Our Favourite Twins!

(via fuckyeahnicolealbino)

postdubstep:

Nicole of Nina Sky has a carpet nailed to the wall of her apartment that reads, ‘Fuck Em’. It’s positioned strategically over her work station so that when she’s making music she doesn’t worry about what other people might think or what the blogs will say. She just makes music, for herself, for her friends, and for her sister, Natalie, who’s the other half of Nina Sky. It just so happens, I think, that what the fraternal twins enjoy is also what we enjoy. “Pure blasphemy!” as the English would say. “These damn Yanks think they can curse public opinion arse over tit and then expect us bid them Best of Britain.” Well, I suppose they do. After all, our UK desk here at MTHRFNKR posted up Nina Sky’s most recent record “Day Dreaming” to unanimous acclaim, and we weren’t in the studio making it with them. So I guess the carpet people were right. The proper way to handle introductions (and reintroductions in the case of Nina Sky) is to simply ‘Fuck Em’. Cheers to that.

First off, congrats on the new record, “Day Dreaming”. It sounds real nice. Where’d the idea come from for that?
Me and Nat were in the studio and we were just writing. Those were the lyrics that came to our heads. It started with “day dreaming,” and then we were just like, “how are we going to make this song so it’s not the typical ‘day dreaming about you’, fantasizing about someone?” We just flipped it so it wasn’t fantasizing about the person you’re with, it was about fantasizing about being with someone else. That’s how it came about. When we’re in the studio we come up with different ideas and when we find something that works we run with it.

You’ve got the new album coming too, Nicole & Natalie. I love that title, it’s simple, natural, it sounds intimate almost, why did you come up with that title and what does it mean to you?
I think that’s a good way to describe it, the word ‘intimate’. This album is the first time we’re putting out an entire album independently, and it really is a reflection of us as artists and as writers, and we produced some of it too. We got in with a lot of our close friends who are producers as well as other ones. I know this sounds dumb, but it’s like Nina Sky raw, because it’s coming directly from us, like, “Let’s just title it Nicole & Natalie.” It’s a Nina Sky album but you’re really going to see who we are as people and even our talents, Natalie as a writer and vocalist, and I’m producing on it. We’re just really really involved in this project from the beginning to end. When you’re working with a label there are so many people assigned to be in the studio with you, picking out songs for you, pointing you in a direction, but this was just us leading, we did it on our own. That’s where it comes from. ‘Intimate’ is a good word to describe it, because it feels like that when you hear it too. It really is just us showcasing Nicole and Natalie.

It must have been refreshing, the creative process this time around.
It really was refreshing. When you’re signed to a label everyone has their own opinion on what you should sound like, what direction you should take, and we’re so inspired by everything, from our travels to different music that we’ve heard, different things that we see. That’s where our music comes from. We don’t have writers coming in and writing for us. It really just comes from our experiences and the things that we’re inspired by. That’s why you hear it in our music. Some of the songs have different influences. Some of them sound dance-influenced, some of them sound R&B-influenced, some of them sound more electronic, some of them even sound more drum and bass-influenced, but on this album it all came from us. The most important part of this project came from inside of us. It’s cool.

Well, scary in a way too, because it’s all you. When you’re working with a label- like when Lupe put out Lasers he was like, “Oh, well you know, I hate this album, because it was all the label,” but now this album is all you. You’re fully responsible.
Yeah, it is kind of scary, because you want everyone to receive it well. You’ve put so much work into it, and it is us being more vulnerable. Everything is from us, the music, the writing. It’s cool and I think people are going to receive it well. And the people who know Nina Sky and have followed our movement from the beginning, they don’t really know us from “Move Ya Body”, they know we’ve always experimented with music. You can look at the people we’ve collaborated with over the years. It’s been everything from reggae music to hip-hop music with The Alchemist to more recently Creep, it’s just a part of who we are.

With that diversity, how’s the album going to sound as a whole, because “Day Dreaming”, the lyrics and the video have two sides, but it sounds like a happy, triumphant record?
I guess people have different opinions on “Day Dreaming”. I could see that. It has a bouncy feel to it. The album is an R&B-influenced album. Our core is R&B. Our first album is an R&B album. Everything we do is with an R&B base, so there are songs with a dance-influence with an R&B base, there are songs with a more experimental R&B base, it’s just how we do our melodies and how we sing and how we write. I guess that’s what brings it all together. It’s still an R&B-based album, but there are some songs that are more up-tempo, there are songs that are more experimental, every side of us is on this one project.

You mentioned you guys did some of the production this time around, and you’ve been DJ’ing since you were a toddler. When did production come into the picture? Was it a big transition going from DJ’ing to producing?
It wasn’t a huge transition. I’ve always used Pro Tools to record us, so I always knew how to use the equipment. I’ve just never sat behind a keyboard or a drum machine or actually created something entirely by myself from scratch, using the instruments to create it. That’s cool. I love learning new things. It’s been a fun project for me. Being a DJ too is cool because I’m always listening to new music, hearing how music has changed from when I first started DJ’ing when I was 13 to now. I’m always in the clubs. It’s cool because I feel like I have a different ear than someone who’s just a producer.

