Hollaback Girl.

HOLLABACK GIRL

Rapper RYE RYE tells LEIGH BELZ how she spent her senior year balancing homework, prom, and recording her debut album with M.I.A.

When Ryeisha Berrain, eighteen, was a kid, she was obsessed with rap and R&B videos because she dreamed of being ... a backup dancer. "That was my main goal," Rye Rye (her longtime nickname) admits with a laugh. "I'd imitate the dances in AALIYAH and MISSY ELLIOTT videos." But as she got older, the Baltimore native says, her interests turned literarypoetry and lyrics to be specific.

When Rye Rye was fifteen, her older sister introduced her to DJ/producer BLAQSTARR, who was taken with the pitch of Rye Rye's …