Remember that catchy song Lick it performed on the Season Three finale of The L-Word before Shane and Carmen’s wedding?

Let us introduce you to the musical duo responsible for its witty lyrics and funky beat; the talented God-Des and She. After ten years of performing together God-Des and She have recently debuted their third album- Three, the title inspired by the many three’s they encountered during the recording of the album, and in other aspects of their lives. Three is a mix of God-Des’s rhymes and She’s melodic voice in a genre labelled (by God-Des herself) as “UrbPop.” GayCalgary and Edmonton Magazine had an exclusive opportunity to speak with this down to earth and friendly duo, one at a time.

God-Des: I’m really ignorant about Canada. I’ve been to Toronto and Vancouver, so where is Calgary in terms of location of the country?

GayCalgary: We’re right above Montana.

God-Des: Aw, shit, god it’s gotta be so beautiful there, I definitely want to come.

GayCalgary: Yeah, it’s super nice. So are you guys still based out of New York?

God-Des: No, we actually live in Austin, Texas now. I actually moved to Austin from New York in May and She just moved down here about a month and a half ago. This is going to be our home base. We were kind of getting tired of the fast paced super expensive life. We wanted some sunshine, some more laid back environment and were also going to put together a live band here and start giggin, bi-weekly, or monthly around town, so that was another reason we kind of wanted to make the move.

GayCalgary: They say Alberta is like Texas. We’re supposedly very cowboy and “redneck” up here. What do you think?

God-Des: (Laughs) Austin is pretty cool ‘cause it’s extra liberal and progressive. The rest of Texas is pretty conservative, but it’s funny ‘cause Madison Wisconsin, where I went to college, is really like a hippy, super artistic liberal town in the mid-west, then there’s like a lot of farmers. Here it’s like a bunch of artists and hipsters and hippies and cowboys, it’s a real cool mix. I kind of say there’s a lot of alternative cowboys walking around Austin. They still rock the cowboy hats and Lee jeans, but they’re super progressive and artistic, it’s pretty cool.

GayCalgary: So when did you guys start making music?

God-Des: My entire family literally are professional classical musicians. My mom is a cellist and my dad is a trombonist. I started playing cello when I was three, I switched to violin at seven and then I switched to percussion at ten, which is the instrument I really like to play. I really love the drums and I started in band in fifth grade, playing all the different percussion instruments and I continued on through college. I started writing rhymes, I guess more like poetry that rhymed in high school and when I got into college my grandma passed away. I was really close to her and she didn’t have a lot of money to give all the grand kids but she just left everybody like fifteen hundred dollars and with that money I didn’t want to spend it on bills or anything stupid. I wanted to do something really important with it, something that I thought would carry me through life and so I actually bought my first sampler keyboard. I started making beats with my roommate at the time and he and I formed God-Des. He was actually an opera singer but he had an incredible soul voice. We were also in a punk band together. Every time our punk band played, nobody really liked it but they liked the hip-hop part we did. So he and I started making beats and performing around Madison and this started to build up a pretty big buzz. Then he had to go away to grad school for opera so I wanted to find another singer. I really liked the melodic element with hip-hop and I heard She singing in her rock band Doll. I asked her if she wanted to do hooks on the side with God-Des and she was like, “Hip-hop? Oh okay, I guess I’ll try it.” (Laughter) And we just connected really well musically, our chemistry was pretty undeniable. We knew we had to go to one of the bigger cities so we chose New York, the home of hip-hop. We packed up our U-Haul and we moved to New York and the rest is history.

GayCalgary: When did you guys start playing together?

God-Des: We started playing together in like 2000. People think they saw us on The L-Word and we were this new band, but we were doing things way before that.

GayCalgary: Do you think being on The L-Word was a big thing for you?

God-Des: Oh Absolutely. It was definitely the right move, I mean we certainly got a lot of attention from the song “Lick It” and people remembered it. The next morning after it aired I was in Manhattan selling beer. I remember looking in my inbox on my phone and it said I had 200 new messages and I was like, “holy crap, what the heck.” It was instant, within about a month of being on the show both of us quit our jobs and have been able to do God-des and She full time ever since.

