Interview: OJC

OJC talks about becoming a DJ, how growing up in Jersey lead him to make Jersey Club, working with PinkPantheress and what inspires him.

As a young DJ and producer from the suburbs of New Jersey, OJC has quickly gained popularity by carving out his own niche in the Jersey Club genre. What makes his sound so special is the unexpected flips. He manages to flip a usually melancholy song like “i was all over her” by salvia palth into a club banger. He brings out the Jersey Club mix hiding in a song you didn’t know was begging for it in the first place, like he did with his mix of “Video Games” by Lana Del Rey. He has a talent for hearing the Jersey Club mix in a song before he creates it. Coincidentally, his DJ name, made up of his own initials, even spells out ‘Jersey Club’. What truly put his mixes at a new level for me was the OJC mix of “The First Taste” by Fiona Apple – I had to talk to whoever was behind it.

‘Accidentally’ Becoming a DJ

OJC described becoming a DJ as something that happened to him, before he could even decide to be a DJ, other people decided for him. “I didn’t start DJ-ing until April of 2023 really, people just kept thinking I was a DJ. I didn’t realize I was becoming a DJ until people kept calling me that. Then I decided to just go with it,” laughed OJC.

For OJC, making music started with being a producer, “I just wanted someone to come over and make a song and have it sound finished right away, so I developed this urge to learn it all – how to produce, mix, and master,” said OJC. He thought of himself as someone who helped artists make their songs, more so than thinking of himself as the ‘artist’. “I was always interested in production, and that’s kind of where my interest in DJ-ing came from,” said OJC. “Eventually I started making mixes of my friends' songs for fun.”

“To me, I didn’t even realize that what I was doing was what DJs do, even when I started making dance music. It was just fun for me to make,” said OJC. “There was a solid year and a half where people would be asking me to do this event or do a set here and I didn’t even think of myself as a DJ yet. They just decided I was a DJ,”  shared OJC. “Then in late 2022, I was like ‘I’m actually gonna learn how to do this’.” 

“I’m really happy that, in a way, other people decided that’s what I am.”

DJ-ing has helped him focus on his own creative process, “With my background producing for people, you aren’t necessarily developing your own creative process, it’s more about helping other people’s process,” said OJC. “My own mixes have felt like an exercise in developing my own creative process and figuring out how I want to produce stuff in a way that feels authentic to me,” said OJC.

Why Jersey Club?

“I can’t think of a point where I learned what Jersey Club was. It was just always there. It was always around me.”

“My relationship with Jersey Club didn’t come from a specific producer or song or edit, it came from seeing it at assemblies and seeing people do cyphers. It was such a social thing. It just existed around me. It felt familiar,” said OJC. 

“Culturally I was right on the outside of it,” OJC said, referring to Jersey Club’s birthplace, Newark. “It's not really my thing to be protective of, I'm from a suburb next to it, which, in a way, I think my music sounds like that's what it is.” 

“The culture of Jersey Club has kind of mutated and become this huge thing in the last two years. I wanted there to be a distinction between what I do and what it has become,” shared OJC. For him, the choice to create Jersey Club mixes wasn’t due to its current rise in popularity, but because it is a style that has been a part of his life. “I never want it to come off like it’s just a gimmicky thing. I appreciate it when people can tell that I’m serious about this,” said OJC. 

How does he do it? 

His mixes include his own original sounds along with established Jersey Club sounds to create a unique style, “I’m working on an album right now, the synths are usually sounds I’ve made. But the culturally identifiable Jersey Club breaks and sounds are used as more of an instrument,” said OJC. “I just like to be creative with these sounds that have existed for decades and been so established in the genre,” said OJC.

“My favorite sound to add is the Think break or the gun click reload. It feels like it has developed its own identity outside of being a gun, it just feels like this metallic percussion. I’ve really gotten a lot out of using it in weird places and changing up the standard pattern with it,” said OJC.

“That’s what’s fun to me, getting these established sounds and putting them in different patterns and places to flip it to a different place,” said OJC.  

Interest In Music

“Middle school and high school I was very introverted. My interest in music was a very individual thing. I would just be really nerdy about it and would get into super niche things,” said OJC. 

“I heard an edit from SJAYY of ‘Kobe’ by Babyxsosa and it felt really inspiring to me. Babyxsosa was already niche and it just felt fun to hear someone remix her song, it felt new,” described OJC.

Some of his mixes are similar in this way, a one of one mix of an already niche song. He simplified it down to, “Having clubby shit under a pretty or even sad atmosphere appeals to me.” 

