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Recently, a rumor circulated that actor-comedian Chris Tucker had become so funny he was afraid to leave his house in fear that he might kill someone with his humor. That's how funny he'd become. That, of course, brings us to the first question we must ask Jacki-O.

Have you become so sexy that you're afraid you're going to kill somebody with your sexiness? Has it come to that?

"Oh, no," the Miami-based hip-hop artist says. "I don't want to wind up in that -- what's that little part in a magazine where it says, 'Negro, please'? They quote people on outlandish things they say, and I know if I said something like that, it would wind up in there for sure."

Negro, please!

"I'm so sexy I can't even leave the house anymore. People can only take so much. I'm afraid I might kill somebody with my sexiness. That's how sexy I am."

-- Jacki-O

"No, no, I haven't reached that point yet. I'm not too sexy to go out. I can go out," Jacki-O says, though we don't believe her.

It's been a year and a half since "Nookie (Real Good)" put Jacki-O's name on the tongue of every record-company executive. (Her real name is Angela Kohn.) With lyrics such as "That pussy it's so purdy/She so sweet, she so good/Wet and deep," the song was the ultimate bench move.

"That song was not only about empowerment but to let the world know I was going to be heard, to get people to take notice," Jacki-O says.

Combine "Nookie" and a body that looks as if it were pieced together by a pack of Ritalin-starved 14-year-old boys locked in a room with nothing but 97 pounds of Play-Doh, and you get people's attention. You get the Madam of Miami.

Empowerment? That has taken a little longer. Because of some complications with a previous recording contract, her national debut on TVT Records, Poe Little Rich Girl, was released only last week, finally breaking her out of the holding pattern she has been in over the past 18 months.

"Whoa, I feel like � It's unbelievable that it's on the shelves. It's like the day is finally here. Ten days ago, I was saying, 10 more days, 10 more days � ' " Jacki-O admits.

With tracks bolstered by the likes of Jazze Pha, the Ying Yang Twins, Trick Daddy and Miami staple Betty Wright, the album puts the power in empowerment. She didn't get everybody she wanted to work on Poe Little Rich Girl. In the CD's liner notes, she puts Pitbull on notice that he won't get away next time. "But I'm so pleased with everybody that came together on this. I never thought I'd be able to work with Timbaland and people on that level," she says.

It wasn't that long ago that Jacki-O operated strictly on a street level, making a living hustling and boosting everything from furs to rims. She was so streetwise, she had a Porsche long before she entered the music business. She has always been in a league of her own, even when it came to boosting. "Ah, I don't like to brag on it," Jacki-O says with a laugh. "But nobody could touch my shit."

She works a similar hustle in the music business. "It's like pawns, you know, like in a game of chess," she explains. "[You] have to use the pawns to get to that place or gain that knight."

And Jacki-O is the first to admit she doesn't even know how to play chess. "But you have to move and maneuver around. I know that," she argues. "The same way as in the street: have to get to this person to get to this other person who's gonna buy this shit and the same hustle. That same energy, that same aggressiveness I had in the streets, I now apply to my music. That's why I'm prepared for all of this."

The only difference is that playing the music game rarely ends in jail time. Since she was an adolescent, Jacki-O has been in and out of juvenile delinquent facilities and prison, and under house arrest for everything from aggravated assault ("some ho shit," she explains) to cocaine trafficking to theft. But as she boasts on the song "Gangsta Bitch": "I post bail and never broke a nail."

It's an obvious nod to her making it through prison in one piece, but she also claims it was hard to maintain her exquisite beauty in jail. "You can't keep your eyebrows plucked," she says. "You want to keep up your looks so when you do get out, you're not messed up. But you can't get a manicure for your hands or a pedicure for your feet."

Negro, please!

"You can't get a manicure for your hands or a pedicure for your feet."

-- Jacki-O, on the troubles of maintaining her beauty in prison

Jacki-O bounces through life from nasty to classy, only occasionally settling for sassy. "One of the ways I express myself is being sexual or being hardcore-raunchy," she admits.

While her lyrics are not all that far-removed from the things she used to say as a phone-sex operator, she says that's not really the case. "I hated that job, because once a man calls the line, he's already horny, already playing with himself or wanting you to get him to play with himself," she recalls. "But the whole job was not to talk about sex so you could keep them on the line."

Now, she's more than making up for it by getting everybody off. Yet her identity is wrapped up in her ideal of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Much too young to have experienced the Camelot years firsthand, Jacki-O discovered her iconic namesake through the tabloids and shots of the former first lady's hot, rollerblading son in Central Park. "I saw [JFK Jr.]," she squeals. "He was so handsome. My God, who made him? I started looking into the whole Kennedy empire. Jackie was always so beautiful, her little Chanel suits -- so classy. She reminded me of a princess or something."

When you catch Jacki-O about town in Miami (she prefers lounges to clubs), she's usually showing as much skin as JFK Jr. But she always expresses a hint of elegance, a touch of class.

"Don't get it twisted," she insists. "I didn't just fall out of the sky being a classy lady. I had to go through things in life."

Along the way, she has become unapologetic about her brazen sexuality. "There was this woman at this one magazine who seemed to want me to change my mind about what I said on, 'Nookie,' that my pussy pays my bills," Jacki-O says. "And I was like, 'No! Nookie pays my bills. [I'm] not saying I'm a prostitute. I'm not putting it on the market, not getting a man with it and having him pay my bills. No, being a woman and having a nookie, that pays.' "

It's paying now, for sure. She gives much credit to Eric "E-Class" Prince of Miami's Poe Boy Entertainment. "I'd give him my right arm," she says. "Other people were dragging me along, and you always get these people who say they believe in you, but it's all talk. They don't believe in you. He did."

In the beginning, a Black History Month assignment at school turned her on to poetry and eventually led her to banging out beats on the walls of her junior high. "It was an outlet. Got things out of my head," she remembers. "That's all I want to do. I don't want to be categorized."

Indeed, as she raps in Poe Little Rich Girl's definitive line, "It's time for a new bitch to step into the game."