(Photo By Kelly Connelly)

This talented Baltimore duo pioneers their own style and takes a game changing approach to forge a new genre that some would describe as being somewhere between hip-hop, pop, electronica, rock, Baltimore club, and whatever other genre one can come up with. It is truly difficult to describe, although the G.E.M’s were kind enough to introduce us to a new expression that makes the task a little less daunting.

The Get Em Mamis are TerAwesome, and prove it on their latest release of the same name. Early on in their careers HBO’s The Wire helped give them a buzz, but now they’re truly making noise of their own by garnering the attention of such media heavyweights as Playboy, Rolling Stones Magazine, and Fader. They have received notice and attention worldwide, but make no mistake of it; they’re dedicated to earning their stripes back home in the States, and they shouldn’t have to wait long.

TerAwesome is an ideal platform to launch the Get Em Mamis to the next level. The album is stacked from top to bottom with a combination of quality radio and club friendly instrumentals and masterful lyricism that is so rare to come by these days. Personally it’s my new favorite work-out tape.

Capital Noise: How did you get the name the Get Em Mamis?
Roxzi: The name was inspired by one of the Baltimore club songs; it pretty much goes like “Get Em Girls, Get Em Girls.” Basically when the track came on you just liked it, and it was just like a saying that a lot of people from our city were saying. So we were going over trying to find names that fit us and we came with an acronym which was G.E.M for Get Em Mamis. Also a gem is like a real rare jewel which is kind of like what we look at ourselves as.

CN: You two seem to have a great natural chemistry. Did you guys hit it off right away?
Symphony: Noo, I was gonna punch her in the face.
R: She’s violent!
(Laughter)
S: It was actually about to be a fight because I thought she was somebody that she wasn’t and my cousin who was Roxzi’s best friend at the time brought her over and I asked my cousin who’s she… She was about to get slapped is what I told her… and that was like the end and the beginning of this wonderful friendship that we have.
R: Yeah it started off kind of shaky but we got past that eventually and we found out that we both were into music and it was something that we both shared as far as our interests and that’s helped us grow closer as a group. And our love for music was equal… I don’t know anybody who loves music like I do besides her… We’re not doing this for the wrong reasons, we’re doing this because it’s something that we love to do, it’s not a hobby.
S: And aside from us being like 8 year old kids on the inside.
(Laughter)

CN: You guys were part of another group The Plague. The G.E.M’s became a duo in 2006, what prompted that decision?
R: It was pretty much a mutual agreement. Everybody decided it would be the best… A lot of people don’t know this but it was not only just somebody else, we actually had a crew of people that we were trying to build together, and you had certain people that wanted to kind of venture off and do solo projects or some people that were just better off as a solo artist so that’s kind of what prompted it. In the end we came out stronger as a duo, as The Get Em Mamis. It wasn’t nothing crazy you know. It was a mutual agreement.

CN: When you guys were in The Plague you had a slightly rougher sound. Would you guys describe yourselves as girly or gritty these days?
S: We’re not gritty. We can be gritty, because that’s where we came from.
R: Not even girly.
S: Yeah we’re grown, we’ve grown up. We had the opportunity to experience so many things that we didn’t experience when we were younger and when we were The Plague. Life’s experiences has taught us so many different things, so you come up with different subjects, the music begins to change.
R: Right, we’re not necessarily girly or gritty. I think we’ve become us. We’ve come into our own so I wouldn’t describe it as either or.

CN: What was the most memorable moment in your careers thus far?
R: We’ve been thankfully blessed with so many opportunities and accomplishments, but I would say when we were in Playboy, simply because that was more shocking than anything. We’re from Baltimore, we rap, we do hip-hop and a mixture of a few other genres but as an artist you never think about being in Playboy. So when they told us that they wanted to do a write up on us because they loved our music I was like “Wow, we don’t even have to take nothing off!”
S: Mine was making the Rolling Stone Top 100. Just being in Rolling Stone magazine period, it’s like one of the greatest honors that you can get as far as publications go. And to be mentioned in the top 100 singles of the year with no radio play, no promotion, just the groundwork that the producers and ourselves laid down, it’s just great. It was great to see our hard work pay off like that… We were actually ranked higher than Lil Wayne.

CN: The Wire gave you guys a big boost nationally by featuring your music. Are there any other new deals in the works to further advance and promote your music?
R: As of right now our main focus is the TerAwesome tour that we’re on. We’ve had got a few offers, but right now the Get Em Mamis focus is the tour… Basically right now we’re just trying to push our mixtape, TerAwesome that just was released and just trying to work that [and] see what happens with it. As far as in the future, you never know, because we’re always working on different things and we’re always talking with producers and TV shows. The Wire definitely was a big boost for us. We actually got an opportunity… I can’t really mention it because the movie isn’t out yet… but The Wire did open a lot of doors for us and allowed us to receive a lot of opportunities as far as movies and other television shows.

CN: What type of movies would you make if you had your choice?
R: A comedy (Laughs)
S: I want a serious role. I want a role probably like Oprah, just something crazy serious.
(More Laughter)
We’re pretty much open to do anything, but I guess what would fit us best is letting us be ourselves which is more the comedy side. I don’t know, with some coaching we’ll be able to do anything, and I can be Oprah!

CN: If there was a biopic ever made, who would you want to play yourselves?
R: I think Kyla Pratt could play me personally. I think she is a good actress, she is young, her energy…
S: I would probably say the girl from Precious. (Laughter)
R: Oh my gosh, you’re the best!
S: No I mean it’s not really too many chubby young [actresses] out there, especially light-skinned young ladies… I don’t know… somebody would probably have to eat a few ham sandwiches… Queen Latifah could probably play me.