GayCalgary: What would you guys classify your musical style as? Would you say hip-hop?

God-Des: No, that’s just so hard to describe, especially when you hear Three, you’re going to be like holy crap, what is this? I was thinking a new funny name would be Urb/Pop. I think it’s a mix between hip-hop, pop and soul music. I think that’s probably the best description.

GayCalgary: Your new album is called Three. Is this by any chance your third album?

God-Des: It is, (laughter) it’s pretty literal! But, we named it three for a lot of different reasons. 3 is kind of the magic and lucky number. We were on the season three finale of The L-Word, this is our third record, we mixed it at Chuck D’s house in long Island and we’ll just say it had a lot of three’s in it. My birthday is in March, it’s a three, and I’m also going to be having some 3’s in my birthday coming up this year.

GayCalgary: What’s your favourite God-Des and She song?

God-Des: Man. (Sigh) it’s really hard to say. The new record only has ten songs on it and we put ten songs on it that we truly, truly loved. I really like “Love Machine” I think that’s going to be the first single and I just think it’s really fun and I never get sick of it. I think that song She does, “Blue in the Face” is a great track. Everything’s so different, each song, but, I like ‘em all!

GayCalgary: What’s your favourite song to perform?

God-Des: I really like performing “Respect My Fresh”, that’s the real hip-hop sounding one on the record. We always get the crowd singing really loud. It’s really fun to dance to and when the beat drops it’s really cool. It’s always fun to sing songs that people know. I mean, I do have to admit I’m rather sick of singing “Lick it” (laughs). I used to love doing “Love You Better” because a lot of people know that song and it’s really cute to hear people singing along.

GayCalgary: Was there some controversy about the “Lick It” music video in Canada.

God-Des: Oh, I don’t know about in Canada, but there was some controversy here in the States. MTV banned it. We thought that was so fucked up, because they’ll play all these really degrading, over sexualized, violent videos and they wouldn’t play that. We were pretty upset about it, but hey, we kept it moving and now they play it late night.

GayCalgary: So who makes up the majority of your fan base?

God-Des: I think the majority are girls and queer girls, but it’s really starting to change. I think our music is really universal and it kind of speaks to everybody so I definitely don’t think its bias in age. A lot of people think oh its hip-hop, its young kids but you wouldn’t believe how many 50 and 60 year old women buy our stuff.

GayCalgary: Are you involved in any queer community stuff in your hometown?

God-Des: We’ve always done a lot of human rights campaign benefits, and we’ve done a ton of just queer benefits. We did something in New York; they have this really cool organization that gives homes to homeless gay kids. They provide them with shelter and schooling and stuff, we’ve played at the school. I guess it sounds corny, but we really just want world peace and equality for everybody.

Next we spoke to She...

GayCalgary: So when did you start making music?

She: I was in a rock band for a long time before I even joined up with God-des. We actually met at a national organization of women benefit. She heard me sing...she’s extra pushy to be honest (laughs), so she convinced me cause I wasn’t really. …My voice is soulful so it lends itself to R&B and stuff but I never thought I’d be in a Hip Hop group (laughs). I play guitar and I write music that’s real different than God-des and She but I was like oh it will be fun, I’ll write some hooks and see what happens. So I started writing choruses and stuff, and we started performing under just the name God-Des. I would just stand there and sing the choruses and it was boring (laughs). I was used to being the front person of a five piece band so then just to be a chorus singer was weird to me and really foreign. Over time I started to do her doubles and we really interacted a lot on stage and the longer we’ve been together the more integrated the singing and the rapping. It’s very interwoven now, and it’s created a really cool new sound.

GayCalgary: Do you have solo stuff going on?

She: This is such a full time job right now. We are our own team and we’re business women and this is a full time business so we’re very focused on God-Des and She right now. Once everything is more a machine and we have a team and things are rolling along I think I will definitely do some solo stuff. I love playing guitar and singing and writing music, all different kinds. I do some trip-hop stuff, I love singing rock and I just love creating music in all different genres and stuff. I think it comes through in our songs, because the new record especially is really all over the place.

