Like many musicians in Los Angeles, Ke$ha survived her lean early years by snacking on the free food offered during happy hour at myriad dive bars. But her situation was a little different. She was scavenging at the same time her voice was all over the radio — she sang the chorus hook of Flo Rida’s Right Round, one of the biggest pop singles of 2009.

“We were both working with (producer) Dr. Luke and it was an accident I was even on it,” said the young San Fernando Valley native, born Kesha Sebert, whose debut album, Animal, is out on Tuesday. “I never made any money off it, that’s why I put the dollar sign in my name as a joke. But I was happy being in that bar with two dollars in change wearing clothes I found in the garbage surrounded by people who love me.”

Ke$ha should soon be able to treat her friends to a few rounds of PBR. Her single TiK ToK, a rapturously dumb electro-pop banger was downloaded 610,000 times in its first week, the highest total for a female artist in one week since Nielsen SoundScan started tracking the figures.

Her album, Animal, which already is a top-5 iTunes album as a pre-order, tackles the evergreen topics of stalking boys who don’t like her and whether rad boots are preferable to male company. It’s all part of a master plan, she says — winning equal rights for women to abuse boys in songs the way dudes have done for decades.

“I’m just talking about men the way they’ve talked about women for years,” she said. “If you listen to LMFAO, it’s all about how women are pieces of meat. I find that stuff funny, so I want to do it back to them.”

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