Naked save for a pair of cowboy boots, an American flag-patterned jacket, and some glitter on her cheeks, Kesha Rose Sebert sinks into a couch in her dressing room and ponders the concept of money. “It comes and goes, and it buys you shit,” says the 23-year-old pop sensation known to the public as Ke$ha. “But it’s a manmade creation, so I don’t let it rule my life.” Then she grins, flashes her wide blue eyes, and says, “I am fucking money.”

Which isn’t entirely inaccurate, judging by how she spells her name, at least. I ask about the stylized moniker, bracing for an eye roll. “Anybody would get sick of that question, especially if you’re being asked 45 times every day, but I’m the asshole who put it there,” she says. “I had no money when I chose it and, instead of wallowing in self-pity, I decided to use it as a statement of self-worth.”

That was then, and this is now. Ke$ha’s debut album, Animal, was released in January and raced to the top of the charts, with the hit singles “Tik Tok,” “Your Love Is My Drug,” “Dinosaur,” and “Blah Blah Blah” packing dance floors from L.A. to London and back again. In the span of a year, she’s gone from worshiping music industry power players like Diddy and Flo Rida to working with them.

In a way, hers is a typical rags-to-riches story. Raised in Nashville by her mother, Pebe Sebert, a country musician, her family was often forced to survive on welfare checks and food stamps. Encouraged by her mother, Ke$ha moved to L.A. before finishing high school with the ambitious goal of establishing herself as a recording artist.

It was there that Kesha became Ke$ha. Shortly after landing in the City of Angels, she made the acquaintance of Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald, the producer behind hits such as Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” and Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl.” Dr. Luke immediately took a liking to Ke$ha and helped broker a deal for her with Sony Records. The two of them then put the final touches on “Tik Tok,” the song that would change everything for her.

Though by no means a philosophical treatise, “Tik Tok” was borne of Ke$ha’s knack for visualizing her dreams, mixing inspiration with supreme self-confidence and running with it. “I thought, When I wake up in the morning, who do I feel like?” Ke$ha says. “Who is the biggest baller—the male incarnation of me? Diddy! I bet he wakes up surrounded by hot chicks all the time!”

Of course, plenty of aspiring musicians like to identify with the rap mogul, but Ke$ha took her self-actualization to the extreme. “Dr. Luke spoke with Diddy the next day and told him, ‘You will never believe this, but Ke$ha and I just wrote a song about waking up and feeling like you,’” she says. Impressed and presumably flattered by the idea, Diddy dropped a couple of ad-libbed lines—and his imprimatur—on the song. Within weeks of its August 2009 release, the song rose to the top of the singles charts, instantly transforming Ke$ha into a bankable star.

Given her Sunset Boulevard predecessors, one might assume that Ke$ha’s rapid success would make her a prime candidate for career burnout or worse, especially considering her hardscrabble background, but she insists that the party-girl label just doesn’t fit. “Am I getting busted in Vegas for coke possession? Have I ever gotten a DUI? Do I hang my vagina out of my stretch Hummer?” she asks in her throaty Southern twang. “No, I’m just a fun motherfucker!”

Casual listeners can nonetheless be forgiven for getting the impression that Ke$ha is a loose cannon. In addition to “Tik Tok’s” endorsement of brushing your teeth with Jack Daniel’s and getting wasted at parties, the tracks on Animal sound like a teenage girl’s Facebook status updates: “Party at a Rich Dude’s House,” for example, is about puking in a closet at Paris Hilton’s mansion. One verse reads, “I threw up in the closet/ And I don’t care/ ’Cause the sun is coming up/ And oh my god I think I’m still fucked up.” Proust it ain’t, but the girl can get a party started.

When asked how she feels when she hears her songs on the radio, she says through a wide smile, “I want to rip my clothes off! I want to tell everyone, but I try not to, except when I’m drunk. I still can’t believe I wrote that shit about the stupid stuff I do and that it’s on the radio.”

During our conversation, Ke$ha’s biggest reveal is that she still lives at home, in Nashville, with her mother. “Why pay rent?” she asks. “Maybe I’ll move out of my mom’s basement sometime soon, hopefully.” According to Ke$ha, that Nashville basement is home to her creative soul. She credits her upbringing—the dumpster diving, the coupon clipping—with her adult indifference to wealth. “I had the best time of my life when I was dead broke and digging—literally digging—through old T-shirts on the street,” she says. “I always looked good, and when I’d find something that fit my body properly, it made me feel euphoric—kind of like how I feel when I write a good song.”

Those piles of unwanted clothes were the origins of her eclectic, shabby-chic, and frequently criticized wardrobe. “I remember the first time I showed up on a worst-dressed list. I was like, Awesome!” she says, laughing and twirling her fingers around a matted hair extension.

Ke$ha has plans tonight. She’ll meet up with Dirt Nasty, an actor and onetime MTV VJ whose real name is Simon Rex. She brandishes a shopping bag filled with “penis gifts” for her friend, toys she picked up at a nearby sex shop.

“Ke$ha and I worked on a few songs together before she got famous, and I play her boyfriend in the video for ‘Tik Tok,’” Rex says. “Then she just blew up, but she is exactly the same person she was when I first met her. Like any of us, she likes a drink and a laugh, and she’s just fucking awesome.”

Ke$ha might have friends both old and new, but her fame hasn’t done her any favors when it comes to dating. “It’s completely impossible because I’m already kind of scary. Add to that the fact that I’m probably busier and more successful than they are,” she says. “I’m always like, Dude, I’m your wet dream. I’m gone half the time and I don’t want an exclusive relationship. Let’s just hang out and be funny. We’ll bone and it’ll be great.”

God help the man who rejects her advances. Her song “Stephen” is about a guy from Nashville who wouldn’t pay her any mind, and who still gets under her skin. “He wouldn’t return my phone calls,” she says. “It drove me so crazy that I wrote a song and made a video about him.”

But surely there’s a man out there for the leggy blonde. “They all turn into ladies,” she says. “I actually just wrote a song called ‘Grow a Pair’ for the repackaged album.” She breaks into laughter and offers to give me a tattoo with a safety pin and a ballpoint pen that she finds on the floor. And just like that, Ke$ha is inking a permanent constellation of “hobo dots” onto the inside of my right ankle. Looking up from her work for a moment, she says, “I never get bored.”

Ke$ha is a creative force, an artist in her own right—or at least her own mind—who’s dedicated to her image and her music, which is clear after spending just one afternoon in her company. “When I went on tour, my life turned into the circus that I’m living now,” she says. “It’s therapy to write songs. If someone breaks my heart, I write a song. That’s how I deal with everything. If I can create something beautiful, I win.”

Photography by Yu Tsai. Styling by Marjan Malakpour. For a behind the scenes look at Kesha in L.A., head here.