DJ Juice - Juice #10 (It's A Juice Thing)
Jersey's own comes through for '92 with some freshly-squeezed blends.
Written by Do Remember! contributor Zvi Edelman
To my mind, musical stories are inseparable from the surrounding regional politics and semi-invisible but super-powerful currents of youth culture that moved all movements in the pre-digital years. Like myself, DJ Juice is from Central New Jersey—in his case Trenton, in my case Princeton. The two places are not far away from each other but also a world apart.
In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, Trenton was an important hub of hip-hop for all of us in the Garden State who were trying to do the knowledge. Most obviously you had PRT and Tony D proving that people right in our neck of the woods could make and were making hip-hop that could compete on a national level.
The “nation” at that time existed mostly in New York and Philly, two cities that Trenton sort of sits in the middle of and (not unimportantly) a place that got a strong radio signal from both markets. And it had a heavy dose of culture from many of the folks putting in OT time from those two cities (some of whom were rappers and DJs when they weren’t street pharmacists including a young Shawn Carter). That cultural/musical awareness filtered down to suburban kids like me in a couple of really direct ways:
1. The illustrious WPRB FM hosted a show called at various times ‘Club Crush,’ ‘The Raw Deal,’ and ‘Vibes and Vapors,’ which included ferociously on point sets from Tony Depula himself (RIP). Also at some point in, I think during the third incarnation of the show, the PRB hosts made me and countless others aware of another Ivy League FM show on 89.9 WKCR which would prove to be a seminal addition to our diet of KISS, BLS, and WQHT.
2. On more of a “pre-viral” tip, a lot of kids from Trenton went to my middle school and high school and surrounding schools, and they brought with them an awareness of songs and artists and a fashion trend adherence that for the aforementioned reasons was often only a couple of weeks behind NYC and Philly.
I am going to assume that #2 accounts for how I first got a hand on a DJ Juice tape. Someone from Trenton or Hamilton or thereabouts gave Juice #something to someone who played it in front of me in my video production class, and then through sheer force of me being really annoying I obtained a dub of that tape. Like all things that were alleged by people closer to the source than I to have originated in the Garden State (45 King/OG Flava Unit, PRT, YZ, DJ Cheese, Naughty, Ready to Roll/Double X, Redman, etc.), the Juice tape had special sauce from jump because someone from New Jersey made it, therefore creating this tantalizing link between the 90 whatever pounds of my physical being sitting in NJ and the world of hip-hop which I would soon fall headfirst in to the middle of as a participant, but which at the time was a powerful force that seemed to be vaguely somewhere nearby—maybe.
This much is certain: the first time I ever heard a tape with blends as opposed to simply a DJ mix was when I heard DJ Juice, and it was definitely a total “what the fuck” moment. The guy was taking two songs (sometimes more!) and making a whole new song out of them. I understand that not so far away from Trenton other people had done this first, but it hadn’t yet reached my ears and it was wildly entertaining and fun and yeah even magical because fuck if I knew how he did it.
Decades later, having traded/dubbed, purchased, and stolen hundreds of blend tapes I still rank Juice in the super upper elite of blend DJs along with Ron G, GM Vic, Hot Day, Doggtime, G-Bo & Double R, Chill Will FTE, Jadel and Rello, etc.—and with an overall level of skill and care through his tapes that might exceed them all. For what it’s worth, I know that my good friend, former Harlem Music Hut employee, and rap game legend Geno Sims feels the same and he doesn’t have my Jersey bias—just really good ears.
This tape, one of dozens that Juice has put out over the years, is a testament to what a master craftsman he is. As is his trademark, Juice hits you with a powerhouse intro, weaving together a Culture Freedom shoutout, “The Show,” “Fudge Pudge,” and of course a snippet of Treach rapping “It’s a Juice thing” from “Uptown Anthem,” and about 30 other snippets at which point you are fully amped for the tape to begin.
He proceeds to create a syntactically coherent rhyme out of pieces of other people’s rhymes and transforms a dancehall siren over two different Pete and CL beats tempo-matched. Throughout the tape, his doubles remain ultra precise and his cuts have mad style and rhythm. He cuts “Dem No Worry We” to absolute shreds after a brief but impactful live interlude from Trenton, and performs time-stopping surgery on LOTUG’s “Psycho.”
What first grabbed me about this tape decades ago and still breaks my brain as I’m writing this is a full song blend of the “Paper Thin” acapella and the “Ting-A-Ling”/Giggy Riddim that is so damn clean and official that if someone pressed it up on a 12-inch I would buy it. Like I said, at the time this was magic. And to be honest, it’s still magic now. This blend embodies the damn-I-never-would-have-thought-of-that-but-now-I’m-going-to-rewind-endlessly quality that makes a great blend tape such high value entertainment.
There’s really not a minute of wasted or lazy space on this tape, no payola song inclusions or mans-and-them demo vibe killers. When he smoothes it out on Side B, the creativity with which he commits murder upon potentially trite blend tape staples like “Juicy Fruit” and “All Night Long” shines bright, the marriage of Chuckii Booker and “Pickin’ Boogers” is bananas, and little dancehall tings like “Typewriter” keep popping up in the mix for texture.
Anyway, they say that writing about music is like dancing to architecture. Just press play and pay homage to a Trenton turntable hero.
Stream It’s A Juice Thing below, and stay tuned for more 50 TAPES posts as we celebrate the release of Do Remember! The Golden Era of NYC Hip-Hop Mixtapes, out now via Rizzoli.
DJ Juice - Volume 10 (It’s A Juice Thing)