By her own admission, Kesha Rose Sebert has learned a thing or two about putting on a spectacle since she last gave Vancouver an awesomely obnoxious eyeful.

The artist known to her fans as Ke$ha first hit town in 2010 as the opening act on Rihanna’s Last Girl on Earth tour. Those who were there might recall her set being what the singer herself might describe as a “filthy hot mess”, the enthusiastic sloppiness in no way detracting from its entertainment value. Astute concertgoers might also have noticed Ke$ha standing by the soundboard after her performance, studiously taking in Rihanna’s show while wearing a large, identity-concealing hoodie. Calling the Georgia Straight from a Council Bluffs, Iowa, tour stop, the outgoing 24-year-old acknowledges that the whole hockey-arena thing was new to her back then.

“That was the first time that I’d even been on tour in arenas,” Ke$ha acknowledges. “Before that, I was touring in tiny little shitholes, opening for an opener who was opening for Mickey Avalon. I was the first of three, and people wouldn’t even be at the show yet because they had no idea who I was. Then, all of a sudden, I was opening for Rihanna. Since then I’ve travelled the entire world, and learned a lot. I’ve learned how to command thousands and thousands and thousands of people.”

Figuring out how to work a room didn’t stop with Rihanna. Kick-started by the insanely infectious breakout single “TiK ToK”, Ke$ha’s debut album, Animal, turned into a seemingly-from-out-of-nowhere smash. Before the California-via-Nashville electro-pop upstart knew it, she was headlining her own stadium shows, this necessitating a crash course in the art of keeping the kids in the cheap seats as entertained as those in the front row.

“I’ve been watching old DVDs, and there’s this one that I have of Van Halen,” Ke$ha says. “I can’t remember what year it’s from, but he [singer David Lee Roth] is just such a fucking incredible frontman. Watching the way Van Halen commands the stage has been really influential. They didn’t get to rely on tricks, lighting effects, and things. It was all about the music.”

That Ke$ha’s proved a keen student shouldn’t come as a surprise; she might play the role of perma-plastered party girl on her records, but she’s obviously no dummy. Back in her high-school years she aced her classes, scoring high enough on her SATs to guarantee her a pick of universities. She could have been forgiven for choosing academic life; Ke$ha, who has never met her biological father, was raised by a single mother who wrote songs for a living. Despite her mom scoring minor hits for the likes of Dolly Parton, music didn’t exactly lead to a life of luxury for the singer and her two brothers.

Postsecondary school, however, didn’t interest Ke$ha, as the singer headed for Los Angeles, determined to turn herself into a pop-music star. Her mother, despite her career struggles, couldn’t have been more supportive, starting with working on the art of songwriting with her daughter during her teen years.

“She was always very honest with me, and told me that it was going to be hard,” Ke$ha reveals. “And to be honest, it has been hard. But she knew since I was born, through almost psychic intuition, that this is what I was born to do. I feel like you create your own realities, and ever since I can remember, there was never any other path for me. If you asked me what would have happened if I’d failed, well, that wasn’t an option.”

Indeed, after a half-decade of slogging it out in the trenches as a La-La Land waitress by night, struggling songwriter by day, she knocked the semi-autobiographical, double-platinum Animal out of the park. A smashingly snotty mix of electro-crunk, white-girl rap, and jagged-edge pop, the disc is—the odd breakup song aside—basically one extended party, casting Ke$ha as the kind of girl-gone-wild who brushes her teeth with Jack Daniel’s in the morning, and pukes in closets while giving ’er at night. Proving the singer more than a one-hit wonder, a follow-up stopgap 2010 EP, Cannibal, would go gold.

Given the stakes are now higher, things have changed for Ke$ha since her first Vancouver appearance, where she got by with silver hot pants, fishnets, a shredded Metallica T-shirt, and a shitload of natural charisma. Her current tour has her firing glitter guns at the audience and drinking blood after impromptu open-heart surgery. Oh, and there are also giant penises and plenty of baby oil.

But at the heart of the spectacle is the singer, whose main ambition, evidently, is to deliver more than flash-and-trash gimmicks.

“When people come to your show, they are not only invested in that show, they are also invested in you,” she argues. “I very much have a philosophy that I think a lot of my fans subscribe to, and that’s to be yourself, unapologetically and always. The underlying message to my music—and I say this to all my fans, because it’s really important—is that you have to have the freedom to be yourself.”

Because there are those who can’t stand to see their fellow human beings having fun, Ke$ha has attracted her fair share of haters, such negativity being nothing new to her. She acknowledges that she was an outcast in high school in Nashville.

“That’s what created the drive to become successful,” she says bluntly. “And hopefully, I’m making other people realize that normal is, um, kind of boring. Freaks and weirdos are what keeps life interesting. I know that I’ve really connected with a lot of my fans because I’ve helped them get through bullying. Bullying sucks—it wasn’t fun. But when you come out of it, it makes you stronger. Today I know exactly who I am, thanks to all the pricks in high school who spent years harassing me.”

And there’s no doubt who Ke$ha is, namely. a swaggering original who looks to be headed for something even bigger than what she has today. She freely admits that she’s in a phase of her life where she’s going hard-core on all fronts, working on a guitar-heavy Cannibal follow-up, partying until all hours of the morning, and, of course, commanding stages around the world.

Ke$ha makes no apologies for her schedule. She’s well aware that precious few artists end up in her exalted position, and suggests that no one should feel sorry about the fact that sleeping is something she won’t be doing until she’s dead. As for the way she’s perceived, fuck the haters, because she’s not going anywhere.

“This isn’t going to all just go away,” she says, the confidence in her voice palpable, “because I’m not going to stop working my balls off.”

Yes, despite how far she’s come since Vancouver in 2010, Ke$ha is just getting going.

Ke$ha plays Rogers Arena on Friday (September 9).

Follow Mike Usinger on Twitter at twitter.com/mikeusinger.