Prima J Photo: Ruvan
Mexican-American cousins Jessica and Janelle Martinez don’t speak Spanish, but as pop duo Prima J (Flash, Aug/Sep ’08), the two infuse English-language verses with simple Spanish vocab to connect with new generation of Latinas. Prima J’s self-titled debut (Geffen), produced by Ron Fair, was released in June.
GIANT: Introduce yourselves.
Janelle: Hi, I’m Janelle and I’m 20. I’m a Virgo. I love sunsets.
Jessica: I’m Jessica. I’m 20. I’m a Gemini–a good one though.
How do you two work together? What’s the dynamic like?
Jessica: We’re family. Our dads are brothers, so we’ve always been very close.
Janelle: Yeah, we have each other.
Jessica: We’re so different, so when we come together, it just makes it that much more incredible.
How are you different?
Janelle: I don’t give a shit. I don’t care. I’m like, “It’s OK. We’ll be late. Two minutes. Calm down.”
Jessica: And I’m like, “No, we have to be there an hour early!” I’m the one with a stick up my ass. I’m serious when I need to be.
Janelle: When we come together, we have fun, though.
I read that you once broke up but got back together as a duo.
Jessica: We always tried to make a group with three girls.
Janelle: All the time. Never worked.
Jessica: It always ended up causing problems between us. It never worked out. But we were in the car one day listening to this old song that we had recorded, and we were like, “Oh, we need to do this.” And we realized we could do it, but just us two because we know we’ll never let each other down.
You don’t see many pop duos.
Jessica: Exactly, not since Salt-n-Pepa. Way back in the day.
They had a DJ.
Janelle: Oh, that’s right.
Jessica: And we’re Latina, what?
Did you two grow up with music?
Jessica: Yeah, we have a lot of uncles. They’re like all our dads. They’re all very close. There are five of them, so they’d pretend they were the Jackson 5 when they were growing up. One played the congas. One played the drums. They all sang together like a group. They never did anything with it, but when my dad grew older, he always sang with bands. So when I was growing up, I’d watch him sing with bands. Our family is very musical.
Janelle: We always had the music blasting. Everyone was always into music and dancing and performing, but nobody ever took it to the level that we want to take it too.
When do you remember discovering music yourselves?
Jessica: When we were young, every Dallas Cowboys game–we were huge Dallas Cowboys fans.
Janelle: Big, big fans.
Jessica: Our family is crazy about the Cowboys. Instead of watching the halftime shows that were on TV, we’d do our own with our friends.
Janelle: Like, “No, watch us!”
Jessica: I guess everyone noticed that we took it way super-serious. We’d get mad if we got moves wrong even though it was just for fun.
Talk a bit about your record.
Jessica: The debut album is self-titled, Prima J. They call it urban pop. But it’s all over the place. You can’t listen to the whole thing and think it all sounds the same. There’s so many different styles of music on there. It’s a personality album. It shows all aspects of our personalities. Young people can relate.
Do you have a favorite track?
Jessica: Ugh. That’s the hardest question. Tomorrow I’ll probably have a different one. But today, “Flip the Script” is my favorite. I guess I’m in an “I love you” mood.
Janelle: You love me!
Jessica: I love you. That’s the only love song on our album. Everything else is about being young. It’s still not really mushy, mushy. It’s just saying, “I’m doing good on my own. I’m fine on my own. But then I met you and I’m like, ‘Oh my god, what’s happening to me.’”
Do you remember the first time you heard a Prima J song on the radio?
Together: Yes!
Janelle: I still don’t believe we were on the radio.
Jessica: Who was driving?
Janelle: Hell, yeah. I was driving.
Jessica: I was at my house, and I don’t have a radio at my house. So someone called, like, “You’re on the radio!” And I turned on the alarm-clock radio, and I was like, “Oh, my god.” It didn’t feel real. It still doesn’t feel real. It just doesn’t make sense to us still.
How have you embraced your Mexican-American roots in your music?
Jessica: We don’t know Spanish. So the fact that we’re recording a Spanish album is that we want to embrace that part of us.
You infuse lots of Spanish phrases throughout the songs.
Jessica: We embrace our culture to the fullest. We want to let that be known. We did not grow up speaking Spanish but we grew up living the culture. We just didn’t speak the language.
Janelle: There’s certain words that we know.
Jessica: That’s one of our goals: to learn Spanish.
So this is like education for you?
Janelle: Big time.
Jessica: Yeah. It’s crazy how when you sing in Spanish, it’s a whole different feeling than when you say it in English.
You’re pushing the word chilosa. What’s that?
Janelle: In Latin culture, it’s a slang word that means “little hottie.” But we kinda made it our own. We stole it. It means a girl that’s independent, someone’s that’s very confident and proud to be herself.
Jessica: That’s our word that we want to get out. We want girls to be proud of who they are and not afraid of being themselves. We want to tell people that you can be yourself and still make it far.
What isn’t chilosa?
Jessica: People who waste more time pointing out other people’s flaws-that’s not chilosa. People are who they are, no matter what’s wrong with them. That’s who they are. Be cool with everybody.
What’s next?
Jessica: We’re just going with the flow. We want to perform at a Dallas Cowboys football game, though.
Janelle: Heck yeah.
Jessica: That would be our family dream.
Janelle: And maybe play on Saturday Night Live.
