All of the tracks on The Musical were written by you two. How has your sisterhood shaped or influenced the content?
Nicole: The album is influenced by our experiences, whether it's about Natalie's friend that is in love, my friend is in love, what's going on in Natalie's life or what's going on in my life. We don't really focus on our sisterly bond, but our music is based on our experiences in our lives.
In life, it is often said that blood is thicker than water. Do you ever find it hard to get along?
Natalie: Not at all.
Nicole: We get along pretty good. We grew up together. We got our first apartment together. We ended up working together. Don't get me wrong, we get tired of each other sometimes, so we take separate vacations. But for the most part, we get along really well. We're from a really close-knit family.
In what specific ways did the recording process for The Musical differ from your debut album, Nina Sky?
Nicole: This time around, we worked with a lot of producers. On our last album, we were limited to our in-house production team. When you work with different people, they bring out different sides of you. You sing different melodies, and you're singing in keys you didn't even know you could sing in, high and low. Creatively, we learned at lot about real production and watched the way different people work.
How did that experience influence the title, The Musical?
Nicole: Well, the reason we titled the album The Musical is because we felt like our first album was the first chapter in a bigger production. When you put together a musical, you want the right writers, the right actors, the right musical score, the right content, and that's how we felt, too. We wanted to make sure that everything was perfect — from the producers to the writers to what we're writing about, the lyrics. That's why we titled the album The Musical.
Going into this project, what were some of your personal and professional goals? When you left Universal and signed with J Records, you were afforded a fresh beginning.
Nicole: It was important for us to be involved in everything, on the business side and the music side. We've always been involved on the music side. We wrote our entire first album. This time around, it was more important for us to be more involved on the business side of everything that was going on. On The Musical, we were co-executive producers, so we were very much involved in everything that went on, which is dope.
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