GayCalgary: What’s your favourite God-Des and She song?

She: Man it changes all the time, I love “Respect My Fresh” I think it’s a super fun song to perform and people really respond to it. I also like “Radio Up” a lot, it really speaks to what’s going on in the music industry and how nothing really makes you feel anything. When you turn on the radio, it all sounds the same. I think that we’ve really lost the heroes of music. There used to be heroes, where you not only loved their songs, but you loved them and I think that’s what we’re trying to bring back. We want to be people’s heroes again, where they feel like they can relate to us and connect with us. I think that’s what separates somebody like Beyonce, she seems very untouchable to me, and she seems more like a product. So I think that there’s something missing when you turn on the radio and the song doesn’t give you goose bumps or you don’t get the chills. That is what we want to change and bring back to the people, that would be great!

GayCalgary: Tell me about the fundraiser section on your website.

She: Well, we are completely independent and we spent a great deal of money on this record; getting a really good producer, a good studio a good PR company. It’s just very expensive and we are asking our fans to help us out, if they have anything extra to send us. It’s been fairly successful, we’ll say the spiel at a festival and we’ll make a lot of extra money. We’ve been extra independent and have been doing this on our own from the beginning and it’s an expensive job to have. Every penny we make, we put back into our business, besides the bare essentials to live on you know. So it’s never an easy task, but we have a lot of integrity because we don’t have a record label telling us what we can and can’t do.

GayCalgary: Have you guys ever been on a label?

She: We had one song signed to Sony, on a compilation for Music with a Twist and that really didn’t get anywhere. Everybody’s like, “God, I can’t believe you guys aren’t signed.” At the same time, that dream of being signed is very archaic, it doesn’t work in the same way anymore and records are not selling in the same way. We sell a lot of records personally to people and we sell a lot of downloads. People don’t buy hard copy CD’s as much as they used to. So that whole business model, it doesn’t really fly anymore. We just need the right connections, to get on TV again and to get a good video out. A lot of the fundraising is to do a video. We want to film a video for “Love Machine” by summer at the latest, and we have all of our ducks in a row but it’s just really hard to make the money that you need because it’s expensive.

GayCalgary: When you’re doing your own stuff, you’re the ones pounding the pavement and making your life what it is, right?

She: Right, and we answer all our own e-mails and we do our own Facebook and Myspace. So anytime anybody contacts us on those places, it’s us reading it and responding and taking the time out to answer any questions or connect with them. At any music festival or gay pride or any show we stay after and sign and take pictures with whoever wants them. Sometimes it takes like two or three hours, but that’s part of your job, that’s part of what it means to be an artist, you give the people their moments and it means so much to them. Sometimes that’s the hardest part for me because I’m exhausted but if I didn’t do that, then I’d feel like such a douche bag (laughs). Honestly, we’re very real; we’re very down to earth. We love what we do; we’re greatful that we get to do it. We’re just normal; we put our pants on one leg at a time. Sometimes people are so nervous to meet us, it makes me laugh. I’m like, “yo homie, we could like totally chill and have a beer, grill out, it’s cool.” We’re probably never going to be different than that.

GayCalgary: Do you guys hang out together when you’re off the road or are you sick of each other?

She: It’s almost like being around each other is like being alone (laughs), ‘cause we’re so used to each other. Right now we spend all of our time together because we are working so hard and doing all our booking and the business. I just moved to Austin and I’m in the process of getting my own place and so right now were 24/7. It’s like a marriage that you can’t get divorced from, so you gotta figure it out. We know each other really well and we give each other our space when we need it and are down for each other, probably more than anyone, ever, just ‘cause it’s more than a marriage, more than a business partner, it’s more than a friend. I really feel like if we’re able to break through, that we are going to change the face of music and what it means and how people connect to it. I just want to bring some joy, love and goodness back into the industry and I think that we can - I am determined.