Samantha Mumba Dodges 'Teen Pop' Label

January 2 -- Samantha Mumba is 17, black, and Irish. So forgive her if she's getting a tad tired of being lumped in with a bunch of blond American teen girls.

"I don't lock myself in with them; it's media," says Mumba, who recently released her debut album, Gotta Tell You, which has launched a hit single in the title track. "It's very irritating, obviously, because I'm Samantha; I can see the differences between us. But it's also a compliment to be locked in with people who are successful."

That said, Mumba notes that Britney, Christina, Jessica, and all the rest are "not people I listen to in my spare time, but I do enjoy their stuff. I listen to a little more R&B, a lot of old Motown stuff, to be honest, and any of Whitney Houston or Toni Braxton."

The Motown infatuation, Mumba says, comes from hearing it since she was a baby, through her parents' record collection. It certainly got her off to a good start; she's been performing publicly since a tap dance engagement when she was 4. She moved on to do musical theater in Dublin, Ireland, before artist manager Louis Walsh, who also handles the pop groups Boyzone and Westlife, found her singing in a club — an engagement the underage diva had landed by telling the owner she was an R&B singer visiting from New York City to make an album with some Dublin producers. Once she signed with Walsh, the then-15-year-old Mumba left school to devote herself to music full time.

"I've been pretty much entertaining all my life," she says. "I never thought about what I wanted to do; I was like everybody else in school, looking forward to the weekend. Everything happened in the space of a few months; it's amazing, really."