Okay, so maybe you already know who Nick Van De Wall is. If you’ve been to any large, popular dance club over the past several years, you’ve probably danced to some of his tunes and didn’t even know it was him in the deejay booth. He doesn’t wear a disguise or a mask like deadmau5 nor does he use doppelgängers to perform for him. In fact, he’s one of the most visible dance-floor advocates that the music industry has.
You may know him by the name, Afrojack, and for his next trick, he’s popped up on Soundcloud as Nick Van De Wall (his real name), with six new tracks — “You and I (Instrumental)”,“Kamehameha,” “Yeah,” “Who Got It”, “Udi,” and “Dutch Music Mafia” — that all take a fun and pumping departure from some of the more hardcore club jams that he’s become known for.
But the Netherlands-born deejay and producer has taken a couple of other radical turns lately aside from reinventing his sound. He recently debuted his new single, “Ten Feet Tall ft. Wrabel,” at the Superbowl, where he also announced that he was working on a debut album under the name Nick Van De Wall. The only details he let out about the future album was a quick premiere of one of the album’s songs, “Dynamite,” which features Snoop Dogg.
In a January interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Afrojack said that he and other EDM deejays “saved Vegas” when the city was in a financial crisis. America was also in a financial crisis, and off-site gambling options like those on the web—Betfair is a notable example, as they now offer limited US gambling—were competitors. Some of the fans became successful entrepreneurs and would ultimately change the culture of Vegas from strictly being a gambling capital to becoming a club and dance capital of the world, and raking in amounts of up to $15 million a night. “Vegas is like a continuous Miami music week,” he said. “It keeps going. There’s always an EDM artist, and a lot of other artists, performing. It made the city alive again.”
Last year, DJ Magazine came out with a list of 100 deejays and voted Afrojack No. 9. This year he wants to be even bigger. “I think 2014 for me is going to give me the possibility to do even bigger things than anyone has done,” said Afrojack in that same interview. “I want to change the party scene—like stop just being a DJ with lights, a big LED screen and oh-look-at-me speakers. There’s way more to a party and I think everyone knows it. I want to make it special. Every song, every form of art, clothing, shoes, it has to be special.”
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