MTV: How did you get discovered?
Holly
Blake: We all auditioned for the group. Melissa and I had the same singing
coach. We didn't know each other, but we both got referred for the audition.
Diana and I went to junior high school together, and she came into the group in
January. Ashley called 1-800-BE-A-STAR and ended up in the building at the right
time. It was just perfectly...
Ashley Poole: Crazy.
Blake: Yeah.
MTV: How did you meet up with Puffy?
Melissa Schuman: Our manager, Kenny Burns, knew Puffy and [label
executive] Andre Harrell at Bad Boy. We were looking for record labels, so he
sent out some of our songs. Somehow, Puffy got it and he liked it and wanted to
see us. We did a performance for him at the Beverly Hills Hotel and he signed us
on the spot. So we're excited about that.
MTV: How do you think Dream will fit in at Bad Boy Records, which is
predominately a hip-hop label?
Poole: Bad Boy is a great label for Dream because our flavor very much
fits theirs. It's not a matter of R&B and pop. It's just a matter of the
combination that we work with. We're not really like pop. I don't think we
actually have a label. We're just like "Dream feel" — we have a lot
of different types of music. It happens to be that our first song is pop.
MTV: How do you plan to carve your niche out?
Diana Ortiz: Our music does it all for ourselves. It's not so much
that we don't want to be in that category. Whether we like it or not, we're
gonna be in pop. We sing pop music, that's how it is, but we also sing different
types of music. We have our urban feels, we have the Bad Boy flavor, we have
ballads that are just so beautiful. We don't want to categorize ourselves. It's
more like we're just singing.
Blake: And if people really like our music, then they like it. It's
not that deep.
MTV: A lot of times when groups start young, they end up splitting or
losing members. How do you plan to maintain your quartet?
Schuman:
It's very, very important that our relationship is close-knit. We're like
sisters, literally. And we just keep the lines of communication open, because
that's what it's all about.
Ortiz:
And we stay humble with each other. We keep each other in check all the time. We
feel that we're a little different from a lot of groups out there, because we've
got four of us working with each other, and four of us keeping each other on our
toes and keeping us grounded and just having that love for each other. One thing
we all have in common is that we're with God, and if we all have that in common
we're all gonna go back to that. We get into arguments, but it's like, "Why
are we fighting over my brush?" It's like, "I love you!"
MTV: How long did it take to make the album?
Poole: Making the album was very quick, maybe a six-month period. We
happened to have a lot of different producers, but our album ended up being more
us working with them, instead of them giving us songs. That's why the album's
more of a Dream vibe.
MTV: Describe the Dream vibe.
Poole: The Dream vibe is more of a message instead of our music. It's
more of the message that you're gonna give out to people.
Blake: It just comes from us as four teenage girls.
MTV: How involved was Puffy in the project?
Blake: Puffy produced two songs and a track for one of the other ones.
It was awesome when we got to work with him closely on those two songs. He's
really talented and he really understood. It was different working with him as
opposed to other producers because he understands the artist's point. He doesn't
just say, "Get into the studio and do it." He tries to put it into
words that we can understand. He was also different — the style of music was
different than the other things we had been recording.
MTV: Why did you choose "He Loves U Not" to be the first
single?
Blake: It's just different.
Schuman: We fell in love with it the first time we heard it.
Poole: The message was completely different. We didn't really want to
bash on the guys this time. We wanted it to be more like confidence within
yourselves. We want to teach a lot of kids out there, and teenagers our age, to
be more confident. It's not like guys are that big of a deal; other girls aren't
that big of a deal. And if you're OK, everything's cool.
MTV: Tell us about the video for "He
Loves U Not."
Ortiz:
The making of the video was so fun! All of us had so much fun. The first day, we
shot it in the desert and we were in dune buggies. It was hot as heck, but we
were in dune buggies! Our stunt guys were driving for us, but they were all
sick. The guy driving Ashley was puking because he was so hot; he had sun
poisoning. The makeup artist was doing our makeup, and he was like,
"Filthy!" Because we were so dirty! [RealVideo]
Blake: We were eating dirt.
Ortiz: Then we used 'NSYNC's "Bye Bye Bye" room, the one
that rotates. That was just awesome! We were rolling and doing cartwheels and
everything. They didn't use those shots, but they should've.
Schuman: Yeah, it was really fun.
MTV: You did a remake of New Edition's "Mr. Telephone Man."
Were you all fans of New Edition?
Ortiz: My sister, she loved New Edition. I never bought their albums,
but my sister was like, "You're doing 'Mr. Telephone Man'?" And I'm
like, "Yeah, why?" And she said, "New Edition did that
song!" And I'm like, "Oh!" [laughs]
Blake: It's a lot to live up to because New Edition was like, New
Edition.
Schuman: Amazing.
Blake: Puffy did the track, so it's totally different than the New
Edition version.
MTV: Will being on Bad Boy make it more likely that you'll cross into
the urban market?
Schuman: We don't wanna be just straight-out bubblegum pop. Our sound
is not like everybody else's. Bad Boy gives us the chance to have more of an
urban feel. If we end up doing an R&B song or something, then great.
Blake: Right, whatever happens.
Ortiz: And we're teenagers, so we're gonna be kind of poppy. We're
gonna have that feel no matter what.
Blake: Our style's gonna change as we get older. Then our music's
gonna change and it's just gonna all fall in together.
MTV: Your bio mentions your dance skills. Do any of you have any
formal training?
Poole: Not me!
Schuman: Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?
Ortiz: Holly took ballet lessons for a while. But none of us really
did. We have an awesome choreographer. Ashley, when she first started out, she
did not have rhythm. So the choreographer helped her find a rhythm.
Blake: She pulls it out of us.
Schuman: It all came from the heart. We love to sing and we love to
dance, and she just brought out our individual personalities in our moves.
MTV: What is your show like?
Blake: We're changing it up and doing "Mr. Telephone Man," a
mid-tempo song called "I Miss You" and "He Loves U Not," of
course. I love it because it's three totally different feels. We come onstage
and we're like a tribute to New Edition. It's laid-back, but it's very sharp.
And then we're doing "I Miss You," which is a really passionate song.
You can just feel it, and it's softer and calm. Then we're doing "He Loves
U Not," which is like, bounce and "Yeow!"
Schuman: It's got attitude.
Blake: It's really exciting for us. Hopefully it's exciting for other
people, too.
MTV: As young women in the business, what are your thoughts about how
you dress and how you appear on TV and onstage?
Blake: It's important for us as teenage artists to portray something
to girls out there that makes them realize it's OK to not wear...
Schuman: Skimpy outfits.
Blake: And that it's OK to not have the typical body. Britney [Spears
has] got a great body, but nobody said that everybody has to have that body.
Women are all different, girls are all different. That's something we're
learning as teenagers. And it's also something that we want to share with other
girls out there.
MTV: Do you all sing lead on the various songs?
Blake: All of us can sing lead. All of us are here because of that. We
all have a passion to sing separately, and then we came together and made it
Dream. We like to sing harmonies.
MTV: What about songwriting?
Blake: I love to write. That's something that, as I grow up, I want to
learn to do better. Ashley loves to write, too. We all wrote "Pain" as
a group. That was really cool, 'cause we actually did write it as a group. It
wasn't like one person did any more than another. Writing it was really
important to us as a group, because that's how we can know that the music is
really speaking for us.