Yeah, totally. Did your sister do some production for this album too?
Yeah, yeah, we do it together. I don’t want to take all the credit for the production, because really we’re sitting here together. If I produce a track and Natalie’s like, “Well, I think the chords should sound a different way,” and she hums me chords and I play them out, then she’s produced it with me. I’ll produce a song but it’s not done until Natalie says, “This is how this should sound, maybe you should change the drum pattern here, maybe you should bring that sound up, bring this sound up,” that type of thing. It’s always a group effort.

What are your strengths individually?
When we get in the studio Natalie’s more the writer. She’s a really good songwriter. She wrote almost the entire first album. This album she’s writing a lot too, so I think that’s one of Nat’s strengths. Natalie is one of my favorite vocalists ever. Her voice is beautiful. She really sings. She doesn’t have to go through all this extra auto-tune, all this other over-processed vocal stuff, it doesn’t need any of that. She’s got the most natural beautiful voice to me. And then my strong points are- I’m more into the production of the record. I’ll sit in on a mixing session, or I’ll go back and forth with the producers about the mixes. That’s more my strength when it comes to creating records. I also write, but Natalie writes more than I do.

Now, you probably get this a lot, but does that sisterly connection, you guys being twins, you guys commented once that when one was sick you could almost feel it, does that transfer over to the music at all? Crazier things have been known to happen, like Pharrell just revealed he can see sounds.
Sometimes Natalie will write a song at her house and reference it in her house and then she’ll send it to me and I’ll have a reference and we’ll listen to the melody and it’ll be the same melody, so it’s like, “We could have written two completely different songs, but we wrote songs with the exact same melody.” Sometimes we hear things the same, but maybe that’s because we make music together. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a twin thing. Maybe it’s just us being around each other.

The video for “Day Dreaming” is really well done, very professional, which is not the easiest thing to come by today. Everyone says they can do video. Had you worked with Adam [Sauermilch] before or is he a friend?
We met Adam through someone else. The whole concept we came up with during a meeting. They had the hair idea and the styling for that scene, the chandelier, and then we all started coming up with the concept, “What if we both play the same person and show that there are two sides to this one relationship. He’s with me and I’m miserable but he’s actually day dreaming about you,” or however someone who watches the video would see it. That was the gist of it. It was a collaborative effort between me and Natalie, and then Adam came in on the filming side, and editing, and having the experience being a great director. It all worked out. Everyone involved in that project was through someone else we knew. We didn’t seek someone to shoot the video. It was just talented friends of friends, which is the best way to work, because there’s a good energy between everyone.

The music you’re making now is bit of a transition from when you were working with The Alchemist and more hardcore rappers. Did you ever get to chill in the lab with The Alchemist or was he sending you the music?
Yeah, when we worked with The Alchemist we recorded it with him, both times, which was cool. He’s a hands-on person. He’ll play the record- well, excuse me, for “Hold You Down” he sent us the record and Natalie wrote the hook and sent it back and we recorded it together. For “Key to the City” we all recorded it together. He’s very hands-on like that. He likes to be there and vibe with us, which was cool. And then with N.O.R.E. it was the same thing. We worked in the studio with him.

You’re in that “Hold You Down” video. That must’ve been pretty cool.
Yeah, it was cool for us at the time. We’re from Queens and the song features Prodigy, so to us that was super dope because at that time the people we were listening to in hip-hop were Prodigy, Nas, these were the people we loved because they’re from Queens, we’re from Queens. It was cool to do a song with him because Mobb Deep was a group that we listened to heavily growing up in Queens.

Did you consciously try to move away from the image you had on “Move Ya Body”, did you try to branch away from that?
It wasn’t a conscious decision for us to become the women we are today, it’s just the way life works. After 8 years traveling the world, experiencing different things, meeting new people, and hearing more music, and just growth, that’s what happens. It wasn’t a conscious decision of ours to separate ourselves from “Move Ya Body”, because when we hear “Move Ya Body” on the radio today, it hits us as much as it did back in 2004. We’re always grateful to have had the opportunity to make a song that 8 years later is still playing. We still hear it all the time, which is amazing. A lot of people don’t even get that one hit. We’re never trying to separate ourselves from that, but as far as who we are today, it’s just years of growth. We were kids then, new in the industry and just being young ladies, and now we’re young women. That’s what happens. It’s a natural progression of growth. That’s how it goes.

