One night in August, a nondescript metal venue in suburban New Jersey, just north of Newark, is the epicenter of one of the most exciting trends in rap right now. At first, the teens who fill the intimate space are bored, standing with their hands at their sides like Sims characters, as a series of local rappers mimic out-of-state styles. Then a DJ screams into the mic “RIP DJ Tim Dolla,” shouting out the Jersey Club pioneer who died weeks earlier, and begins to play hyperactive records in his honor. Instantly, scattered dance circles turn the place into a sweatbox.
A formal dance battle breaks out onstage, and participants get 30 seconds to make their case. Standouts include a dude with pitch-black shades who hits herky jerky footwork like he’s playing Dance Dance Revolution on max difficulty, and a woman in a tracksuit who damn-near launches another contestant off the stage with a single hip thrust. She’s the winner.
Next, the Newark rapper Bandmanrill steps out onto the stage with an entourage behind him that’s at least 20 people deep, and they’re all dancing. The 20-year-old runs through his tracks in a lightning-fast blur—songs that are defined by their kinetic Jersey Club tempos, that have been lighting up parties and YouTube for the better part of a year, that recently landed him a major-label deal with Warner. The unwritten rules of personal space are thrown out the window, as the soundman hurtles expletives at the open water bottles being thrown in his direction. Bandman’s go-to producer Mcvertt, who is also a part-time competitive dancer, accidentally elbows his friend and MC straight across the face, but Bandman keeps rapping anyway. Dodging flailing body parts and getting blinded by iPhone cameras is rarely this much fun.
Rapping on club beats is hard. The instrumentals are so fast and layered that they can bulldoze vocalists who are unfamiliar with their rhythms. Yet in cities steeped in club culture, there is a long history of rapping over speedy, thumping production: In Jersey, there was DJ Frosty’s 2010 remix of “Ride That Wave”; in Baltimore, Tate Kobang’s 2015 single “Bank Rolls” was a phenomenon; the “T2RChallenge” took off in Philly a couple of years ago. But Bandmandrill is spearheading a new take on club rap.
In March 2021, Bandman released “Heartbroken,” where he merged the intensity of drill flows with a Jersey Club beat by Mcvertt. It led to the emergence of scenes in Newark and Philadelphia, where rappers are embracing high-octane tempos, triplet-kick patterns, fierce drum breaks, synths full of reverb, and twitchy dances. The trend has injected rap with a refreshing burst of pulse-quickening chaos; now, rap scenes from New York to France are adopting elements of club production. On TikTok, the jittery dance steps have become ingrained into the platform’s fabric. Even rap’s biggest star, Drake, tried riding the wave with this summer’s Honestly, Nevermind.
The explosion has been fun, but with it comes fears about the appropriation that has swept through club music again and again. Rappers and producers in Newark and Philly are excited to see their homegrown music spread beyond city limits, but they’re also protective of their sound and dances. Their innovations have been stolen before. “We were busting our ass trying to make it out the hood, and people were just running with our sound,” says the 30-year-old Jersey Club stalwart DJ Jayhood of the mid-2010s moment when DJs and producers around the globe became infatuated with their music. “If there’s one thing people love to do, it’s not give credit.”
In Drake’s recent music video for “Sticky,” he jacks the “Shake Dhat” move associated with the Philly Goats, a dance-oriented teen rap trio who went viral on TikTok last year. But instead of inviting the Philly Goats to dance in the clip, Drake recruited the more popular Philadelphia club rapper, 2Rare, for a cameo. “That probably should have been Newark; I was surprised he didn’t hit Mcvertt for a beat,” Bandman says with a shrug, talking about Drake’s club rap moment. Situations like these may feel small, but they’re examples of how the pop world so often parachutes into club scenes, gives their half-assed homage, and moves on.
