L: UNIIQU3. Photo by Phrank Tomphun. R: Dos Flakos. Photo by Ángel Añazco.
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The world of ballroom is visual, physical, aesthetic: competitors are judged in categories like body, face, realness, and of course vogue performance itself. But balls are heard as much as they're seen — by the vogue beats themselves, with their omnipresent Ha crashes, and by the voices of commentators, part-emcees part-executioners spitting bars that fall somewhere between battle raps and word salad. To be a commentator is to always be in competition, whether that's against other commentators or the relentless pulse of the beat itself.
UNIIQU3 doesn't come from a vogueing background, but the self-proclaimed "Queen of Jersey Club" knoweth the roots of her kingdom. The origins of Jersey Club can be traced back to a crossbreeding of the regional Baltimore, Chicago, and New York scenes at the turn of the millennium. Many of the earliest parties in Newark were thrown at the same ballrooms and banquet halls that played host to the Houses of Vizcaya, Jordan, Infinity, Genesis, and Fire Ball.
It makes perfect sense, then, that UNIIQU3 is a damn fine commentator herself. In 2021, I was totally obsessed with her track "Microdosing," where producer UNIIQU3 threw down a 131 BPM gauntlet that rapper UNIIQU3 ably demolished. On her Dos Flakos collaboration "Shake the Room," premiering exclusively on The FADER, she totally embraces the role of ballroom emcee, dipping into that unmistakable cadence as she issues commands to "shake the block and make it drop."
Look hard enough, and the beat that UNIIQU3 and the Bronx' Dos Flakos constructed together becomes a history lesson in the last forty years of dance music. Every sound has a story behind it — the Ha crashes, the air raid sirens, the jungle breakbeats, the ping-ponging samples of UNIIQU3's voice — but don't expect to care about any of that when you hear a DJ drop "Shake the Room" in the club. Between this absolute barnstormer and the effect it's sure to have on a crowd, the room might not be left standing by the morning.
