GetEmMamis

The Get 'Em Mamis got some more recognition in the May 15 issue of Rolling Stone.

Stone gave their single "Cold Summer" four stars in its Downloads section.

Here's a bit of the review:

"These Baltimore ladies outshine their male counterparts with clipped double-time rhymes and a beat that belongs on boomboxes at barbeques across America."

I couldn't agree more.

Congrats, Mamis. - Sam Sessa, Baltimore Sun

We've heard Get 'Em Mamis (G.E.M.) on The Wire and we've heard them in the streets-Rolling Stone placed their hit “Cold Summer” higher than Lil Wayne's “A Milli” on the top 100 singles of 2008. So when we had the chance to snag Roxzi and Symphony's Baltimore swagger and hypnotic club beats for our very own, we jumped. Even better, the two hottest and fastest-rising chicks in the game hit the studio, spat out the perfect champagne-room track “Planet Swag” and handed it straight over. Check it and your other underground favorites when their soon-to-be-classic debut, TerAwesome, hits late this summer. For us, it couldn't come soon enough.

Sounds like: Missy Elliot, Clipse, Kid Sister, Kano - Hillary Kaylor, RCRDLBL.Com

This is the house that built the Get ‘Em Mamis.

Not far from the water, a graffiti-speckled train runs by a ramshackle warehouse. In that neighborhood, in a small rowhouse, in a tiny living room, is where Deenah “Symph” Eaton met Fallon “Roxzi” Diane. They were going to fight, right there, six years ago.

“She said, ‘I’m about to slap you,’” says Roxzi, now sitting close to Symph on the living room’s couch. “I started looking around for things to fight with.”
Thankfully, it didn’t to come to blows.

They made up — it was a case of mistaken identity — and started trading freestyle raps over the phone. Now, after years of self-promotion, traveling to sparsely attended shows and overcoming sexism, the Get ‘Em Mamis are moving to something bigger. Rolling Stone is on the bandwagon, featuring the group online in a spread about Baltimore’s music scene. Calling them a “fire-hot duo,” the magazine also gave four stars to G.E.M.’s new track “Cold Summer” — part of a campaign of the same name in which G.E.M. posts a freestyle track over old-school hip-hop every Friday on their site, myspace.com/getemma.

They are, rightfully so, singled out for their rat-a-tat-tat staccato delivery and imaginative beats. On “Rep Your Set,” the “Superman” theme is sampled. Their stuff can be bass-heavy, thumping and frenetic. It can be smooth, then jittery, then smooth again (think a “Supa Dupa Fly”-era Missy Elliot). “Cold Summer” alone uses bongos and repeated “brrrs!” And the lyrics are playful bragging. From “Cold Summer”: “My pinky ring so icy you can mix drinks with it.”

The lyrics are all their own, the beats bolstered by Baltimore’s Darkroom Productions — the brains behind the acclaimed Hamsterdam albums — which provided music for HBO’s “The Wire.” G.E.M. songs on the show gave them mainstream exposure.

“She just about jumped through the roof,” Symph says of Roxzi’s reaction to “The Wire” exposure and Rolling Stone recognition.“Symph is just chill about everything. She never gets excited,” Roxzi counters, with a playful frown.Soon after meeting they formed The Plague crew.

They were in high school — young, gritty, vulgar. They wrote what they knew, and all they knew was Westport.

Now they’re older — 22 — and have matured. They’re less angry, Symph says. “We write about relationships and finances and having fun in the club,” she says. “Back then, the only mushy stuff we’d write about were the mushy brains on the street left by gunshots.”

Roxzi, boisterous and endearing, prefers dresses and Symph, soft-spoken, wouldn’t be caught dead in one. Yet they complete each other’s sentences and respond to questions with the same remarks and facial expressions.

“The formula is there’s no formula,” they say simultaneously when asked about their working relationship. They exchange a glance and laugh.

Initially, they recorded and performed separately before forming a crew, The Plague, with a third member. They’d do up to three shows a day, driving between Baltimore, Virginia and D.C.

“We’d go and perform anywhere, even if there was one person and a horse in the crowd,” Symph said.

Because they were women in a heavily male hip-hop field, people instantly didn’t take them seriously. Many were expecting them to simply get on stage, do something seductive and keep their mouths shut.