The label though, they must have had a different take on growth. Once you put “Move Ya Body” out they probably wanted- at least in my opinion, they probably wanted you to stick with that same vein of music.
I mean, the label’s job is to streamline what you are, put you in a box. That’s what they do. They put you in a box and you’re a product of theirs and they have to make sure everything comes together the way they want, so they can sell the product, which is the artist. The thing is, we’re still artists and we want to be creative and we still want to experiment. They did have their own opinions on what we were doing, and at that time we had done the N.O.R.E. song and it was a really big song, “Oye Mi Canto”. So they were even like, “Go that lane,” but at the end of the day we wanted to stay true to who we are, and that’s all we’ve done over the years. We’ve stayed true to who we are.

You must still be getting paid quite a bit from those early songs.
Like I said, it’s an amazing thing to have a song that was that big and it’s still being played. It’s a blessing. We can perform that song anywhere and people know it. That’s fucking dope. But at the end of the day it’s 2012 now. If made “Move Ya Body” in 2012 it’s not going to work the same way. It was good for when it came out. It’s a record that people still play. But if we dropped that record today everybody’s going to look at us like, “What are you guys doing?”

Seeing that you’ve been around so long in New York City, working within that culture, do you notice a big difference between the culture of doing the music now as opposed to 8 years ago or whatever? What’s changed and how have you adapted?
I think being in New York City what’s cool is you’re around lots of other people who are doing the same thing. There’s lot of other musicians. A lot of people come to New York to do music. That’s how a lot of our stuff has come together. When we worked with N.O.R.E. he’s based in New York and that’s how we connected with him. The Alchemist, at the time he was in New York. That’s how we worked with him. We worked the same way with Creep. They’re Brooklyn-based. With Diplo too. He was in New York and that’s how we worked with him. These are people we’ve actually worked with in the studio, and it’s always been that way in New York. When you’re here you’re in the center of everything, in my opinion. Maybe being from New York I’m biased, but people are always coming here to get inspired and make music. That’s the cool part. It was like that in 2004 when we were making music and it’s still like that today.

Probably how you hooked up with Action Bronson too. He’s fucking amazing. With “Cocoa Butter”, was it surprising to hear what he was rapping about, or had you listened to him before?
We’d heard his music before and we were like, “He’s dope. He’s from Queens.” And then Statik Selektah sent us the record and we wrote to it. We loved the vibe of it, the way it felt. When the song comes on it’s immediate. The track stops and it makes you feel something. So we wrote the hook and sent it back and they ran with it. That’s how we work. A lot of people look at us and they’re like, “They do all these different things.” But that’s just who we are. We love all genres of music, and if someone sends us something and are like, “You want to get on this?” If we love it we’re going to do it, because we love music.

That’s the attitude to have.
Yeah, that’s the way to be if you really love something or are passionate about something. People make conscious efforts to be a certain way, to streamline stuff and say like, “I’m only going to do hip-hop music. I’m only going to do electronic music and it’s only going to sound this one way.” But for us we just hear all these sounds and they all inspire us. We love different genres of music and there are all these great artists, so we want to work with everyone. We want to make great music. It doesn’t matter if it’s with a hip-hop artist, if it’s with a reggae artist, if it’s with a dance artist, we just want to be a part of something great. That’s what we’re doing.

Are you going to go back on tour soon?
Yeah, we’re constantly on tour. We’re traveling all the time, but we’re going to set up a tour based on the album. We’re in the process of doing that now.

I read that you loved Croatia.
The food there was incredible. It was right by the water and it was warm. It was beautiful. The food was great. The people were super nice. You don’t expect that. We didn’t travel a lot when we were kids. There’s so much of the world that is beautiful. We never thought we’d be in Croatia and then we finally got there and were like, “Wow, it’s so amazing.” I would go back in the summer again.

Who are some of the most interesting people you’ve met on tour? Any particular characters?
We met somebody who had Natalie’s name tattooed on them. It didn’t say Natalie. Because we call ourselves Ni and Na Sky, you know, ‘Ni-na Sky’, and she had ‘Na Sky’ tattooed on her. I was like, “Wow, that’s really cute.” That was in Germany, recently. There’s this song on our first album “Faded Memories” that a lot of people have tattooed on them. There’s another song called “Surely Missed” that a lot of people have tattooed on them, but I’ve never seen anyone with the name tattooed. Then I saw ‘Na Sky’ tattooed on her and I was like, “Wow, this girl is in love with Natalie.”

[laughs] I saw a picture on Twitter of one of your apartments and there was a big sign that said, ‘Fuck Em’. What is that?
It’s in my apartment. It’s just a Supreme rug. It’s a rug that I nailed to the wall. It’s right above my turntables.

Why?
I think it’s cool. It looks cool. And it’s the truth. You can’t please everyone right so ‘Fuck Em’. You’re always making music and thinking, “Are they going to like it?” And it’s like, “Just fuck it, make the music you love.”

Have you heard that Rick Ross song, “Fuck Em”?
Yeah, he says that throughout the whole song, right?

Yeah, it’s the chorus.
I like Rick Ross. 

By Peter Marrack

(via fuckyeahnicolealbino)

(via fuckyeahnicolealbino)