Author: Emma Loggins
Date: 2008-03-13


Interview:
Interscope recording artists Brit & Alex are the multi-talented twins who have been tapped as the new "it" girls of pop music by producers Tricky Stewart (Rihanna's "Umbrella," Mary J Blige) and Dallas Austin (Gwen Stefani, Madonna). Their sound, a refreshing blend of slinky melodies over hip-pop tracks, is the perfect blend of New York-sass-meets-London-cool. "Let It Go," their single and video from the movie and soundtrack Step Up 2, The Streets, is an early taste of what Brit & Alex have to offer.

So tell me a little bit about you all, what's your background?

Brit: Basically we grew up in Connecticut. We started doing music and modeling in about 9th grade. We did the John Freida commercials, so people knew that we could sing and that it was something that we were doing. People were submitting us songs, we were trying to figure out our direction, and it wasn't really working.

So we thought, let's go over to London and see if we can get it right. We ended up going into the studio and finding our direction. I kept thinking we had to get over to America, you know we're Americans, so we parted ways and headed back.

At that time, Pink's album came out, and we're like whoever did this is perfect for us. And it was Dallas Austin. We didn't have any connections in the music industry, so after a while we managed to get a hold of his manager, and he took a meeting with us. We played him our songs, and he said that he would pass them along to Dallas. He said if he liked them then he'll do it, but you know he's done so much now that he doesn't do anything that he doesn't want to. It's not about the money; you know he's worked with Pink, Gwen, and Madonna. So we were praying that he would do it, and he agreed to it.

So long story short, we went down there and spent about two months with him. He wanted us to be his new TLC. We were in the studio every single day. We slept in the studio. So he basically did half our album and then recommended us to Tricky Stewart, who did "Umbrella" with Rhianna. So Tricky did the other half of our album which really worked well.

We wanted to feature Missy Elliot on one of our tracks, so we took a meeting with her manager Mona Scott, Violator. And she told us, "Look, I think Missy will do this, but I feel like you guys should take one last meeting with Jimmy Iovine before you guys go over to London by yourself."