“We heard a lot of, ‘Who writes for you?’” Roxzi says. “Yeah,” Symph interjects. “Then it was, ‘Hey, y’all can spit — for chicks.’”

But they started to attract a following and recorded an album in two weeks, in Symph’s mother’s Westport home.

That album attracted then Baltimore-based Def Jam producer Sean “Mocca” Banks, who helped them and urged them to change their name. Then Darkroom came knocking and used a G.E.M. jam, “When You See Us,” on Beyond Hamsterdam. Next, G.E.M.’s “Cold Summer” will be featured on Darkroom’s Hamsterdam: The Album, due out in July. Symph and Roxzi say they’re working on a mixtape, Material Girls, where they’ll freestyle over all Madonna tracks.

And they’re out of Westport, living together near Catonsville.“There’s really no stopping. We want to accomplish so much,” Roxzi says.

“For me, I’d love to be something like Jay-Z, but the female president of hip-hop. I’m looking forward to it.”

Symph takes one of her trademark pensive pauses.

“Yeah, there can be two female presidents,”she says.

Jordan Bartel is assistant editor for b. Contact him at jordan@bthesite.com - Jordan Batel, B The Paper

"Cold Summer"
BY GET 'EM MAMIS

For fans of The Wire: Baltimore ladies rhyme about diamonds over a sample that sounds like a shivering polar bear. - http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/24947047/singles_of_the_year/21

"When You See Us" by Get 'Em Mamis is a snarling d-girl anthem that pits low-voiced rappers Roxzi and Symphony against a steamy, finger-snapped, screwed-down Bmore club beat. It's a street testimonial: Real bitches do real things/ On the block pitchin' from the summer to the spring/ Hustle from December to November, nahmean?/ Bmore stay on do grind, out to get that green. And it's a club track, with a chorus dying for flygirl shout-alongs: When you see us on the block, holla, GET 'EM MAMI!

Currently rockin' off The Wire: Beyond Hamsterdam soundtrack, "When You See Us" was featured in season four of that epic HBO show during a scene when "Michael was getting some cut-up," says Symphony. But if you're expecting Roxzi and Symph to be some crazy hard chicas in the vein of Felicia "Snoop" Pearson's hood assassin character on the show, think again. These 23-year-olds are BFF material: funny, wild and focused. Plus, they have a drink named after them. "In the 'Ooh Aah Song' we say, Goose, lime juice, call it the Get 'Em Mami, and that's pretty much what you do," says RoxzL "Mix Grey Goose and lime juice and you got a nice little Get'Ern Mami."

Part of Baltimore s Plague Up crew (formerly known as The Plague), the duo formed their own spinoff in late '06. "Everybody who saw our name, Tha Plague, before they actually saw us, was like, 'I thought y'all was gonna be ugly. When I think about the plague, I just think about disgustingness,'" says Symph. "This time were cuter."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Get 'Em Mamis will drop a mixtape this April on Darkroom Enterprises, the label run by Darkroom Productions. It was the production duds Harnsterdam mixtape that first clued The Wire folks in to the city's rap scene and the aforementioned "Ooh Aah Song" is scheduled to show up in another episode of the Baltimore tragidrama. Get 'Em Momis paint their hood with the same acute insight and realism as the show, and lyrically, they will body you. "People definitely look at females like they're gonna rap about fingernail polish and bubblegum and stuff like that," says Symph. "We expect people to look at us like, 'Oh they're not gonna do anything.' Cause if everyone knows what we're capable of, that takes the fun out of shocking the shit out of them, right?"

JULIANNE SHEPHERD

myspace.com/getemrna
COPYRIGHT 2008 The Fader
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning - Julianne Shepherd, The Fader

Posted 9/8/2009 1:10 PM by Hillary Kaylor

Tags: Baltimore club, hip hop, rap

We’ve been waiting all summer for this! Get Em Mamis, of Rolling Stone and The Wire fame, have dropped their official debut and there aren’t enough superlatives to describe it. Ish burns more than Icy Hot! Slays more than Buffy! Deep-freezes quicker than Sub Zero! Okay, it's clear jamming to the best in Baltimore club will not transform us into Symph and Roxzi, but we’ll keep trying. The baddest chicks on the planet say thank you, kisses and banana pudding for listening but we say thank you for the TerAwesome new swagger. Look out for the tour starting later this fall and two follow-up projects, in the meantime revel in some slick video action.
- Hillary Kaylor