Among the lessons learned — you can't always look beautiful as you're belting out the lyrics.
I've learned a lot in this business already," she says. "You have to sound ugly and make ugly faces in order to get some good sounds. I'm learning that now. It's a long process going through different beats that these producers are throwing at me.
"I've been a roller coaster, but it's great for me to experience all of this and I'm only going to get better."
Lesson number two — how to deal with criticism.
"I'm going to have to listen to stuff like that and get over it," she says. "It's a business, it's hard, and it's catty. I'm learning how to deal with it."
So raw is this newcomer that she is just now learning how to write her own music.
"I used to experiment with writing, but I never knew how to put it into a song," Miss Issa explains. "It was really hard at first, but now I'm learning how to write my own music."
Miss Issa's sizzling first single, "Stay Up," is a catchy dance tune featuring Fat Joe. The track is already receiving critical acclaim after hitting the airwaves hardly a month ago. The talented singer says that she is thankful that an established artist like Fat Joe would collaborate with her despite her relative obscurity.
"I thought that he would sound great on one of my tracks and he's Latino as well, so I figured it would be perfect," she says of the pairing. "He's a great person and I'm glad that he was willing to help out someone just starting out. I'm so thankful to him for helping me on this. He made my single blow up much more than it ever would have."
Best described as an Urban-Latin mix. Miss Issa is close to finishing up the work on her first album.
It's going to be hot," she promises. "The majority of my music is upbeat club music. I think that shows a lot of happiness. Whenever I pop in my CD, I'm jammin' right away so it puts me in a good mood. I hope that it does the same for a lot of other people."
Miss Issa says that she hopes that her music can impact people as much as other artists have influenced her over the years. One of the tracks on her new album is about a difficult break-up that she experienced with an ex-boyfriend. She says that "Ain't it Funny," a single by Jennifer Lopez, helped her through her break-up and she wants to do the same for others.
"I just want everybody who's going through hard times to know that everything's going to be all right," she says. "Just get the strength to move on — I did it, they can do it. Everybody else has gone through it."
Coming off her first performance in November, Miss Issa says that she hopes to tour as much as she can in the future once the album is complete this month.
"I'm hoping to perform a lot," she says. "I love performing. I love the attention. It's great knowing that people are so into my music. Thank God that I've got rhythm and I can dance!"
In the future, the animal lover (she recently brought home her fourth dog) hopes to expand into clothing and make-up. She says that she has big dreams beyond just her music.
"Anything that I can get my hands on, I want to do," she says. "The sky is the limit for me."
As a child, Miss Issa would come to tears watching her favorite artists like Beyoncé, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, wondering how each achieved stardom. It is those memories that make the moments driving around L.A. these days all the more special.
"I still feel like I want to cry sometimes whenever I see artists on TV," she says. "And now that I'm going to be out there, I swear it's the greatest feeling in the world. My mom is calling me every five minutes.
"It's overwhelming at times. I can't believe that this is actually happening."
For more information on Miss Issa, be sure to visit her official Web site — www.miss-issa.com
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