CN: Is a tour currently in the works?
S: We have dates that are etched in stone, and we have dates that are being added.

We have dates that are etched in stone, and we have dates that are being added.

CN: What’s the hardest part of preparing to go on the road or for a show in general?
S: I don’t know because I think it’s great. I can’t say that anything is the hard part.
R: Even the hard parts are exciting.
S: Yeah, because we dedicate so much of ourselves to the music and to the performance, this is what we want to do; it’s not a situation where we have to choose between doing this and that. We dedicated our entire lives to this, so being able to actually go on tour and you know prepare for a show is one of the greatest feelings in the world.

CN: I heard good things about your live show. What makes your live performances stand-out?
R: What we try to do is bring the party atmosphere back to live performances. A lot of times when you go to some hip-hop shows or whatever show that you go to sometimes you just find yourselves just standing there listening to the music nodding your head. And that’s lame because you can do that in your house without getting dressed and wasting your gas. So our primary goal when it comes to performances is to make sure everyone is having fun feeling like they’re at a party and not necessarily just watching their favorite rapper on stage. Like we want you to feel like even though we’re on stage if they were playing our song at a party, like the biggest college party that night and you’re just dancing and everyone is having fun, we want to bring that to our audience live. So I think that kind of helps us define our performance because we’re not just up there to rap, we’re up there to get you into the mood, partying, forgetting about whatever it was that you were thinking about when you got there and you know just having a good time with it.

CN: If you had an unlimited budget to produce a stage show, what could we expect to see going on?
Both: Oh my God!
S: We would just parachute down from the helicopters that would explode immediately after.  So much pyro, confetti, and just like all kinds of shit flying around. I really want to in the future when we get our stage show huge, I really want to do some work with a magician that would make shit disappear and eye illusions and things like that. Just put on a show… like a Michael Jackson type show with a waterfall and an elephant and you know small…small pygmy children.

CN: Symphony, have you guys sampled some of your father’s music? I heard he was a Rockstar.
S: No we haven’t sampled any of his music. But we do get his input in other ways, like he is very influential as far as our stage show is concerned like when we do get the opportunity to use things like pyro and confetti cannons and smoke machines… and things like that just to enhance the performance overall so we get advice from him as far as that’s concerned. But we haven’t had the opportunity to sample any of his music yet.

CN: In your video for “Work/Rock With Me” there is a street fashion show. Which prompts me to ask; How do you guys define the Get Em Mamis style and what inspires it?
R: Basically what we try to do is create a new genre of music that will fit the Get Em Mamis. What we found is that by mixing certain sounds and certain genres of music it kind of infused our new sound and our style so when sometimes I feel like maybe some artists possibly could put themselves in a box just saying, ‘Okay, I’m a rapper or I’m a singer and this is what a singer should do.’ Whereas we’ll do hip-hop lyrics over a pop beat and make it real fashionable and kind of let our style be inspired by that so I’d say our music inspires us sometimes we dress like rockstars, for the most part I would say that we’re rocked out. Sometimes I would wear a dress on stage, a dress and some pumps because that’s just what I like to wear. I think [in] our music, mixing the genres inspires our image. We’re pretty much able to take a little bit of everything and make it our own.

CN: What exactly is TerAwesome?
S: Somewhere between Terrific and Awesome. We caught a lot of flack because on the cover it says that it’s a noun and people (say) ‘No, it’s an adjective.’ But no, it’s a noun because it’s a place. Somewhere between Terrific and Awesome, for anything that you think is TerAwesome, that’s what TerAwesome is.

CN: Lil Wayne says that he lost out on a lot of money by not branding “Bling Bling.”
Have you taken the proper steps to brand TerAwesome?
Both: YES.
R: TerAwesome is the Get Em Mamis, so if you think you’re about to use it, you might want to think twice.

CN: What stands out about your music is that laced into the dance/party vibe of your records, all the lyrics remain potent which is something a lot of emcees male or female can’t say nowadays when making radio-friendly music. Is it a conscious effort on your parts not to dumb it down?
S: We have a difficult time actually dumbing it down. We’ve been in situations where producers send over beats and they write, “I just want something simple that everybody can get with.” Those are the songs that take us the longest because we’re so lyrical, that’s what we do; we’re writers so it is difficult to dumb it down. And even when we do, what we consider dumbing it down is still not. But we do try.

CN: You’ve garnered a lot of attention from some major publications like Rolling Stones, Fader, and Playboy. Have offers from the Majors started pouring in?
R: We have actually got a few offers, I won’t mention names. But we got actually quite a few offers, even overseas. I would say a good 40-50% of our offers have been overseas like in Germany or in the UK, a bunch of different countries for distribution and record deals, but right now we’re still focused on our music. If a deal that’s good enough to take advantage of presents itself  then of course we’ll be more than willing to take that opportunity but as of right now we’re still looking.

CN: If you could work with any other artist from the DMV, who would it be?
S: Right, well if you’re talking DMV than we definitely want to do something with Wale. We definitely want to do something with Timbaland or Pharrell. As far as Baltimore we have something with Mullyman in the works, we definitely want to work with Bossman in the future, pretty much anybody from our city that can further both of our careers.
R: The general idea is something that we always wanted to do was to have a track with everybody.  A lot of times we have artists that we know about that maybe the rest of the world doesn’t know about, that are from our city that we would like to work with. That opportunity itself would be amazing so we’re all about the unity. Everybody wants the DMV to kind of stick together, and anything that we can do to help the situation if that means getting on a track or showing up here or photoshoot with the whole DMV in it, whatever it takes we definitely want to be part of the movement that unites us and makes us stronger as a unit.

RELATED LINKS:
Get Em Mamis Myspace
TerAwesome Download
Work/Rock With Me Video