Khia
Photo: Artemis

Too Short is all for women getting theirs.

But there comes a time in every baller's life when he has to stand up and say his peace. Which (kind of) explains why Short recently issued an answer song to Khia's sexy independent-women single, "My Neck, My Back (Lick It)."

The song is called "My D---, My Sack," and Short swears it's not about starting a beef with the upstart female MC.

"I was hanging out in Atlanta, where that song has been around for a while," explained Bay Area legend Short. "Then I went back to the West Coast for a while, where it was blowin' up, and when I got back to Atlanta the record would come on and it was like some kind of female anthem. [Women] would be running out to the dance floor and high-fivin' each other. I thought, 'This ain't right.' "

So, the notoriously nasty West Coast rapper went into the studio to cut some new lyrics over Khia's music and give her a piece of his ... mind.

"The rap industry has always been a female-bashing thing, then you have the Destiny's Childs and Lil' Kims standing up for themselves and talking back [to the men], which is cool," Short said. "I'm glad they have something to high-five about. But it's not like playas like me who've been around for a while aren't going to have something to say about it. F--- that. There's too many females out there celebrating."

With her debut single steadily climbing the charts (currently #12 on the Billboard Hot Rap singles chart), 25-year-old Khia reacted like a savvy veteran to Short's answer track.

"I haven't heard it, but I've heard they've been playing it," she said of "My D---, My Sack," which was recently sent out as a white label single to DJs.

Short does have a point about the impressive legs on Khia's song, though. The steamy track bubbled under for almost a year in the Dirty South before her debut, Thug Misses, was given a national release by Artemis Records in April.

"A lot of people are trying to do remixes to that song and I'm like, 'I don't know. I don't need nobody else,' " said the former Tampa, Florida, bartender and new millennium Roxanne Shanté. "I'm hot enough by myself. ... Unless I specifically write it for you, or we sit down and we vibe on it together ... just to come on my s--- trying to do an answer to mine or outdo mine 'cuz you hot about what I said? It's not even about that."

Khia understands why some people might be offended, or threatened, by her bluntness (the dirty version of her hit gives Short a run for his money in the rated-X department), but she's not stressed about it.

"A lot of them hard heads feel like I'm just trying to bash guys, and that's not really what the song is about," she said, not naming names. "It's just about a man and a woman, basically [saying], 'This is what I want you to do for me. This is what makes me feel good. It's not like [I'm] saying, 'Just [do] this, this and that [to me].' ... It's about pleasing each other when y'all making love."

Short said his song, which may or may not make his next album, due in the fall, was meant in jest, but he's gotten the feeling Khia didn't take too kindly to his joke. "I tried to call her and she wouldn't come to the phone," he said, laughing. "I hope she has a nice career ... and she's not a one-hit wonder."

• Too Short
• Khia

Khia
Photo: Artemis

Calling from her Florida hotel room on Tuesday, Khia Chambers is far from the corpse she's been rumored to be.

"I'm vacationing with shorties, and I'm trying to do this [interview] and [watch my kids] too," explained Khia (pronounced Ky-yah) after she paused to chastise her two playfully mischievous children.

At a time when her hit single, "My Neck, My Back (Lick It)," and her debut LP, Thug Misses, should be causing the biggest buzz around the Philadelphia-born Tampa resident, people have been wondering if the chatter that she was murdered by an angry boyfriend was real.

"I was on Dirty Down Records, and you know how you leave one record company to go to another one and they hate and try to bash you? That's all," Khia said. "They're the ones that's been spreading the rumors." (Representatives from Dirty Down Records could not be reached for comment.)

"People, they got a habit of spreading stuff," she continued. "It's like the radio stations here, instead of confirming it, they get on the air and blast it and then try to confirm it later. It don't matter. Controversy sells. I'm alive and well."

The mantra "sex sells" has also been followed religiously by marketing execs for many moons, though the 25-year-old said the message has only recently been embedded in her brain. People have been listening to her sexual demands on "My Neck, My Back" for months, and — much to her astonishment — they're loving it.

"I guess the world is just nasty and freaky like that," she said. "It's not even my favorite song, and I was kind of surprised that's the song that everybody jumped on. ... That song is just nothing compared to my other music. It's like, 'That's what the world is about today,' so hey, it works for me.

"It just spread," Khia continued, addressing the song's recent appeal. "It took its time to work its way up. I've been riding this out in the South. Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Kansas City, St. Louis, it's been out for like a year. It's just really getting to [the rest of the country]."

Before Khia was getting her thug on in the studio, she was grinding as a bartender on the Tampa club circuit for seven years and rubbing shoulders with DJs until she gained a buzz with her own underground recordings. She eventually hooked up with Dirty Down Records, who released the original version of Thug Misses.

"They acted like they had the funds to promote the album, but they didn't really have the funds," Khia lamented. "It's been out a year and a half now without promotion. They were just sitting on it. They weren't doing nothing with it. So I got on the road and promoted the album myself, accumulated heat, and Artemis Records picked up the album."

A new version of Thug Misses was released this spring with a few new tracks, including "My Neck, My Back," which she said took 15 minutes to pen. With the track still spinning hard on turntables across the country, she said it will be a while before we get the next single (she's pondering "The K-Wang" and "Remember Me"), let alone her next LP, Street Preacher.

"My second album is already complete," revealed Khia, who's been opening up spot dates for Fat Joe, Fabolous, Truth Hurts, Ja Rule and P. Diddy. "The new album, it's still real. This [second] album is a little more off the chain because I was really able to put out my best."

• Khia