ABOUT A YEAR AGO, my excitable friend Kevin Starke of the vinyl emporium Kstarke Records told me that he'd recently run into K. Joy (myspace, facebook, podomatic, press kit) - "the singer on that track 'Like This' that Ron Hardy always used to play," as he described her.

If there's one thing you learn in the music business, it's that the people who work behind the counter usually have a better idea of what's going on than the rest of us. I made a mental note of it, and referred back when I heard a hot track on Cyberjamz Records - the label from the internet radio station of the same name. The artist was K. Joy. The title? "Like This" - the same track but updated with a sleek and modern Deep House sound (the Chip E.-produced original was also re-released). It was quickly followed by "Butterflyz" and then the latest, "Lover's Dance". And in the years that have passed since "Like This" tore up the dancefloor, K. Joy hasn't lost a thing.

I talked to K. Joy in late June 2009, just ahead of her appearance at Kstarke's July 4th Old School Party and the release of her unique charity remix project, "I Am Woman", which features a star-studded array of vocalists from Dajae to Carolyn Harding, Martha Wash and K. Joy herself.

Take me back to your early days! Were you a fan of House Music before you recorded "Like This"?

Oh yeah! I would say my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I loved going to parties. These were mostly the Mendell parties, Kenwood, and of course the Music Box and the Warehouse. There were also little parties held almost in people's basements. Anything that was going on during the weekends, I was at!

Did you know then that you wanted to be a vocalist?

I actually never thought about singing as a career. I come from a very strict household. My mother was a teacher, and in those years it was all about prepping for college, maintaining a 4.0 GPA and going to an Ivy League school. The singing that I did was mostly gospel and classical up until that point.

How it happened was that Chip E. and I had been friends since we were kids. Literally, kids! We must have been eight years old and I remember playing in my father's office. I made up a song - you're going to laugh, but it was about a goldfish! But I sang this song and we were making rubber cement balls and I think he must have remembered that all those years later.

I always loved singing though - I was in the choir at Kenwood. R. Kelly was also in the choir then. The music department was really, really serious there. There was a three to four hour talent show coordinated by Lena Mclin, almost like Britain's Got Talent with actors, singers, dancers - you name it, all competing against each other. I tied for first place, and I remember R. Kelly was in second place.

Chip was either there or heard about it. He came over to my House that summer and told me he was producing House Music records. He asked if I would write and sing on one he was producing. The title was going to be "Like This" and he gave me the topic and I had to craft the whole song to fit that. I wasn't used to writing that way but about ten minutes later I had the song written.

"Like This" charted very high in Billboard and was definitely a bona fide hit. I'm curious because now we hear complaints that labels don't develop talent like they used to. Do you feel that you were properly developed as an artist by DJ International?

I would say no. It felt as if DJ International regarded Chip as the artist and me as "just" the vocalist. To them it was Chip's song, and Chip just pulled me in. This has long been a problem for vocalists in the dance music industry, with so much attention focused on the DJs and producers, and vocalists almost treated as someone that the producer pulls in.

"Like This" charted to #15 on the Billboard chart. Part of it was my ignorance of the music business - I was just a kid and as a kid you never think you'll have a hit song in Billboard, that you'll hear yourself on the radio, that people will recognize you in the club. You do projects because they're fun, or because someone asks you and you're afraid to say no. I felt like I was lost in the shuffle.

I was looking through your discography and there wasn't much in the dance music industry between "Like This" and your releases in the last couple of years. What made you walk away from the dance music industry?

What made me walk away was that I didn't get paid. We were paid for touring, like when a special label show was put together, but that was it. I don't know this for sure but someone told me that "Like This" sold well over 100,000 copies, and I never saw a royalty check. I was told that it was "in the mail", if you can believe that. Then I was told to go see Chip about it. But Chip said he wasn't paid either. It actually hurt our relationship - we were set against each other.

That's crazy - "Like This" was licensed all over the place. And it's sad, because I had almost this same conversation with Chip. The producer and the singer of this great song, who were both really young, basically left the industry for more than a decade and I think we're all worse off for all of the great tracks Chip never made and the great songs you never wrote.

Yeah. It made me feel like I didn't want to ever deal with House again. The music is so positive but all of the politics and everything were so negative. I was just a kid and didn't have money for a lawyer. What could I do?

But it was never my way to respond with more negativity. I began to sing jazz at local nightclubs and that provided an outlet for me. In the meantime I attended Northwestern and worked hard in my career.

So what brought you back after so many years?

It was in 2005 or 2006. Cassioware got permission from Chip to sample "Like This" for his track "I Wanna See You Freak (Like This)", but Chip thought that he should check it out with me as well. Chip mentioned it when he was filming his documentary [The UnUsual Suspects], as we'd been in touch again. Then Cassioware asked me to come up to make a cameo when he was shooting the video.

It turns out that Diamond Temple and Rob Da Noize Temple were also there. Rob started asking me the same questions that you're asking, about what happened after "Like This". And the same thing had happened to him! He suggested that I should do my own label, since that was really the best way to make sure that your business gets taken care of.

Rob later introduced me to Sammy from Cyberjamz. I have to say that Sammy is the most fair, most honest label owner I've ever dealt with. I've been with Cyberjamz for a year and I've never done business with a better label owner in my life! When he says he's going to do something, he does it. He doesn't wait for you to call him about it.

My label is called Pure Innergy Recordings and is now a division of Cyberjamz. We've released four EPs since last year. First was "Like This", with both the original Chip E. release and the new versions; then "Butterflyz" by Soul Oasis presents K. Joy; and then the "Butterflyz Unreleased Cocoon Mixes"; and then "Lover's Dance". I currently have about 30 unreleased songs finished and waiting to be released.