Camouflaged in a small complex on Preston Avenue South, Jenkins's apartment doubles as a recording studio and a second home to half a dozen members of the HardTymz family, a rap crew based in St. Petersburg, Fla.

With names like Rah, Problem Child and Blunt Cha Boi, it's easy to see how misconceptions could form. Many of the HardTymz artists have served time in jail or prison. Mostly in their 30s, these men see HardTymz as a second chance.

Lateesha Jenkins, 31, is the woman at their center, trying to turn raw talent and passion into a business.

"We need Teesh to keep things in order," said Dalton Baptiste, 31, who goes by Blunt Cha Boi and is in the rap group Bombai.

For the past few years Jenkins and her fiance, musician and producer Michael Jenkins, 34, (their shared last names are coincidental), have slowly crafted a hip-hop crew made up of rappers from St. Petersburg, New Orleans and as far as New York.

This year Lateesha Jenkins switched her major from social work to business at St. Petersburg College, where she is working toward an associate's degree. As part-owner of HardTymz, she hopes some business savvy will help the crew carve a niche in a fiercely competitive industry.

Variations of HardTymz have rapped together for years, but ego and greed killed the crew's chances of success in the past. As former members garnered local attention, they dropped out of the group to strike out on their own, Jenkins said.

This time around, she said, things are going to be different.

In hip-hop, the rag-to-riches story is a popular one.

One of Jenkins' idols in the industry is Jay-Z, president and CEO of Def Jam Records. He rose from a Brooklyn housing project, where he transformed himself from drug dealer to a music mogul. And there's Percy Miller, aka Master P, who got his break when he took it to the streets of New Orleans, selling his first album from his car.

For now, HardTymz is at the rags end of its story. Last month, the business made $455 from CD sales and renting out studio time. That's up from nothing in May, Jenkins said. Most CDs are sold by members of the crew from a white Ford Explorer that bears the HardTymz logo on its rear window. Artists take turns driving the car around south St. Petersburg blasting their newest tracks - their form of advertising. Five convenience stores in St. Petersburg have also agreed to sell their work.

HardTymz's studio could be mistaken for a teenager's bedroom: a futon sits along the same wall as a computer and a keyboard. Across the room, a big-screen TV is frozen with the image of an Xbox video game on pause. An electronic piano keyboard is the only clue that music is created in this bedroom.

When members of the crew take their places, the room transforms into a studio. Michael Jenkins, who raps with Bombai, puts on his headphones and flicks on the computer, which becomes a mixing board. In the tiny closet lined with mattress padding, a HardTymz artist takes his place. The closet provides just enough standing room for him to close the folding door. The foam on the wall provides just enough insulation to create a sound booth.

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If the rap industry doesn't follow a conventional business model, that's fine with Lateesha Jenkins. Little in her life has been conventional.

She grew up fast in New York living in foster homes and state-run facilities. She was just 15 months old when she was taken from her biological mother and placed into foster care.

She was adopted by a middle-class family in Brooklyn when she was a toddler. As a teen she idolized supermodels Naomi Campbell and Tyra Banks and dreamed of strutting down the runways in New York and Los Angeles. But life with her adoptive family was troubled. At 14, Jenkins was sent to a state-run group home. A few months later she learned she was pregnant.

Without a permanent home and few options, Jenkins gave the state custody of her 1-month-old girl, Tatyana.

She regretted the decision almost immediately, and struggled to regain custody of the child for the next 10 years. She worked part-time at a discount department store and managed a Dunkin' Donuts, but couldn't prove she could care for Tatyana well enough to get her out of foster care. Out of options, Jenkins agreed to abandon parental rights to Tatyana, who eventually was adopted by her foster family.

When she lost ties to her daughter, she decided to leave New York. She found her own birth mother in North Carolina, then moved to St. Petersburg with a friend.

"I always had it bad until I came to Florida," she said. "That's when things got beautiful."

She found a job and an apartment of her own. A short marriage, still being dissolved, briefly changed her name to Lateesha Jenkins Fannane. She started college and met her fiance, an aspiring rapper who had just been released from prison.

Over the next few years, the couple worked together to rebuild their lives. As Michael Jenkins' musical ambitions grew into the HardTymz crew, so did Jenkins's involvement in the group's management. She's applying the same attention to her personal life. Her daughter, now 14, visits in the summer, and the two are struggling to mend a relationship that was severed more than a decade ago.

"We have our problems," Jenkins said. "We're trying to work through them."

Jenkins isn't discouraged by the step-by-step progress of her life, personally or professionally. She says she's learned a lot in her 31 years, and is finally comfortable with the direction her life is heading.

In the next few weeks, she said, she'll apply for business grants targeting African-American business owners. She plans to expand the business to include HardTymz Hip Hop Cafe Inc., a studio that will allow customers to record and mix their own tracks on professional recording equipment. She hopes the business will attract people like them and be a place where a community of artists can gather.

Although the rap industry is dominated by men, Jenkins is confident she will succeed.

"I'm a good motivator," Jenkins said. "I want to show people and my employees appreciation. I will not disappoint anyone."