Last year, the prolific Ani DiFranco released three albums. Any record company marketing executive would tell you that's more than the market could take. But then, DiFranco doesn't have to answer to any record company. She owns her own.

She started her own Righteous Babe Records in 1990, which has subsequently become one of America's most successful independent labels with catalog sales approaching a million. DiFranco oversees every aspect of the business, including producing, cover design and selecting which musicians to play with. On the most recent album, her 15th, "To the Teeth," these included sax player Maceo Parker and The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, who probably shares a few opinions with DiFranco on artistic property.

Apart from her percussive guitar style, at various times DiFranco also plays bass, drums, keyboards and banjo. In addition to her trademark "folk punk," she flirts with rap, jazz, soul and funk, making an already notoriously hard artist to define even more so.

The result, typically for DiFranco albums, is somewhat mixed: sometimes brilliant, occasionally just infuriating.

DiFranco doesn't just spend her time in recording studios. It's as a live act that she really comes into her own. She's been on the road more than 200 days a year for over 12 years, mainly in the U.S. but also in Europe, Australia and Asia. From driving around in a VW bug, sleeping in the car and playing to no more than a handful of people, DiFranco has become, almost entirely through word of mouth, one of America's 50 top-grossing live acts.

That word-of-mouth effect has worked in Japan too, with some help, rather surprisingly, from daytime FM radio. She first came to Japan a couple of years back to play fairly small venues, last year progressing to sell out larger venues.

Her free spirit, integrity and lack of inhibition immediately sets her apart from the scores of other American singer-songwriters. The press though has had a hard time pigeon-holing the Buffalo, New York-born 28-year-old, variously describing her as a "hippie punk" or a "skatepunk goddess with a tattooed neck." She's been compared to Tracy Chapman, Michelle Shocked and even Eartha Kitt.

Everyone, though, is united in at least one opinion: Her live shows are extraordinary. A born communicator, she creates an intimate atmosphere, regaling the audience with stories of travels or people she meets. Her lyrics, colorful, witty, honest and angry, speak even greater volumes.

DiFranco learned about self-reliance from an early age. She started learning guitar at the age of 9, memorizing the entire Beatles songbook. As a precocious 10-year-old she befriended a "chain-smoking, coffee-drinking degenerate folk singer." She used to get up on stage and play with him at various bars around Buffalo.

When she was 15 her parents parted and left Buffalo, but DiFranco decided to stay. She started writing songs, as a form of expression, and was still in her teens when she cut her first album.

Her uncompromising and independent nature has also manifested itself in the marketing of herself. Despite offers from record companies big and small, she has never swayed from her original idea of controlling her own destiny, and doesn't appear to be mellowing with age.

Her lyrics leave no stone unturned: corporate greed, errant lovers, male egos, standing up for your rights, being yourself, menstruation. She is not afraid to take on any topic, but she does so with a large degree of humor and is something of a reluctant icon for feminists, lesbians and youth.

There are so many mediocre, angst-ridden so-called folk singer-songwriters on the radio (and seemingly at every major train station in Tokyo). Ani DiFranco certainly provides welcome relief.