Ask anyone on campus if they know what Jersey club is, and they’ll probably say no, but play them the Jersey club remix of “We Are Young”by fun., and it’s almost guaranteed they’ll recognize it. Born in the 2000s, the genre has been in a constant flux of popularity, and right now, it seems to be coming up again.
It’s difficult to explain what something sounds like with words, but at its core, Jersey club music is fast-paced and full of samples. Most tracks are remixes, often featuring a sample of a well-known song. Say what you want about originality, but this works well for the genre’s purpose of getting people to dance.
Started in Newark by DJ Tamiel, Jersey club came from Baltimore and Chicago dance music. Jersey club tracks usually sit around 130-140 beats per minute, and its drum kits are known for their unique sound effects like the bed creak, gun slide and double snap.
The Jersey club influence seems to come and go, but in recent years, we’ve seen a revival of its DNA in some popular music that’s trickled down into more niche areas. The backbone of Drake’s 2022 song, “Currents” is the classic Jersey club bed creak, and Lil Uzi Vert’s 2023 single “Just Wanna Rock”has the Jersey triplet drum pattern and the double snap sample throughout. Uzi’s video is also an homage to the genre’s dance culture with him dancing on top of a truck in New York with a mass of fans encircling him.
On the topic of dancing, odds are you’ve probably seen videos from TikTok and Instagram user, jerseyyjoe. The name explains his accounts clearly — his name is Joe Lepinski, and he dances to Jersey club music. Some of his videos have millions of views, and the comment sections are full of GIFs of cartoon characters and people dancing, an indirect form of online participation in the music’s dance culture.
Jersey club’s fast-paced nature matches the fractured and speedy consumption social media brings, and combined with its easily recognizable samples, it makes the internet a perfect place for it to thrive.
In 2021, Jane Remover, an EDM artist, hosted an online music festival on Discord called Planet Zero Summer Solstice. It was a clear showing of the integration of the internet into music culture, with the whole “festival” being held online and the chat room being spammed with GIFs and emojis.
During the show, a young DJ called kmoe played a set of remixes from Katy Perry to YBN Nahmir to the digital crowd’s approval. After this successful online set kmoe and some of his friends started TwerkNation28, a collective that would release Jersey club mixes until they disbanded in 2022.
They took the hallmarks of Jersey club, poured the chrome liquid of the internet into it and made their own style. The samples are pitched up, the drums are frantic and the songs are punctuated with sounds derived from the ironic soul of meme culture. You might hear DJ Khaled announce, “We the best” during one of their tracks, or the sound AirPods make when they’re about to die, or the whistle signifying the end of a race in Mario Kart. That evolution of Jersey club is easily recognizable in the way it appears online today.
Among those ways is Jersey club in rap. SweepersENT, a New York drill group, has taken the Jersey club sound and molded it into something new. Instead of using the usual oscillating 808s New York drill is known for, they rap over sample-heavy, high-speed Jersey club beats.
“Spin Thru The Sev,” “Doin Too Much” and “Snowfall II”all feature the Jersey club percussive pattern and sound effects from Jersey drum kits. Combined with the aggressive delivery and dark subject matter of New York drill, there’s a push and pull of themes. You want to dance because the drums are so energetic, and you know the sample in the background, but you feel like you shouldn’t because they’re rapping about things people get life sentences for.
It’s hard to know for sure where the genre will go from here, but in a year from now, if you asked someone on campus if they knew Jersey club, I wouldn’t be surprised if they said yes.
