UNIIQU3 is getting her flowers

Five years after her breakthrough EP Heartbeats, UNIIQU3 has seen Jersey Club – a sound she helped take global – percolate into pop music, and her name dropped in all the right places. Time, then, to re-enter the chat with a new album that strikes out for new horizons.

Getting hold of Cherise Gary, the artist and DJ better known by her stage name UNIIQU3, is no easy feat, entailing days of flurried email back-and-forth between her management and PR team. When we finally settle on a video call in June, London – where I’m dialling from – is in the grip of a sticky, sweaty heatwave. But when Gary enters the frame, it’s like the welcome relief of a much-needed blast of aircon. I learn she’s in the midst of getting the oil changed on her car, running errands in her native Newark during a rare break from her punishing schedule as an international DJ. 

“It’s nonstop,” she explains of the pressures of touring. “Like, I could take about four flights on a cute weekend, maybe more. It’s definitely adventurous, but it’s crazy because I feel like when I’m not on the road, I turn my life off. I need to recharge, I need to decompress for at least two days… and then I’m back at it.” 

Growing up in New Jersey, where she has recently returned after a stint in LA, Gary’s first come-up was in the local Jersey Club scene. After meeting one of the genre’s most prominent figures, DJ Tameil, by chance, she began to explore the city’s club scene and, after noticing the lack of female artists, taught herself to DJ and then produce. Rising to prominence in the 2010s, she reached international acclaim in the 2020s, creating official remixes for the likes of Tiwa Savage, having her own work sampled by Chloe Bailey and Doechii, dropping a viral edit of Sasha Keable’s tell me what you want, and releasing the acclaimed (and iconic) Heartbeats. 

That breakthrough EP took the club-focused, bass-heavy Jersey Club genre and subculture on an emotive ride through different stages of heartbreak. And while it came from the career stasis and romantic uncertainty prompted by Covid, it burst out of lockdown to help bring Jersey Club to the global stage. 

As Gary notes, the project helped to bring a new emotional tenor to the genre, with her vulnerable songwriting and infectious vocals and raps demonstrating how the bouncy sound could translate to the more traditional shapes of charting pop music. “Heartbeats set the tone for being able to talk about emotions in Jersey Club. It doesn’t have to just be, ‘Let’s go, shake it, bounce it.’ I brought some maturity to it,” she says. “I feel like I am definitely responsible for pop music having such a Jersey Club dance aspect to it now, when it comes to the pop girls like Tinashe, Doechii, Zara Larsson. Being one of the first women in Jersey Club in the scene, pioneering that sound, was just… it was really dope.”

It’s not just these high-profile moments that have led to UNIIQU3’s rise, but also an infectious, energetic style as a selector that has resonated with audiences from Brazil to South Korea, as dancefloors have gravitated towards high-octane, frenetic club textures. While many DJs – particularly female, queer and POC artists who, arguably, are expected to deliver a greater level of showmanship behind the decks – find that the meatgrinder of the club circuit can leave them with little time to produce their own music, Gary has used it as fuel for her latest project: Mass Appeal. 

The album’s name reflects the shared trajectories of Gary and Jersey Club, tracing how she’s helped take the sound global. “Jersey Club has mass appeal. It’s come from the little city of Newark, and it has floated all over the world,” she explains. “Every subgenre or mainstream genre has dibbled and dabbled in it.” But there’s also Gary’s own story; as part of the Jersey Club movement, and as an artist standing on her own. “I also have mass appeal. People have been like, ‘We gotta tap in with UNIIQU3.’ My name’s been in rooms I never thought it would be in, it’s taken me to countries I never even knew existed.” 

The album’s sonic through-line is established by lead single Mile High Club, a flirty mood track that winsomely beckons listeners into UNIIQU3’s globalised club adventure. “It’s literally setting you guys up to let you know what’s to come,” she says. “It’s a smooth takeoff, everybody’s boarding and this flight that I have planned has got numerous stops, a couple of layovers, and we’re gonna be going to different countries that have embraced Jersey Club and embraced me.” 

Calling My Name, the second track from the record, embraces a distinctly US club sound with the ballroom-influenced stylings of Leonce and Cakes da Killa, but Gary teases an eclectic and varied spread of collabs. “The cultural exchange will be sonically driven. I got different collabs on there from artists from Madrid, Australia, the UK, Brazil, South Korea. I got a Cameroonian-French queen on there, you know? It’s reflective of all the places I’ve been, but still very raw,” Gary summarises. 

Ironically, despite the mix of references, Mass Appeal is a means for Gary to reassert ownership of her sound at a time where Jersey Club has entered the mainstream, but not always the creators behind it. At a more grassroots level, Gary references the disorientating experience of hearing the sample pack she collaborated on with Splice continue to make the rounds on the internet without credit to her as an artist. “It’s still making waves to this day. It’s been a part of so many other viral songs, whether in the club space or just the dance space,” she says. “I hear, like, even the smallest bit – [me singing] ‘let’s go’ pitched up or down, or I’ll hear [me saying] ‘drop that shit’ on so many different tracks.” 

It’s clear when we speak about her future plans that Gary is ready to remind people how this sound – her sound – travelled from Newark to the rest of the world, while also showing her own evolution as an artist. “I’ve been thinking about this project and I’ve been wanting to tell this story for so long,” she says. “When I’m in album mode, I’m a conceptual artist: I’m like, let me build a world, let me dive in that world, and then I can share it with everybody.”