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One of Gospel music’s most charismatic personalities are back in the spotlight with another cutting-edge, Contemporary Gospel CD release certain to win hearts and minds over to the Kingdom. Providing both style and substance as torch bearers of the Gospel, Mary Mary return to the forefront with an album simply entitled, The Sound. As new millennium ministers, these sanctified sisters exude confidence, charisma and a Kingdom-first mentality to their music, their message and their lifestyle. BlackGospel.com couldn’t wait to dig deeper to see what drives this talented tandem to another level of music ministry.
Christopher Heron: OK ladies, let’s begin. After being in the limelight for 8 years, we, as those having been blessed by your ministry, think we know Erica and Tina, but do we really? Tina seems to be the playful, funny, outgoing sister, who isn't afraid to say what's on her mind. Erica seems a bit shier, more sentimental and little bit more conservative. But that's just my take on you ladies. Tina, how would you describe your older sister, as an artist, mother, sister and Black, Christian woman? And Erica, how would you describe your sister, as an artist, mother, sister and Black Christian woman?
Mary Mary - Tina: That’s a good question. How would I describe Erica as an artist, a mother, a sister and a Christian woman? As an artist, I think she’s exceptional. I think she has a very distinguished voice. I think she has a desire to be excellent. You hear that in the music that we make. As a mother, I think she’s caring, I think she’s loving, I think she’s attentive to her daughter. As a wife, I think she’s a model of how women should be for their husbands in this day and age where everybody is, “I’m the boss and don’t nobody tell me and whatever.” She finds a way to be a strong individual, but still let her husband know that he’s the man. You said as a Christian?
CH: Yes.
MM - Tina: I think she is a true Christian. I get to see her onstage, offstage and behind the stage. She is just that...a Christian. I don’t doubt her walk with God in any respect. What people think she is, while on stage...she is just that. She is that, at all times. If she ever gets it wrong, she’s not too proud to admit it. She’s an honest person. She really desires to please God. She is a bit conservative. She’s crazy just like me, but you all just can’t tell because she’s a little shier. She’s fun. She’s cool. She’s like the counselor. Everybody in the family wants to talk to Erica. She’s so wise. I think what you said would not be far off. Those are also ways that I would describe Erica. What you said and what I said, that’s who Erica is.
CH: And Erica, how would you describe your sister as an artist, mother, sister and Christian woman?
MM - Erica: As an artist, she’s so alive. She’s so full of life, honesty, heart, passion. That’s who she is. She’s super energetic. She goes hard for whatever it is. Sometimes, it doesn’t really matter what anybody else says. If she’s passionate about it, that’s all that really matters. That’s good. In a world where people can be so swayed by what other people think and how other people feel, she’s very confident in what she is and who she is and who she is in this music industry. She’s definitely not an insecure chick at all. As a mother, she’s really off the hook. She’s really a great mom. My nieces are super smart. They know that they’re loved. I think that’s how you really judge how good a parent is, you look at the child. She definitely won’t have any industry kids who come out begging for everything or want to wear designer clothes. They’re just normal, beautiful children. They have the same fire that their mother has.
Tina: Careful.
MM - Erica: They have the same fire that their mother has, but that’s great. My daughter is more subdued. She’s more like me. As a wife, I think Teddy (her husband) and Tina are so – you know how boyfriends and girlfriends are all over each other and they love each other? You would think that Teddy and Tina are just an elaborated boyfriend and girlfriend. They’re not a boring couple like, “Oh, you can tell they’ve been married for 30 years.” They are crazy about each other. It’s a beautiful thing to see. In this industry, people get divorced every five minutes. There are some couples that say, “He said this to me and I didn’t like this. He wore this and I didn’t like it.” Just stupid stuff. They didn’t honor the vow, for better or for worse. I’ve seen her go through the worst and she’s gone through it like a champ. She’ll speak her mind whether it’s what he want to hear or not, but that’s the beauty of Tina. You know you’re going to get The Real, all day long. I’m going to give you the real but it’s going to be wrapped up in some perfume and flowers.
