Brick City Bass

Another post about art and music! This one is about a much less prominent genre: Jersey Club. Although, it is no less personal. I first discovered Jersey Club in 2010, shortly after I discovered Baltimore Club, from which it evolved. To the untrained ear, the two styles are quite similar. Both are house derivatives, with similar, pounding, 808 bass lines. There are three main differences. First, Jersey Club tends to be a little bit faster, at about 128 bpm. Second, where Bmore, as it is often called, relies on horn and gunshot samples, Jersey club is overrun with the crudely implemented samples of bed springs squeaking, of "Jersey" vocals,  and of the notorious Dick.wav. Finally, while Baltimore tracks tend to flow and bounce, Jersey producers and DJs tend to chop their samples beyond recognition.

Both Baltimore and Jersey club are hood music, by the people and for the people. That is to imply that neither is preoccupied with especially high production values. However, the two are also distinctly of their times. Although Baltimore's export only gained a larger audience in the late naughties, it is a product of the nineties. As such, its tracks tend to have the acoustic warmth of vinyl and tape. Jersey club, on the other hand, emerged with MySpace, and has since become an Internet phenomenon. Its tracks are often scarred by low sample rates, and inexperienced producers unfamiliar with the mechanics of compression. In some of its more bizarre incarnations, Jersey club even incorporates uniquely computerized sounds that would be more at home coming out of a Gameboy than out of an array of quality tweeters.

Therein has lain my primary issue with Jersey Club: its indefiniteness. I am not a die-hard Greenbergian aesthete, but I do believe that certain media are predisposed to certain messages. While I have remained intrigued enough to follow its progress for about six years, Jersey Club has often left me unsatisfied. In the most basic sense, I have found it inauthentic. But its more complex than that. I think that I best expressed the problem in a review I wrote of Dave Nada's 2014 mix, Love in This Jersey Club:

Almost six years ago to the day, the musician called Dave Nada released what is unquestionably my favourite mix, Love in this Bmore Club. I have listened to it more times than there are days since its release on Mad Decent. Not only did it introduce me to a new genre of music, but it also shifted my quest for my own musical taste into top gear. It is the mix that re-ignited my love of rap, made we want to hop out da Range’ in some fresh Timbs and a puffy jacket. At 35min, it was so short and so sweet, not unlike a chocolate truffle. I scoured the internet, but never found anything that even came close to its style. I guess it was the last truffle in the box. For six years years I have hoped that Nada would do it again, and the other day, my prayers were answered — sort of — when he released a new mix. 

Like the earlier mix, Love in this Jersey Club is Nada’s homage to the softer side of genre of club music that has been tearing through Newark clubs. The obscure genre of Jersey club shares many similarities with its older sibling, Baltimore club, whence it originated. Not since my lament over my inability to drink beer have I wanted to love something as much as I did this mix. Unlike beer, I can stomach this mix, but I cannot help but feel disappointed. I accept that Jersey is a different genre, switching Bmore’s pounding bass for ratcheting snares, but the mix feels rushed and messy. The Bmore mix features smooth transitions and a logical progression through some true classics of the genre. The slamming, emotional end of it is nothing less than brilliant. LITJC, by contrast, jumps all over the place, trying to include recent hits; it sacrifices a timeless sound for a current one. 

It starts off strongly with an intense build to Future’s part in Love Song, but this is intensely desperate vibe is promptly killed with a light and insincere Robin Thicke song. R.Kelly’s Number One seems like a step in the right direction, until around 9:20, when DJ Hoodboi gets a little carried away with the loops of "chopped and screwed like us." I get it, your chopping it. Ha ha. The DJ Sliink remix of Toni Romiti’s Miss Me is even more irritating in that respect. While this same technique is used in the Bmore tracks, it tends to loop the parts that one actually wants to hear over and over. Remember, Bmore emerged from early house music, which was, itself, based on looping the hooks in disco songs. Worst of all is the ending. Nadu’s mix of the classic Isley Brothers song, Between the Sheets, is a beautifully heavy piece, and it would have made for a suitable breakdown and tribute to the earlier mix. Instead, Nada cranks the revs and then jumps into a fluffy, melodramatic number of little pith. There are far better Jhene Aiko songs than Comfort Inn Ending, and far more suitable ones. [...]

Although most of the blame for this unconvincing sequel to the monumental Love in this Bmore Club lies with the maestro, I acknowledge that the stock with which he could work was not ideal. I have heard plenty of excellent Jersey club beats, but I suspect that Nada, like so many others, was too caught up in the excitement of the moment to make better selections. When he made the earlier mix, Bmore was already twenty years old as a genre. Jersey is still young, and needs time to mellow, and this mix’s chaotic sound is proof of that. [...] despite waiting six years for it, I wish that Nada had waited for another six. Like I said, it isn’t bad, but isn’t the romantic soundtrack I thought was going to be bouncing out of the Escalade at one o'clock in the morning. I believe that some perspective would have greatly improved the selection, and clarified the vision.

Thus, for years, I have grappled with a conflicted attraction to an immature and purposeless genre. When I heard Dave Nada's tribute to it, I set out to do it better. But I couldn't, and I was not sure why (obviously, Nada is a world class DJ, but even regarding selection, I was stumped.) Then, a few months ago, the thought occurred to me that, perhaps, Jersey Club is not meant for the forced Valentine's mixes that have become commonplace. Newark is called the Brick City for the ready availability of crack-cocaine bricks. It's gritty, and I felt like the music is best suited to reflecting that reality. Others may disagree, but I am much more content with my mix, now that it's not trying to be cute. 

Hard strobe lights. Knocking bass. Fat asses twerking on the floor. Hennessy splashing out of the bottle onto fresh Timbs. Those are the images I have been trying to conjure in my new mix, and I wanted my album art to suggest a similarly ratchet vibe. I believe that the messy spray paint job on cracked bricks (pretty clever eh?) achieves that. The numbers, 973, are Newark's area code. 
Currently, my mix is still in the works, but the album art was completed 5 November 2016.