The day after the show, Bandmanrill and Mcvertt sit on the cluttered porch of the house in Newark where Bandman was raised. Weequahic, the surrounding neighborhood, is a mix of boarded-up buildings and houses where Black families hang out on their stoops and take in the midday sun. Growing up, Bandman, whose real name is Siril Pettus, didn’t leave the area often. His high school was five minutes away, and around the corner was the boxing school where he spent most afternoons staying out of trouble. Inside the busy house, the living room walls are lined with old portraits of his large family.
Club music was a constant in his life. His dad was a DJ who played house music at small events and cookouts, sometimes with DJ Wallah, who is now on the airwaves at Hot 97. “My father had that shit playing in the basement every day, so now whenever I hear a house sample I know it off rip,” says Bandman. As a teenager, club music was played on the school bus, during dance battles at pep rallies, and at backyard parties. Bandman and Mcvertt run through the tracks and dances they associate with their upbringing: DJ Lilman’s “Team Lilman Anthem,” and Jayhood and DJ Joker’s “Hands on Ya Hips”; the sexy walk, the Urkel bounce, the sharp bounce. “A lot of people see these dances on TikTok and don’t know the culture of it, but they really have deep meanings to them,” says Bandman. “Like, everyone be doing the KB Bounce, but that’s really a tribute to someone who died.”
Bandman says that 10 of his 11 brothers rap, and that they inspired him to start making music in his bedroom a couple of years ago. At the suggestion of a friend, who stumbled into a funny clip of Baltimore rappers cracking jokes on a club beat, Bandman aimed to do something similar while placing more focus on the rapping end of the sound. He chose Mcvertt’s instrumental “Heartbroken,” which straps a rocket to UK producer T2’s 2007 garage hit, a sample made popular around Jersey by Jayhood’s 2009 club mix of the same name, and paired it with a flow that wouldn’t be out of place in the drill scenes in Brooklyn or the Bronx.
The snippet was posted to his TikTok, where he had built a solid following with goofy videos about Jersey life. Given the platform’s obsession with both the infectious spirit of dance music and the aggression of drill, it was the perfect combination. Within 48 hours, it went modestly viral, so he shot a music video for the track that captured the haywire feel of a Jersey party.
In the time since “Heartbroken,” Bandmanrill has gone on an unrelenting run of high-voltage singles that dismisses any thoughts of one-hit gimmickry. His style also offers a refreshingly upbeat diversion from the popular pain rap of the genre’s current megastars like Rod Wave and YoungBoy Never Broke Again. The Mcvertt-produced “Bullet,” full of gun clicks and sped-up vocal bits, will make you reach for an inhaler on contact. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony has never sounded as turnt as on “Bandthoven,” a high-energy thrill packed with breathless raps about ass clapping. “I Am Newark” reimagines a shitty pop song as a heartracing homage to his city.
Through it all, Bandmanrill hammers you with musical context. “Shoutout Jayhood, he’s the one that start it,” he raps on “Copy and Paste,” and his recent single “Real Hips,” produced by Jersey’s own DJ KilSoSouth and DJ Bake, is a smooth tribute to Jayhood and Joker’s “Hands on Ya Hips.”
“I like what Bandman’s doing—he’s found a way to match what’s going on today with a sound that’s for Newark,” says Jayhood. “Sometimes young niggas will come up and not show the proper respect to older generations, but he’s been doing nothing but that.”
Similar to other deeply Black cities with Great Migration origins like Chicago and Detroit, a grassroots dance music scene has long been the backbone of Newark. In the late ’90s, the sound of the city was inspired by Chicago house. Then Newark’s DJ Tameil built a relationship with Baltimore club trailblazers Rod Lee and DJ Technics, and started playing their more aggressive dance music in his hometown. In the early 2000s, Tameil graduated to producing music of his own and teamed up with rivals-turned-friends Mike V and Tim Dolla to form the Brick Bandits. The trio laid the foreground for Brick City Club, which would soon be stamped as Jersey Club.
“Man, when that sound hit Newark, that’s all anybody wanted to hear,” remembers Jayhood. “At a Jersey party you will see real gangsters put their guns and their drugs down, and have a good time while club is playing.”
