THE DANCER PERSPECTIVE  |  JERSEY CLUB  |  STREET DANCE HISTORY

New Jersey Street Dance and Jersey Club Origins — The Dancer Perspective (Part 1)

Newark's Anthony “Solo” Harris grew up inside the house parties, mixtapes, and dance crews that built Jersey Club from the ground up. He sat down with Dance Mogul Magazine to tell the story from the inside — and years later, the whole world finally caught up.

By Dance Mogul Magazine  |  Interview by Kamille King  |  Originally featured August 2020  |  Updated and expanded 2026

Anthony “Solo” Harris — Newark dancer, choreographer, and co-founder of Dance Mogul Magazine | Photo: Dance Mogul Magazine Archives

Every viral sound has an origin most people never hear. In 2020, before Lil Uzi Vert's “Just Wanna Rock” sent Jersey Club racing across TikTok and up the Billboard charts, Dance Mogul Magazine's Kamille King sat down with Anthony “Solo” Harris — a dancer who didn't read about Jersey Club in a think-piece but grew up in the middle of it, watching the house parties, the mixtapes, and the crews that built it. His goal was simple: tell the story straight, from someone who was actually there.

What follows is Part 1 of that conversation, reproduced as it originally ran, tracing the culture from the jazz clubs of the 1960s and Newark's Zanzibar-era nightlife through the raunchy '90s house-party circuit and into the early-2000s moment when DJ Tameil gave the sound its name. Below the interview, we pick the story back up in 2026 — because the credit Solo asked for has finally, unmistakably, arrived.

The Interview: What Is Jersey Club?

Kamille King: So, the first question is this: What is Jersey Club music and dance?

Anthony “Solo” Harris: There are so many different meanings. It means a lot to different generations. Jersey has always been Jersey. There has always been a culture in Jersey for music and dance that goes back to the '70s and even the '60s with the whole jazz movement. In the '80s, however, Jersey had some of the best clubs, like Zanzibar, Sensations, and a whole bunch of other spots that people could research. So, it was like a hub, a mecca where artists and music were coming through from all different types of places and backgrounds.

Jersey Club roots — the sound and energy of the culture

The movement and music that defined Newark's dance floors

So, if you want to say, well, what's club music? Well, it was when the older generations, our parents and people of that time, were going to the club, and they were dancing to house music that was coming through from our home state of NJ, NY, Chicago, Detroit, and a multitude of different places. So, to them, that's their club music. Then, over time, when you get into the '90s, I remember being a little boy, and there used to be club mixtapes, but it wasn't Jersey Club as we know it now. These were songs that were from Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit. Songs like It's Time for The Percolator, Hit It From the Back, You Better Snap, Dookie Booty, lol — all these inappropriate songs that I had to sneak and listen to on this tape.

The '90s club mixtapes that circulated around Jersey — the seedbed of a sound

These club tapes were circulating around Jersey, and in the '90s, that's when the whole house-party scene became prevalent. House parties were the place where kids would come to listen to raunchy music, and they were doing raunchy things. They would do different dances to club music like the wall, the lock it up / stolen car, etc. So, therein lies the dancing — with the actual scene and atmosphere being cultivated.

Kamille King: Wow, so this was bubbling in the '90s?

Anthony “Solo” Harris: Yes. That's when all the elements were coming together with the young people in the Essex County community, especially in Newark, NJ. Then, you move into 2001. This is where DJ Tameil, who is the founder of Jersey Club, comes into play to give us an identity, music-wise.

Anthony “Solo” Harris and DJ Tameil, the founder of Jersey Club

Tameil had connections in Baltimore, and their OGs gave Tameil the blessing to remix their style of club music. I don't like telling other people's stories, especially while they are still here to tell it, but that's the person that you really need to interview. He can fill in all those gaps for you. But he came back with that blessing, and he was the King and the founder of making the type of music that we all started partying to in the early 2000s. That's what Jersey Club is now in terms of what you hear. It's DJ Tameil's musical advancement. At that time, he was calling it Brick City Club, being straight from Newark, NJ. He was the one who ushered in the new sound, and then soon after, you had other people like the Brick Bandits, a producer powerhouse of beatmakers. You also had other DJs and producers doing their thing. Those are the other people that you need to interview; they were very influential in creating and upgrading the sound. Along with the sound taking shape, you had a local dance group that went mainstream called the Brick City Dancers. They were the main ones that were doing shows, traveling, dancing to the club music that we were hearing. They were taking the party and putting it on stage. What made them popular was, you got a chance to see what kids were doing behind the scenes. Parents didn't notice. Parents didn't know what was going on at the house parties. But when they brought it on stage, we were all excited as young people because we knew what they were doing. They were doing all the inappropriate moves, but it was done in a way where it's acceptable to everybody.

That was the prominent group that was showcasing different dances to club music. There were other dancers and people making up dances and partying, but BCD set the tone for what was to come in the new millennium. I call the '90s era the Freestyle/Improv era. A lot of the movements were done off of a feeling, and everyone did the main dances, but they all did them in their own unique way. This was the beginning of everything you see now. BCD (Brick City Dancers) is the 2nd generation of NJ's street dance movement. This legendary dance group is responsible for the dance resurgence in New Jersey in the early '90s. With the guidance of Basil Harris and Barbara Ramirez, these young men set the blueprint for all dancers and crews throughout NJ. The innovators are Major, NyJohn, Mark, Faheem, and Shaheed. BCD was the first dance group with diverse styles of street dance to open their own show at NJ's prestigious NJPAC, appear on national television multiple times, and set the landscape for popular dance hangouts like Skate 22 and Branch Brook Park, and a host of other inaugural events and opportunities around the country. They were the first to show the kids in Newark, NJ what working together as a dance group could achieve.

