the video is hers) and artist. "In school, I'd draw for people and get paid $5 for each one. But the most fun was just seeing their reactions to what I created for them. I love that." Mya admits that, among the many things she is, she's also a bit of a tomboy. "Guys will ll just go out and do something. Females will talk about it a lot. I don't care if I break a nail. You have to be aggressive to get the same respect as the guys."

She's the girl you knew had the talent-if she would only step on the stage or behind a microphone. Now, Mya has.