The sound spread fast through Myspace and word-of-mouth. Its evolution was rapid as well, especially with the emergence of artists including DJ Fresh, DJ Sliink, and DJ Lilman. They popularized a form of Jersey Club heavy on dance instructions, almost like line dancing; Lilman’s 2014 mega hit “Team Lilman Anthem” is like the “Cha Cha Slide” on expert mode.
Subsequent producers like DJ Runnah and DJ LilC4 boosted the BPMs to evermore heartracing levels. “It got so fast that everyone couldn’t hit the same moves, so the dancing became competitive,” says 23-year-old Newark-raised DJ and producer KilSoSouth. The brain-meltingly fast tempos laid the groundwork for the restless pace of tracks by Bandmanrill and other Jersey spitters like Feezy G and DG Hooda, along with Philly rappers like D4M $loan, the Philly Goats, 2Rare and Lay Bankz.
The current club rap scenes in Newark and Philadelphia pull from similar roots, but while the former has adopted rougher drill sensibilities, the latter has gone for a lighter, dance-first approach.
Like Bandman, D4M $loan grew up immersed in club music. “In Philadelphia, everyone had their dance crews, at the parks, skating rinks, and dollar parties we would battle,” he says. In 2020, $loan came across DJ Tizz’s club reimagining of the infamous children’s song “Baby Shark.” He snatched the beat and, alongside the late Skiano, released a single of the same name. The sound is bright and silly, but made distinct by $loan and Skiano’s growling deliveries—they sound like the muffler of a Harley Davidson. Their “Baby Shark” had a brief viral moment, and offered an early touchpoint of what Philly’s take on club rap would look like.
In 2021, D Sturdy of the Philly Goats was DMed by the Baltimore-born, Philly-grown, and New Jersey-based club producer DJ Crazy. The group had a lively, if unmemorable, trap dance song called “Broke Shit,” but Crazy pictured them on an upbeat club instrumental. The producer brought the crew from Philly to Jersey where they made the buoyant dance cut “Philly Shake.” Then, Crazy put together “Shake Dhat” with D Sturdy and another Philly rapper, Zahsosaa, and the song’s party energy—and infectious dance, a fusion of the hips move associated with Jayhood and an upper body motion called Wu Tangin’—became a staple of TikTok.
D Sturdy cites Philly’s gun violence, which is set to hit staggering new highs this year, as a driving force behind why the Philly Goats just want to have nonstop fun. It’s an escape. And the energy is contagious, making Philly’s rendition of club rap intensely permeate social media, from 2Rare’s “Cupid” to Lay Bankz’s “Boyfriend N. 2” to Bril and 5Star’s “Get Humpy.” D4M $loan has returned to the sound as well, and his clash of menacing flows and bubbly club beats is the most interesting take among Philly’s current club rap vanguard. “We just want to bring the good vibes for Philly, Jersey, and Baltimore,” says $loan.
There is a friendly rivalry between the Newark and Philly scenes. In each city the rappers and producers swear that their sound is better, that their history is deeper, that they can out-dance the other, that their parties are more unmissable. It’s homerism with a purpose.
Inside Bandman’s house, while laying on a fully extended pull-out couch, he tells me, “That party last night is what Jersey parties look like every time, I’ve never been to a party anywhere as busting as the ones in Jersey.”
I ask Bandman and Mcvertt about what makes Jersey parties so distinct. The producer’s face lights up. “I was just in Miami and L.A., and then yesterday I was back in Newark getting my hair done, and the girl who’s doing my hair is screaming and about to fight,” he says. “It’s that ghetto shit. Damn, I be missing it.” Bandman laughs in agreement, before getting a little more intense. “This is Jersey. This is what we do,” he adds. “For years niggas been taking our shit, and we ain’t make a dime off it, that shit is wack. I’m tired of us holding our tongue, getting brushed over. Everyone is going to know where this club shit came from.”