[laughing]
MM - Erica: I’m going to tell you what I feel. I’m just going to hug you after I say it.
MM - Tina: Perfume and flowers. That was the best line of the interview right there.
CH: All right. Before we jump into the conversation about the new album, let me ask you a question about your previous releases. You’ve had some breakthrough songs that really popularized the albums. I’m curious to know if the songs that became hits were songs that even you ladies knew would become favorites. For instance, on the debut album, Shackles and James Cleveland’s Can’t Give Up Now are songs that everyone still plays at praise parties or on radio. Were these the songs that you believed would become hits?
MM - Erica: I’ll say this. We had high, high, high expectations for the first album. Everything we asked for, God provided. Then, of course, he exceeded our expectations because that’s just what God does. I didn’t know that the love for those songs would last this long. I would never have known that I would run into somebody in a shoe store in New York and that person would tell me they’re from Israel and they just heard about the song from a random conversation. I didn’t know the music would mean all those things. I didn’t know that so many artists and people, who are in jail, would send us letters to tell us what the music has meant to them. I didn’t know that. That was a surprising part, a wonderful part. I think that’s the beauty of music. Once you put it out there, you never know who it will reach.
MM - Tina: When you make records, you think every one of your songs is the greatest song. I think every one of them is possibly going to be a single, especially when you’re making the music. After you listen to it all, you might think, “Okay, these songs might lead the way.” I think we kind of felt like Shackles would be a song that would lead the way. Like Erica said, we had no clue it would do what it did, but we thought that song would lead the way. With Can’t Give Up Now, we just kind of knew that, definitely, in the church world, that would resonate with them. On the last record, we kind of felt like Heaven would be that song that would lead the way. There were some other songs that would grab, but Yesterday, when we wrote that song, I wanted to finish that song as soon as possible because it just wasn’t one of the songs that I was feeling the most. By the time I finished writing it, I was like, “This is something. This song is something and I think this song is going to have an incredible impact.” We were grateful for that, but you never can tell. You never know. That’s why you want to go hard and make your best possible record every time you go in because you never know. You never know what the world is going to respond to. You just want them to respond.
CH: It’s true. I still fall hard for that remake of Walter Hawkins’ Thank You.
MM - Erica: Oh, Thank You. That is one of my favorite songs period. I love how Warryn (Campbell) put the original recording at the end of our song. That was so cool. It was pretty phenomenal. ‘Baby Dub’.
CH: We’re going to get to ‘Baby Dub’ in a minute. Your upcoming album, The Sound, of course, features tracks. I went to your website and I heard the title track The Sound and the very funky Get Up. Are these the songs that you suspect will break through or do you have some sentimental favorites that we should look out for?
MM - Erica: We didn’t expect that to break through, but there are some other songs that you should look out for . . .
MM - Tina: Like Forgive Me and It Will All Be Worth It and I Worship You. I Worship You, the opening lines, “I was lost but you came and found me. You left your throne thinking about me.” There’s so much of that song that I think will definitely hit people’s hearts. “You took everything I was and made me what I am. With all I am, I worship you.” Anybody who can ever reflect on their relationship with God, or not even feel like they have had a relationship with God, and they can say, “I said a prayer here and there. I shouldn’t have been blessed. I shouldn’t have been protected. The situation should have been way worse. It was nobody but God.” Anybody who feels those thoughts and emotions in their life, I think that song is going to really resonate with them. I think Get Up is so appropriate for the climate of America right now. Not just America, but this economy that we’re experiencing, the fact that we have a president of a different race than ever before.
MM - Erica: I love how you called him the president already.
