It is a type of deep and garage house with an emphasis on soulful vocals influenced by Newark's gospel legacy.
Places like Club Zanzibar in Newark, New Jersey, where DJ Tony Humphries began his residency in 1982, helped "spawn the sometimes raw but always soulful, gospel-infused subgenre" of deep house music known as the Jersey sound.
[1][2] Besides the term "New Jersey house", there are alternative names for the genre: "In the UK, for fairly unfathomable reasons, it became known as garage music (named after the Paradise Garage in New York), while in NJ itself they simply called it club (or perhaps more pertinently, the Jersey sound," Mix Mag reported in July 2020.
[3] Newark female singers remixed by house music DJ Larry Levan included Gwen Guthrie ("Ain't Nothin' Goin On But The Rent") and Taana Gardner ("Heartbeat").
Jersey artists like Jomanda, with the crossover hit "Got a Love for You," found success in the early 1990s house-music scene.