“I don’t remember who made it but there’s an edit of ‘House in Nebraska’ by Ethel Cain that’s absolutely insane. To hear what they did with it is so interesting because it’s such a slow depressing song,” said OJC.

“A lot of my mixes are songs that I don’t even know particularly well. I treat it as a sample that I’m going to take in as many different places as I can.”

“I did an edit of “Space Song” by Beach House and to this day I don’t know that I’ve listened to that song all the way through. In my head I know the atmosphere of it already, to me it’s more about the idea of it,” explained OJC.  

He went on to describe the process of his “The First Taste” mix which is my personal favorite, “It was one of my favorite songs by Fiona Apple, I just love her music. That song just made sense to me, it came together in 30 minutes,” said OJC.

“That’s sort of how I know it’s something good. If I feel good about something it doesn't take too long.”

SCHOOL

“I graduated in 2020 from high school. I had a year and a half to just do nothing and that time really helped me get off the ground a bit with figuring out what I wanted to do with music stuff,” said OJC. 

Aside from his own mixes, he is also studying music production formally, “I'm in a kind of niche program. It's called electro-acoustic studies, which is a kind of heady way of going about recording,” explained OJC about what brought him to Canada. 

DJ-ing in Canada

“This might just be me being in Canada but yeah, I've tried playing a lot of footwork stuff like Cakedog. I remember someone actually came up to me at a show in Canada and told me to turn it off because I played ‘Get Down’ by Cakedog. Security, or someone at the venue, was like ‘Dude we’re trying to break even here, could you just turn this off?’” laughed OJC.

He went on to confirm that Canadians do love listening to Drake, “I had my friends from New Jersey come up to Canada. And my brother made a flyer and we made it look like a concert and it was in my shitty apartment. So there wasn't really a room or, you know, it didn't look like a concert. It was kinda dead and I was like ‘Whatever, I’m gonna play One Dance’ and that just kinda flipped a switch and people were like ‘Now I’m gonna pay attention’,” laughed OJC.

Playing different stuff for different crowds is part of the fun, “Even just playing only Drake, just the experience of doing that is really fulfilling. Being able to connect with people in such an immediate way is special. Anything else that you add on to that is extra, but what it’s really about is connecting with people,” said OJC.

“Start with interacting and connecting with people before anything else.”

Working With Artists and Other DJs

DJ-ing is about connecting with people, as OJC said, and this has allowed him to make connections with artists whose songs he’s remixed as well. 

“I had a few crashing by interactions with PinkPantheress. I had been making mixes of her songs and putting them up online and she mentioned she was doing a remix album and her team sent me stems,” said OJC. 

“Her and her team were so nice, I didn't feel like I was being treated like someone that didn’t know what they were doing even though I was,” laughed OJC. 

“I had listened to ‘Noticed I Cried’ probably hundreds of times before receiving the stems, so, to be able to deconstruct it and look at the different layers and have the opportunity to add production to the real thing and not just an mp3 of the song that I rip off Youtube, to be able to rearrange it and everything was just super crazy,” said OJC.

With that excitement, I asked if there’s any dream song he wishes he could deconstruct on that same level. “I love FKA Twigs. I've been listening to her since I was like 15 probably. She was a gateway into that whole world of production, she introduced me to Arca and Sophie. So, any song off Magdalene. That whole album is one of my favorite albums ever and every time I hear it I'm just like ‘How did they make it sound like that?’ Her and the producers she works with are just so creative,” said OJC.

In the past year of DJ-ing, he has not only had the chance to work with PinkPantheress, but also with some amazing current DJs, “Anytime I’m with Gum or Dazegxd, I’m with them like ‘Damn they know what they’re doing’, It’s a social experience. That’s what makes DJ-ing so interesting,” said OJC.

“Jewelssea and Swami have been the most inspiring to me, on all fronts. Their music, the way they present it, the way that they handle themselves as artists, DJs and producers, all of it,” said OJC.

Future for OJC

After speaking with OJC, it’s clear how much passion and work goes into each of his mixes and how much admiration he has for other DJs. When asked about his goals, he explained that he just wants to keep playing in new places, and along the way, wants to find his own identity as an artist.

“I make music like everyday. I don’t want to just push it out to do it. I’m really focused on trying to build something cohesive and representative of me right now.”

To check out more from OJC you can follow him on Instagram @ojc.oli , Twitter @prodojc , Tik Tok @ojc.oli Soundcloud @OJC-O.J.C.