By the midpoint of 2025, Nick van de Wall—the global powerhouse known as Afrojack—experienced a profound creative epiphany. Following the global hiatus of the pandemic, the producer admits he had become consumed by the industrial side of his career. “I was hyper-focused on sustaining the business and ensuring the expectations of Afrojack fans were met,” he explains.
His schedule was a relentless cycle of brand management: overseeing his Wall Recordings imprint, traversing the globe for massive festival sets, and engineering the surgical edits required for mainstage performances. However, once the foundations of his business felt secure, his priorities shifted. “I reached a point where I just wanted to return to what I love: crafting music intended solely for the dancefloor, without the weight of commercial viability or streaming metrics.”
The Rise of Kapuchon
While van de Wall is a fixture on the world’s most prestigious stages, he has recently found a deeper fulfillment in the anonymity of underground clubs. Under his Kapuchon alias, he has been able to test his craft in rooms where his celebrity carries no weight. During a guest appearance with Miss Monique at Hï Ibiza last summer, he witnessed a crowd reacting not to a “superstar DJ,” but to the vibrations of the music itself.
“People were glancing at me, questioning, ‘Is that actually Afrojack?’” he recalls. “In that moment, I was just a guy playing records. It was pure communication. Seeing people’s faces light up because a track hits—not because of a name—that is my greatest sense of accomplishment lately.”
This pursuit of raw energy has culminated in the Kapuchon Presents Afrojack Tour. This March, the producer will embark on a seven-date North American club run, hitting intimate venues like Sound in Los Angeles, StereoBar in Montreal, and Refuge in Brooklyn. For an artist synonymous with EDM’s “mainstage era,” moving into the club circuit signals a shift in how genre boundaries are perceived.
“It’s refreshing to see the walls between genres finally crumbling. Everyone has the freedom to explore everything, and I thrive in that environment.”
On Elitism and Genre Hierarchies
Do you feel the electronic scene was previously too segregated, forcing artists to stick to a specific ‘brand’ of sound?
It’s a complex dynamic. Often, audiences use genre as a tool for social identity. You have the techno purists who dismiss EDM as ‘entry-level,’ and the avant-garde listeners who look down on techno. People frequently use their musical taste to claim intellectual superiority. I’ve studied psychology, and yet I still find it baffling why people feel the need to use music as a hierarchy.
Are we seeing a shift away from that gatekeeping?
The beauty of the current landscape is that the creators—the DJs and producers—aren’t typically purists. Someone like Charlotte de Witte isn’t going to reject a record simply because I’m associated with it or because it has commercial appeal. A great song is a great song. It’s illogical to judge music based on the creator’s reputation rather than the sound itself. I’m encouraged to see more people embracing that logic.
The conversation around these social hierarchies can be incredibly draining for artists.
It’s always been there, but the creators are largely ignoring it now. We have living legends like Carl Cox, Richie Hawtin, and Armin van Buuren who have outlasted these trends. Their longevity grants them an authority that supersedes the opinions of the younger generation. If Carl Cox validates a sound, the argument is essentially over.
The Social Media Dilemma
How has the era of constant digital access changed the relationship between the artist and the audience?
Social media has stripped away the mystery, but it has replaced it with intimacy. You have direct access to an artist’s psyche. However, there’s a downside. I recently saw an interview about how modern musicians are forced to be ‘content creators’ first. I love the craft of music; I find the performance of ‘brand building’—doing TikTok dances just to boost streams—to be exhausting.
We see artists getting booked today based on viral fame rather than technical skill. People become stars for ‘sexy faces’ or shirtless AI-generated remixes of 90s pop songs. I’m happy for their success, but it forces a difficult question: Do I spend three hours a day on a social media strategy, or do I spend that time in the studio?
How do you advise emerging artists who don’t have your established platform?
The only sustainable path is radical authenticity. Don’t perform for the camera. If you want to show who you are, go live for eight hours and just show your process. Show the craft. Eventually, that transparency will resonate. But it’s a brutal battle. You aren’t just competing with other musicians; you’re competing with influencers, fitness models, and viral AI videos for a few seconds of attention.
The Work Behind the Fame
Do you think some artists reach the top for the ‘wrong’ reasons?
Perhaps on a small scale, but you cannot sell out 20,000-capacity venues on a facade. To reach the pinnacle, you need authenticity. Look at Keinemusik—they had the hit of the summer with ‘Move,’ but they’ve been grinding in the underground for 20 years. Mau P was producing for a decade before his current project took off. Even John Summit, regardless of the ‘commercial’ labels people throw at him, puts in the work with eight-hour sets and tech-house tutorials. These guys paid their dues.
The Grammys often favor ‘artsy’ electronic acts over party-centric ones. As a Grammy winner, what’s your take on that divide?
The Grammys favor a specific aesthetic. Party culture and DJ culture aren’t always seen as ‘high art.’ I’m not interested in pretending to be ‘artsy’ for validation. I remember being criticized for ‘selling out’ when I collaborated with Pitbull. But he’s a successful artist who reached out because he liked the music. If I had said no just to protect my ‘cool’ image, wouldn’t that actually be the real definition of selling out? Protecting an image for money is just as corporate as anything else.
Have you always been this comfortable with your choices?
Not always. I didn’t put my name on ‘Titanium’ originally because I thought I was ‘too cool’ for it at the time. That was the pressure of being young and trying to protect a specific reputation. I learned from that. If you are genuine, people will eventually understand. I use a food analogy: one day you want steak, another day you want a cookie. Loving one doesn’t invalidate the other. You aren’t defined by just one thing.