Kamille King: How do you know so much about them when you were a little boy during this time?

Anthony “Solo” Harris: Because I was there, and my dad was their dance coach. I was watching as a little kid. I remember EVERYTHING; they would do all the big talent shows down at Symphony Hall and all over — and WIN. They were the faces of dance in the community of Newark, NJ. It was undeniable.

To be continued…

Why This Story Matters: From Brick City Club to a Global Sound

Solo's telling isn't just nostalgia — it's a documented lineage. Music historians largely agree that Jersey Club grew directly out of Baltimore Club music, carried north to Newark, and that DJ Tameil is credited with pioneering the sound in 1999 as an evolution of that Baltimore blueprint. Before it was ever called Jersey Club, it went by the name Solo uses in the interview: Brick City Club, a nod to Newark's nickname. The Brick Bandits collective — Tameil alongside figures like the late Tim Dolla and Mike V — built out the production side, throwing DIY parties and pressing the sound into the community.

What Solo adds, as a dancer, is the half of the story the crate-diggers usually miss: the movement. The genre's signature triplet kick drums, chopped vocal stabs, and stop-and-go drops were never just sounds to be catalogued — they were built for bodies, tested first in Newark's house parties, skating rinks, and teen showcases. Groups like the Brick City Dancers took what kids were doing behind closed doors and put it on stage at Symphony Hall and NJPAC, giving the culture a public face. That dance-first DNA is exactly why Jersey Club translated so naturally to short-form video a generation later.

Where Are They Now? Jersey Got Its Credit

When Solo said in 2020 that it was “time for Jersey to finally get the credit for once,” it read like a hope. Within two years, it read like a prediction. In September 2022, Newark producer MCVertt — then a teenager — crafted the beat for Lil Uzi Vert's “Just Wanna Rock,” an unapologetic Jersey Club record that exploded on TikTok, broke onto the Billboard charts, and pulled the genre out of Newark's borders and onto the global stage. The track went on to win Song of the Year at the 2023 BET Hip Hop Awards and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Song in 2024.

It didn't stop there. Beyoncé folded Jersey Club energy into Renaissance, Drake leaned on the genre's signature bounce, and Nicki Minaj tapped it for Pink Friday 2. A new generation — Bandmanrill, DJ Sliink, and the artist widely called the “Jersey Club Queen,” UNIIQU3 — now carries the sound that DJ Tameil named two decades earlier. The story Solo insisted needed to be told by someone who lived it is now being told on the world's biggest stages.

As for Solo himself, he never left the culture — he built inside it. He came up through Newark's legendary ENVY dance group (established in 2003), the crew credited with revitalizing street dance in the new millennium and helping cultivate the Jersey Club dance style and energy. In 2010, he and his father, Basil Harris — the same dance coach he references in the interview — co-founded Dance Mogul Magazine, the platform you're reading right now. He went on to co-found the Dance Warz battle platform and launched Dancer First Management LLC, a company built around putting dancers' business interests first.

His most personal work may be Solo Expression, a studio he founded that specializes in serving the developmental-disabilities community, at-risk youth, and senior populations — using dance as a form of therapy. Having taught professionally for over fifteen years and logged a decade of direct-care experience, he has also brought Jersey Club into institutions that once had no room for it, teaching the style at NJPAC's community workshop series. The kid sneaking club tapes in Newark became the man teaching the culture with a purpose.

Why It Matters to Dance Mogul Magazine

This interview lives at the heart of what Dance Mogul Magazine was built to do. Jersey Club is one of the clearest examples in modern culture of a Black and Latino community creating something world-changing and watching it get borrowed, renamed, and monetized before the originators ever received their due. DMM exists so the people who actually lived a movement get to tell it in their own words — not have it summarized by outsiders after the fact.

It matters even more here because the storyteller helped build this publication. Anthony “Solo” Harris is a Newark dancer whose lineage runs straight through the street dance resurgence he describes — and DMM's mission is to preserve exactly this kind of firsthand history across every style. Explore more of that record through our Dance Styles Hub, our Exclusive Interviews, and The Legacy, where the pioneers of every movement get their credit — for once.

Continue the Jersey Club Series

This is Part 1. Keep going with more of Dance Mogul Magazine's Jersey Club coverage — from the rest of Solo's interview to the workshops, films, and features documenting the culture:

The Story Continues

Solo ended Part 1 with three words: to be continued. Six years later, the continuation isn't just Part 2 of an interview — it's a genre that jumped from Newark's living rooms to the Grammy stage, and a generation of young producers and dancers who now get to build careers on a sound their city invented.

Dance Mogul Magazine will keep telling these stories the way they deserve to be told — from the inside, by the people who lived them. Because the credit Jersey asked for isn't a favor. It's the record, set straight.

Jersey Club Anthony Solo Harris DJ Tameil Brick City Club Brick City Dancers Newark Street Dance Dance History ENVY Dance Group Where Are They Now Just Wanna Rock

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