"I am impressed when music matters, when genres are broken, when spirits are lifted, and when people make a difference." These are the opening lines to Nelly Furtado's self-penned bio, which the then-teenager sent around with a demo tape and pictures from a mall photo booth, hoping a record label might take notice. She surely couldn't have predicted the bidding war that ensued, or the prestige she was about to earn. Ultimately, it was DreamWorks, a label founded on respect for artistry above all else, that signed the young beauty. One can assume it was impressed with her R&B diva soul, pop princess sass, and innate appreciation for ethnic diversity. Furtado's debut album, Whoa, Nelly!, came out this fall to heaps of praise.

Born in Victoria, British Columbia, to working-class Portuguese immigrants, Furtado, now 21, first sang in public at the age of 4, began playing ukulele at 9, and wrote her first song at 12. Where some young girls might ask for dolls or clothes at Christmas time, Nelly would ask for synthesizers and recording equipment. "I was so into it," she remembers fondly, recalling that her teenage bedroom was "plastered" with images from Rap Pages magazine. "It was my refuge," she adds. But it wasn't one from which her parents were excluded.

Music lovers themselves, they encouraged their daughter's passion, and only protested once: when Nelly decided to move to Toronto at 17. There she formed her first band, a trip-hop duo called Nelstar, which recorded songs and even made a video. But the ambient genre couldn't encompass all Nelly's influences - everyone from TLC to Smashing Pumpkins to Cornershop to Brazilian music to the marching band her mother's family played in. For her music to reflect everything that inspired her, she would have to shift gears.

Enter Gerald Eaton and Brian West. The leaders of Toronto pop/funk act the Philosopher Kings, they caught Nelly performing an original song at the all-female Honey Jam and approached her with an offer to work together. Things progressed slowly, while Nelly taught herself to play guitar and began working on some new material, but once the trio wrote "My Love Grows Deeper Part I" - a sultry, reggae-inflected tune which wound up on Whoa, Nelly! - the singer knew this partnership was going to last.

Nelly and Track and Field (Eaton and West's production moniker) wrote and produced Whoa, Nelly! between 1998 and 2000. During those two years the DreamWorks deal went down and Nelly played her first "real" gigs: four dates at, Lilith Fair 1999. Not bad for a girl without a proper album, but those who'd heard advance tracks believed that Whoa, Nelly! signaled the arrival of a rising star.

And they were right. The album's opener, "Hey Man," is a joyous acceptance of life's rhythms - elevated by sampled strings and soul-stirring harmonies. Writing the song, Nelly says, she realized for the first time that she "had something to say." The electro/funk/folk "S*** on the Radio" comes right out and says it: "You liked me till you heard my s*** on the radio/ Well I hate to tell you pop ain't going solo/ Still you curse the day that I decided/ to stay true to myself."

"Turn Off the Light" pairs acoustic guitars with layered dancehall-style vocals, while the album's last track, "Scared of You," features Portuguese guitarra player Nuno Cristo and bilingual lyrics - a nod to Nelly's roots and possibly a hint of projects to come. All throughout the record are loops and snippets of instruments, just enough for the sound to register in your brain, and then on we go to the next thing: It could be a blast of brass or a Hindi chant. Nothing is too "out there" for Whoa, Nelly! As the artist says with the giggle/grin flourish that comes so naturally to her, "I'm making pop music; that means I get to be anything I wanna be!"