Deborah Cox, looking good in some new, form-fitting duds despite a cold that has her sipping camomille tea, contemplates Sarah McLachlan's Lilith Fair swansong while sitting in the Toronto office of her record company.

 Or is it the end?

 "I think she's going to bring it back," says Cox, 26, who is among the main-stage performers. "It's too close to her, and she always says, you know, maybe in 10 years she'll bring it back again. So the doors aren't closing totally."

 Cox also admits that she initially assumed the worst stereotype about the festival when it began three years ago.

 "I thought that the whole concept was like women of folk music," she says. "That's what I thought it was, and that's fine with me. It's okay to have different festivals cater to one thing. And then once I started to see more diversity over the years and they had Erykah Badu and Missy Elliott and stuff and I was like, 'Oh, okay.' I believe that you have to start from somewhere and then you can always expand."

 That statement sounds like Cox's singing career, which has had a major boost in recent months due to the staggering U.S. success of Nobody's Supposed To Be Here, the first single from her second album, One Wish, which was released last September.

 The song is the longest running R&B single in U.S. history, having spent 33 weeks on the Billboard charts, a record 14 of them at No. 1., and selling one million copies. One Wish has sold 700,000 copies in the U.S. and 50,000 copies in Canada.

 Cox, who moved to Los Angeles in 1994 with then-songwriting partner and now husband Lascelles Stephens, was signed to Arista by starmaker executive Clive Davis himself for her 1995 self-titled debut.

 She has since won three consecutive Juno awards for best R&B recording, been nominated for a best new artist American Music Award and became the first Canadian to win a Soul Train award earlier this year over Lauryn Hill and Janet Jackson.

 She's also been signed to an advertising deal with Roots, is talking to Disney about starring in some children's TV musicals, and is planning to record her next album in the spring. She hopes to incorporate reggae and jazz and feature some songs written by R. Kelly and Hill.

 Cox clearly seems poised for the same worldwide success as other Canadian female singers, which would include Celine Dion (for whom she sang backup for six months in the early '90s), Shania Twain and Alanis Morissette. Her one gripe is that she doesn't enjoy the same radio play as they do in Canada.

 "I think the profile of Deborah Cox is probably bigger than the music," she says. "I'm always in a constant struggle with just getting the exposure musically here in Canada, like seeing the videos and hearing the music on the radio. I think that's the part that's a little bit lacking."