By the end of the month, Ciara Harris is going to have some tales to tell, maybe enough to fill a book.

Ciara is keeping her distance from the guys while on tour. CIARA With: 50 Cent, Ludacris, Lil' Jon & The Eastside Boyz, Ciara, Mike Jones, G-Unit. Where: Post-Gazette Pavilion, Burgettstown. When: 7 p.m. Tuesday. Tickets: $25 to $67.50; 412-323-1919.

The R&B hitmaker from Atlanta, taking her baby steps in the entertainment industry, finds herself in the lion's den with the baddest boys of crunk and rap: 50 Cent, Lil Jon, Ludacris, Mike Jones and G Unit, hitting the Post-Gazette Pavilion on Tuesday.

It's the kind of roster that makes you want to have the Kevlar handy.

And here's Ciara, a 19-year-old beauty too young to even order a beer and not much inclined to party.

"Not at all," she says. "I'm not a really big party person at all."

The soft-spoken Ciara is on the phone from a hotel room in L.A., having just played the first show with the mob. And while Ludacris jumped out for her set, her interaction didn't go much beyond that.

"No," she says. "I stayed in my dressing room the whole time. All I could hear around me was loud talking, and I hear music bumping so loud, as if the concert was actually going on. I said, 'Wow.' I was really focused, as this was my first time on the road with them."

Here's why the good money is on Ciara to stick it out with the boys. She grew up a military brat -- her mom in the Air Force, her dad in the Army -- moving around to Germany, California, Arizona, New York and other places.

"It helped me with being able to adapt to different surroundings, cultures and lifestyles," Ciara says. "I can go anywhere and just fit in."

Ciara spent her formative years in Atlanta, where she was captain of the high school cheerleading team and an aspiring model when she saw Destiny's Child one day on "Good Morning America."

"What happened was, Destiny's Child was on TV the day I decided I was going to do it," she says of her venture into pop music. "But a lot of my inspiration comes from people such as Michael and Janet and Whitney and Patti, a lot of people who have been at it for so, so long. And [Destiny's Child] have as well, and I respect them for what they do. But my biggest influences are Michael and Janet."

When hot producer Jazze Pha first spotted her, she was part of a vocal trio called Hear Say. He wanted her. She was signed to Pha's label, Sho'Nuff, in 2002, and introduced to the studio. Ciara came with the whole package: sultry vocals, slick dance moves, MTV looks and the skills to co-write 10 of the songs on her debut.

"Goodies," issued last fall, is now double platinum, powered up the charts by the ubiquitous hit singles "Goodies" (with Petey Pablo), "1,2 Step" (Missy Elliott) and "Oh" (with Ludacris).

The title track, with its distinctive siren sound and "Yeah!"-style backdrop, finds Ciara on a Lil Jon track, chalking one up for girl power as she purrs, "If you're looking for the goodies/keep on looking, 'cause they stay in the jar."

The song has earned Ciara a title she never expected or even wanted: First Lady of Crunk & B.

"I can't take that name. I can't take it," she says. "It's kind of crazy. How can I be known as that when there's only one song that's a Crunk & B record? My album deals with so much more. I'm not the Queen of Crunk & B. I'm not the Princess of Crunk & B. I was the first girl to do a Crunk & B record. I set a trend, but there's more to me than Crunk & B."

Ciara, having just released the self-penned ballad "And I," isn't expecting the First Lady tag to stick.

"I think people will see," she says. "Time will tell. When you come up, they always want to compare you to something, they want to put a stamp on you. But eventually they find out who you are. It all takes time. We're all just trying to get to know each other."

Kind of like Ciara is getting to know her new tour mates, including 50 Cent, one of the more menacing figures from the rap world.

"I met him when I first began, briefly," Ciara says. "We didn't even talk, really, but he seems to be a real cool guy."

Still, that's not her speed. Ciara has been romantically linked with a rapper who has significantly less bark and bite: Bow Wow, whom she's known for a long time.

It's one of the perks of stardom. Her intention, though, as she navigates this rough-and-tumble tour and preparations for the next album, is to focus on the work not the perks.

"The way that I see it now," she says of stardom, "you really have to stay focused. You really have to be disciplined. You really have to stay committed to it, and take advantage of all the options that come your way. I can say that when you do look at it from the outside, especially in my earlier phases and earlier days, it did look like it was really easy and fun. But it's definitely harder than you'd expect."