MM - Tina: Hey, I’m hopeful. That’s faith talking. Our president-to-be, can I say that? I’m putting him right in his place. But to see somebody like Barack Obama be the democratic candidate for presidency and how his whole campaign is about change...it’s great. Who cares if you had all the answers in the past, you had all this experience. Everything was great and wonderful per your resume, but it never translated. Let’s do something different. Let’s Get Up, get out there and make something better happen. The song Get Up, to me, is perfect for that message, in an economy that’s crazy and everybody is discouraged and not knowing if they’re going to make it and how they’re going to make it. They need a song like Get Up. You have to find the light in the middle of darkness. You have to find the hope in the middle of hell. There is a way. You’ve just got to want it. You’ve got to see it. You’ve got to believe it. You will find it, even if it takes some time. I think a song like Get Up is just so necessary, some courage to motivate, to inspire, to push people. I’m glad about that song.
There’s a song that’s called Dirt. It’s talking about how we all need dirt to grow. Everybody likes roses. Everybody wants a wonderful bouquet, but before you get them and they’re in a lovely little vase, they come from the grimy dirt with the rocks and worms and ants and all kinds of stuff in it that’s not so pretty or so cute. Somebody’s hands had to get really, really dirty to get them out of there. You have a beautiful flower that comes from it. We talk about the need for dirt to grow. We have a song called Forgiven Me. I’m reflecting on my past and the things that I’ve gone through and the things that I caused and the things that someone else might have caused. It wasn’t good. I’m a good person that something bad happened to. Or maybe I was a bad person that caused something to happen to somebody. Whatever it was, I cannot live there. I have to forgive myself. I have to forgive the situation. I have to move on and aim for something better in life. Then a song called God In Me. It’s talking about how you look at my life, you look at what I wear, you look at what I drive, you look at what I got and you think I’m something. It’s not me, it’s the God in me. God is blessing me. What I got, I’ve been given. I think I went through enough of the songs.
It’s a great record. The first half of the record alone, you may not be able to sit down. You could do your whole workout to it. It can run your Praise and Worship service. The whole album is 45 minutes. It’s not long at all. It’s your driver-to-work CD. It’s explosive. Like boom, we’ve got a song called that...Boom. Warryn came into the studio. We hammered the tracks out. Warryn was like, “This song is going to be about boom.” Me and Erica are like, “Huh? What are you talking about?” We ended up writing a song saying, “I’ve got so much information about God, I can’t keep it to myself. I got to tell somebody. If I keep it all in, I’m going to explode. It’s going to be like boom.” There you have it...Boom.
CH: I want to ask you about the mega-producer and husband of yours, Erica, Warryn Campbell. Many of your listeners weren’t even aware of Warryn’s serious illness in the form of kidney cancer that he had to fight and overcome. How did that revelation affect your family and help you to cope with that very serious adversity?
MM - Erica: Honestly, I was already prepared for it. I grew up in a church where people were cured of cancer. My Lord is a healer. When that situation came, I had my moment, literally a moment, where I was kind of stressed. After that, it was like, “Okay God, do what you do best, and that’s heal and take care of the people who serve you and give you their lives.” We didn’t allow me or Tina or my sisters or my mom, my mother-in-law, none of us would allow people to call us with negativity and crying. I think we put ourselves in a position to experience God’s miracle. We found out about his condition on a Friday and the very next Friday, he was cancer free. There has been no chemo, no radiation, no setbacks, no liver failure, no kidney failure, nothing. He’s 100 percent stable. I think it’s a testament to what God can do when you use your faith.
CH: Wow. We really can’t say enough about Warryn Campbell.
MM - Erica: Isn’t he great?
CH: He is something special. Over the years, his gift to produce music has caught the attention of both mainstream and Gospel artists like Kanye West, Alicia Keys to Fred Hammond, from Australia’s Jade MacRae and Missy Elliott, to Yolanda Adams, Kierra Sheard and Men of Standard. His catalog is very impressive.
MM - Tina: Erica, what’s that song he did? I think it’s our first record or the second record. What a Friend. His arrangement of What a Friend...what’s crazy about this song is that before Erica and me even knew we were song writers, I took a version of what I heard in church and did my own little something to it. I let Warryn hear it and he turned it into this incredible creation. That was the song, What a Friend on our first record. What he was able to do with it, I’m saying to myself, “Who even thinks like that?” It was just so incredible. It was so phenomenal. There’s a record, I can’t even think of the song. It was my favorite song on the second record. You did the little movement in there.
