Queens, New York songstresses born to Puerto Rican parents, 21-year-old identical twins Natalie and Nicole Albino have lived and breathed music all their lives. They composed their first song together; “Sisters” at the age of seven and hold their DJ stepfather responsible for their eclectic taste, especially their obsession with The Police.

“We used to play karaoke a lot when we were 14 years old and we always picked the Police songs,” sweet Natalie says excitedly and looks over to her more distant, street-cool sister. “We listen to all genres of music, we draw influences from everything. We say it all the time: Bob Marley, Mary J [Blige], Cyndi Lauper, Lauryn Hill, there’s no genre we don’t listen to,” Nicole tells Batanga in her indubitably hardcore New York accent.

Almost out of high school, they auditioned for the Jettsonz production team who introduced them to hip-hop producer Cipha Sounds, and recorded the demo for their summer anthem of 2004, “Move Your Body.” The hip-shaker’s popularity forced the girls to record their self-titled debut within three weeks.

This summer they shake off their one-hit wonder status with another potential anthem, “Take Your Clothes Off” from their sophomore effort, The Musical, which has been three years in the making. Older and wiser, having been to college and toured the world, like Europe and most recently hitting up Korea to play for U.S. troops, this album gives us a more grown up Nina Sky with the same fusion of dance, pop, hip-hop and R&B they’re known for. “A lot of what we’ve written about is personal maybe that’s how we’ve grown, the content is a bit more mature but we’ve stayed true to who Nina Sky is,” says Nicole.

More time to work on The Musical also gave way to collaborations. While Nina Sky has always written their own music, it was refreshing for them to co-write many of the tracks with hot hip-hop and R&B names like Scott Storch, Ryan Leslie, and Rick Ross — all without the help of their label, Universal Music Group. “It’s never like, ‘Nina Sky wants to write everything, we don’t want to collaborate with anyone’ because when you work with different people they bring out different things in you,” says Nicole. Their most notable collaboration to date has been working with Nuyorminican rapper/producer N.O.R.E on his reggaeton-fused track, ‘Oye Mi Canto,’ attributing their introduction to the genre to him. When asked about the ghastly “is reggaeton dead?” rumor, Natalie said, while the hype has died, “The music is still living.”

In regards to the on going argument on whether the Puerto Rican genre is considered urban music, surefire Nicole gives us a yes, “If hip-hop is considered urban, then yeah, I consider it urban music. [But] if there’s a rock band in Harlem is that urban music?” The girls aren’t too fond of the genre game anyway, “No one likes to pigeon hole themselves but you have to for marketing…”

Politics within the music industry aren’t counted amongst their favorite things, either. “There are too gray areas [in the industry],” Nicole notes regrettably looking at Natalie for confirmation. “It’s more than just making good music. There’s more that goes into putting out an album. The album’s pretty much done, we’ve fulfilled our part, we made the music we have our single and everything else is basically the label. So we’re just waiting and hoping that everything comes through. We’re not going to sit here and talk shit about the label.” Natalie adds, coyly covering her mouth after cursing. The Musical has slated for release since last year and online sources even cited July 17th release for the album, but the album has yet to have an official release date.

These ladies spend so much time together it has us wishing they’d at least release solo albums but not even then will their bond be broken. “Everything we do and a lot of things in life, just because we’re so close and so used to being together is usually made together, it’s kind of weird but [making music apart] would be something we’d discuss…it’s more of a group effort with everything we do.” Natalie. “The bottom line is in the end, even if we’re working apart we’ll always be together because I’ll work on her project and she’ll work on my project,” Nicole concludes.