Not everyone from Jersey pretends to be from New York. Some Jersey natives rep the Garden State to the fullest, and when you’re a music maker, that means bed-squeekin’, back-breakin’ anthems hot and sticky enough to set off the fire alarms. MC Fetty Wap and Jersey Club king DJ Sliink are two such individuals who put Jersey on their backs. It’s no big shocker that a collaboration from the pair would be a certified scorcher.
“My crew The Cartels, and Fetty’s crew Remy Boys always had respect for one another from being on the grind in New Jersey,” Sliink says in an emailed statement. “When Fetty blew up, he always told Big O and me, that “he got us on one” for the streets and for Jersey. We ran into him at SXSW a couple years back – when ‘Trap Queen’ was everywhere. He’s like, ‘Yo, I still got you.’ Few months later, we ended up all linking in the studio in Paterson, NJ. Crazy we actually recorded him over a different beat. Then spent the next four-to-six months doing multiple versions.”
There was just one snafu. Wap’s success has made him big pop money, so when the friends sent their song “Text UR Number” to label execs, the radio readers demanded something more pop-forward. Of course the suits got what they wanted, but Jersey never sleeps, and today, Sliink and Wap come through correct with the “remix,” or as Sliink likes to point out, the original version.
“After some major label BS and politics, we linked with DJ Envy, and finally released the song and got some great national love,” Sliink says. “I think we peaked at No. 30 on Urban radio. Definitely an exciting moment to have my first radio crossover song, but the version we released as original was really the radio edit. The ‘Remix’ that we are putting out now is really the basis of the first version we originally made, when we were doing for the streets, for Jersey. For respect from where we come from.”
The “Text UR Number” remix is a live wire of Jersey Club greatness. It drops Friday, April 6, on Commission via BMG, but you can listen to its beautiful bounce below, exclusively on Billboard Dance.