MM - Erica: Trouble Don’t Last Always?
MM - Tina: No, not that one. It’s another song where he did all this elaborate, wonderful stuff. During the bridge, that’s when it just kind of came alive. You’re like, “Who thinks like this? Who does all of this and goes so far into this wonderful land of music and brings it right back to the hook where it started?” He’s phenomenal. He is incredible and everybody who doesn’t know him and doesn’t have him as part of their project, they are missing out on something. He can make everybody and anybody sound good. I think he comes out with the hottest tracks. He’s so versatile. He can make any kind of track and it sounds authentic to whatever genre it is. He’s original. He’s innovative. Warryn is special. That’s not just because he makes records with us. If we didn’t have Warryn, I would hunt him down and find him.
MM - Erica: I think the thing that’s great about Warryn is he gives people their own sound. When you have a Warryn Campbell song, it’s not like, “Oh, so and so did that song.” He gives you something that’s original to you. I think that’s really great. I think any producer can work with somebody that’s already established and already has a huge audience because people are already following the artist. But if you take an artist that nobody knows and you give them a voice, that’s a testament to how awesome you are, as a producer.
CH: In my humble opinion, the sound and style, the flavor of Mary Mary is really a reflection of California. Your music is very fresh. Your music is breezy. You’re trendy. You capture the essence of California. I want to know how influential has Los Angeles been to your ministry, to your music, whether it’s going to Faithful Central Church, attending El Camino College, meeting Warryn Campbell in L.A. How has Los Angeles impacted your music and ministry?
MM - Erica: I think everyone is greatly influenced by where they’re from. There’s a vibe in L.A. You can hear people talk a certain way and be like, “Where you from, the West Coast?” You can hear a certain sound of music. People would hear certain tracks of artists. It’s like, “Those are Warryn’s friends. They all make music together, so there’s something similar to it.” There’s a sound. There’s a vibe. There is a culture, even if you’re not aware of, that usually stems from where you’re from. You’re affected by it. I’d have to say we were greatly affected by it. We’re glad to be from L.A. We like L.A. We like this vibe. We like the people. Some of the stuff, I’m a little embarrassed about. The culture and the sound and the dress, we’ve been greatly influenced by that. I think you definitely can hear that in our music. I think that’s also why we were able to bring something fresh to the music scene. There’s not a whole truckload of artists, especially Gospel artists, from California or from L.A. People are mostly from the South and from the East Coast mainly. Not a lot of West Coasters were doing Gospel. That’s not to say that no one was, but you generally think of people from the South and East Coast, they had Gospel on lock. It has been great to be able to present something that’s different. It looks different. It sounds different. The whole presentation is different and it’s unique to us. The West Coast, I’d have to say, definitely had a great influence on us. This is where we live. This is where we’re from, born and raised.
CH: I’m going to shut this interview down with one final question. When listeners hear The Sound, the album, the title track, they’re going to be familiar with the beats. They’re going to hear that radio-friendly sound that is Mary Mary all over again. What is the fundamental message that you want to leave everybody with, through the lyrics of the songs?
MM - Tina: I want people to know that God is for you. Whether you’re dancing to the music that’s inspired by God, it’s just easy. Hear and understand God and the music and know that He is for you. That’s not just for people who look a certain way or act a certain way, or are from a certain background or have certain experiences. God is for every living, breathing being. We try to present music in a way where everybody knows it, everybody gets it. If you go to church, if you don’t go to church, if you’re old, if you’re young, if you say you believe in Jesus, if you say you don’t believe in Him. If you hear this music, I want people to be affected by it. I want it to be so blatant that you don’t have to be a Bible scholar. You don’t have to be a “spiritual” person. You just get it. It’s something that makes you interested. It’s something that makes you think, “Let me check this out. Let me go to church. Let me pick up this Bible. Maybe there’s something in there for me.” That’s what I want people to get, that God is so necessary. You need him and he’s for you.
For more info, visit the official website at for Mary
Mary at
www.Mary-Mary.com.
