HipHopSince1987 recently had a chance to sit down with Arghtee, the founder of CLUBJERSEY, about the future of the label and entire genre now that it’s popular among the mainstream audience.
How long have you been involved with Jersey Club?
Over 10 years ago I noticed Jersey Club to be a genre which had a lot of buzz on streaming platforms like Soundcloud, and an amazing music culture behind it. There wasn’t an active YouTube channel at the time doing that for the genre so I started to spend all of my time focusing on building the channel.
In the earlier days of YouTube, it was popular to have “music channels”, such as UKF or All Trap Music which focused solely on creating a platform for music. I was in college at the time and remember not going to classes to focus on trying to go viral. Thankfully within 6 months, I was able to get my first million views total for the channel and I’ve been trying to keep building CLUBJERSEY ever since.
What do you think about the recent virality of Jersey Club music?
Jersey Club has always been a viral music genre. Jersey Club often samples popular songs which means the songs are already popular, but with a more danceable upbeat swing to it. It’s impossible not to move your hips when you hear Jersey Club music. A lot of original Jersey Club songs often have challenges or dances, DJ Jayhood & DJ Joker’s “Hands On Ya Hips” that was released 11 years ago and had a huge impact on the parties in New Jersey.
Jersey Club was especially popular on Vine and now with TikTok gaining social prominence it was only a matter of time until Jersey Club broke the general public conscience, which is what’s happening at the moment. We’ll see how long this cycle lasts, but regardless Jersey Club isn’t going away anytime soon as it’s tied to the culture in New Jersey.
The hottest artists at the moment who have been bringing the movement to the mainstream audience; Lil Uzi Vert, Ice Spice, Coi Leray, Pink Panthress, Drake etc. are all co-opting Jersey Club to great success and most of the biggest songs in the last 12 months feature a beat pattern that’s from the genre. It’s exciting times and it’s especially dope to see young producers such as DJ Smallz, MC Vertt and DJ 809 get their shine.
Where are you planning on taking the CLUBJERSEY Label?
We are currently planning events for our CLUBJERSEY 10 year anniversary. We are doing a showcase which will be filmed and put on YouTube, in Philly and in London in the next two months, and there are plans to throw more in New York, New Jersey, Miami, Paris and a bunch of cities before the year is out. Let’s see what we are able to throw for the culture.
We have a lot of original music and a few compilations ready for release, and we are attempting to continue to build and grow interest in the genre and CLUBJERSEY.
Long term I am building a platform in the Web3 space. Jersey Club music has been plagued with issues correlated to how the music industry is set up and run. There have been takedowns and copyright strikes which have affected almost every producer. CLUBJERSEY itself lost a YouTube channel and multiple streaming platform accounts resulting in over a billion views being wiped from the internet. And that’s our accounts alone. The key issues are usually anything to do with Kanye West’s or Drake’s catalogue, which I think has an irony to it seeing as they are the main perpetrators when it comes to sampling and “borrowing culture” from other artists.
What were you doing speaking at NFT NYC?
In the NFT space I’m known as the NFTHYPEMAN and I’ve been involved and avidly watching the Crypto space since 2011. I’m speaking during the NFT NYC conference about how artists can utilise NFTs to grow a following and also working on my documentary series Hypemerica.
My goal has been to educate and onboard artists to crypto and I have been onboarding artists to Tezos via hypeman.pizza, giving free crypto to over 1000 wallets. Another resource I’ve been building is www.nft.sx which is a directory to what I consider to be a comprehensive list of what’s happening in the space.
I really believe artists can really empower themselves by using blockchain technology. I was able to sell a music NFT for over $12k at the start of the Ukraine war and send money to those in affected areas in Ukraine, so I’ve been able to witness the power of crypto first hand.
Who are your biggest Jersey Club influences and who should we be keeping an eye on?
My personal favourite producers would have to be DJ Tim Dolla, Mike Gip and Cueheat, each one of those three have an insane catalogue of club tracks, I would say they never miss when it comes to cooking up something fire! It was an honour to meet Tim Dolla before he passed away last year unexpectedly, he was one of the founders of Jersey Club music and in general he had an amazing and positive energy.
Tameil and DJ Sega were both influences of mine also, and listening to their songs made me want to learn how to produce club music. Once I had started my channel the first producer from Jersey to really engage with me was R3LL and he introduced me while on skype to Mike Gip.
Since then I’ve been rocking with everybody from New Jersey and the tri-state and I always try to reach out and show love. I know what it’s like to start from nothing and have no support network, so I try to utilize my channel to help give those artists a platform.
With CLUBJERSEY we’ve been putting out compilations and singles consistently for the last 10 years and I’m grateful that I’ve been able to put out releases with artists of whom I am a huge fan. We’ve got our 10 year anniversary compilation dropping this year, and myself personally I’m working on a debut Arghtee original Jersey Club project in collaboration with Cueheat, DJ Jaycee, Jayhaan, DJ Get Bizzy and other super dope club producers.
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