YNC OR SWIM Matching outfits add pizzazz to Team Gina shows.

Gina Bling and Gina Genius are pink and sparkly hip-hop femmes who are ready to rock your world with their fierce rhymes and matching outfits. This week, they’re swooping in from Seattle to promote their new CD, Product of the ’80s, and to add a dash of glitter to pre–Dyke March festivities. TONY checked in with them before they arrived.

What’s the Team Gina concept?
Genius: It’s a synthesis of pop culture—pop music, hip-hop and dance routines. We’re influenced by everything from Broadway to Run DMC, and we’re all about costume changes, dances and theater.

You’re both in your twenties, and yet you are so influenced by the ’80s. What can you recall about the decade?
Genius: The epitome of the ’80s for me is sitting in my bedroom with my tiny portable turquoise, neon-yellow and pink boom box, and I would sing along with it.
Bling: Sneaking to the TV in the basement to watch Bananarama videos, because I wasn’t allowed to watch MTV. And the toys! Pogo Ball. Rainbow Brite. Jem. My Little Pony.

Why did you each leave New York and how has it affected you?
Bling: I lived in New York for five years, and left in 2003 to come back to Seattle, where I’m from originally. I needed a slower pace; New York was too crazy. Coming back to the West Coast and not having to work like a dog for no money and pay a million dollars in rent and be exhausted all the time sounded like a good way to become creative again.
Genius: I lived in New York for seven years and I love it and I miss it, and there are no bagels in Seattle! New York is the greatest, but it’s so much pressure and anger, and you have to hustle just to survive. Whereas in Seattle, you can just relax and be so creative and everyone is really nurturing and supportive of everyone’s creativity as opposed to being cutthroat and competitive. Here’s my classic example: In New York, if you have a show and four bands are playing, you get four different audiences that are just the friends of the four bands who come to see their friends and then leave. In Seattle if you have a show, the whole town comes because it’s the fun thing that’s going on! People are really enthusiastic and open-minded and not just into one thing.

How did you pick your stage names?
Bling: I was dubbed Gina Bling.
Genius: Gina Bling is glamour personified. She is the Samantha Jones of the young generation! She never leaves the house without gold stilettos and eyeliner. And I am the one who is more overtly activist and kind of like the mad scientist. The one with the arsenal of big words and political ideas.

You decry the lack of butches in your “Butch/Femme” song and video. Where are they all?
Bling: [Laughs] I think there’s an influx right now! I’ve known more butch women in the last two weeks than I have in the last two years.
Genius: I truly feel that our video turned the tide. We got over 40,000 hits on YouTube and hundreds of e-mails and letters, and I really think that butch is coming back in a big way.

And did the video get you any…
Genius: Dates? No!
Bling: No! [Laughs]

Team Gina performs Fri 27 at Don Hill’s for the NYC Dyke March Benefit Show.