Label owner, Grammy winner and hit maker Afrojack joins us for an interview as we delve into his thoughts on crypto, his new alias and label Kapuchon, buying a castle in Belgium, working with David Guetta and much more.
Nick van de Wall aka Afrojack is known for his unique Dutch style of music that has evolved into many radio hits, both credited and uncredited. With billions of streams to his name, Afrojack has been a consistent top 10 DJ for many years now, always delivering hit after hit both in the club scene and the commercial. Afrojack has recently branched out with his Kapuchon alias as well as his labels, looking for bright new talent. His most recent feat is ‘Hero’, his collaboration with good friend and frequent producer David Guetta. The terrific record has amassed several million streams in the weeks after release.
What has kept you entertained over this down period? I’ve seen you gaming a lot, what are you playing at the moment?
Warzone a lot. I’ve also enjoyed the new Resident Evil demo, I’ve always been a big fan of Resident Evil. I’m very excited for the new one that’s coming out this weekend. I’ve been spending a lot of time really getting close to my team, my ground team, because I always used to be on tour a lot. I really got to work a lot with the people that are always here on ground in Belgium, to basically manage everything. We’ve been working together more and more. Now we’re really a lot tighter knit basically, which allows us to move a lot faster. So I’m really excited for the future, because now we’re going to be able to get more shit done easier, even when I’m touring.
You join the list of artists like David Guetta and Calvin Harris who’ve also turned to house side projects, what inspired you to bring back Kapuchon?
I started it around when I started Afrojack, around 12 – 15 years ago or something. I always had it and I already had the music, but I never released it and now because we had the COVID downtime, like I said, I was close with my team. So we said, why don’t we start the label now? So we just started the label, we started signing some stuff from other favorite artists, and we started releasing my own stuff. Like the music was already there and playing the music for years, but we just never released it. So now we got to release it. It’s pretty cool.
Yeah, an edit of ‘Run and Hide’ has been on the DJ Afrojack Soundcloud for three years now, but you have finally released it officially now.
Yeah, I even played it at Tomorrowland mainstage, like five years ago. It was just never released. And then I put it on SoundCloud. And now I was like, okay, let’s actually give it availability.
You mentioned the Kapuchon label, will we see some releases from other artists there?
They’re already been a collab with Sven Fields and there’s a new one from him coming out next month. Chico Rose has been doing some stuff, it’s not out yet but it’s coming. I really just want to make it a home place for doing whatever shit you want to do, you know, it’s not a certain direction of house or techno. The reason I love house is because it’s so wide, the reason I love techno is because it’s so wide. Of course it’s diverse through the different sub genres. But for me, if it grooves it grooves, then we’ll release it. It’s not about the success in numbers. It’s about the success in creating something special.
You can send demos to Afrojack’s labels here: [email protected]
Yeah because you have mentioned in the past you don’t put a lot of promotion behind it, you just put it out like back in the old days.
Yeah, exactly. And I think this is a necessity, especially when you have so much pressure working with major labels and distributors. Having something where you can just do what you want without the pressure of Spotify numbers or Beatport charts. It’s fun, and it needs to be fun. That’s why we started this.
It’s rare for any musician or artist to remain at such a high level for years, how have you been able to adapt to the trends of dance music as the music continues to change and develop?
I think it sort of happens automatically. Every time you go into a studio, you look at what’s now and you look at, what am I? Then I just tried to do what I do, to whatever is now. You’re always operating within a culture. So for me, it’s just what do I want to do with that culture? I like to freak it and make people surprised and make go: oh, what is this? Where did this come from? That’s my biggest hobby. I’m always adapting to what’s there, because I’m always utilizing what is there.
You’ve been living in both Dubai and Belgium over the past year, which place was more inspiring to make music?
Belgium! Because I actually just bought a castle here and I’ve been building studios. So instead of how you see in the movies with old families living in a big mansion, I always thought how cool would it be if you would change all the rooms into studios.
You recently joined forces with David Guetta again, how did you guys first meet and what has made this relationship so long lasting?
We both have the same passion, that’s the main thing. But most importantly, we have the passion for everybody should win. A lot of people in the music industry have a “sink or swim” mentality, they try to one up each other and they’re very competitive. David has always been very collaborative. I used to be signed to him, around 10 years ago. And what I learned from working with him, he would never try to get me to work with other people through him, he always introduced me, he always wanted collaborative experiences to exist around him, not just through him. When you get an email forwarded, and someone deletes the email address off cc, so you can’t get in touch, this type of shit, he never did that.
That also inspired me to work with other people in the same way and just trust the process, trust the people around you, and just give trust. And of course, there will be some people that will try to abuse it, and then you work with them, and then stop working with them. That’s the thing that always made it easy for us to work together, there’s never been a hidden agenda. There’s never been a priority of one’s own success over the other success. It’s always been, let’s help each other as much as we can. I think that is what made it so easy for us to always work together. And that’s why he is one of my best friends. He almost sort of mentors me still to this day. I try to spread that word also through my label when signing other artists. I want to show people that the music industry is not necessarily an evil place, with evil managers and evil labels. They’re not evil, there are some very evil ones don’t get me wrong, but they’re not all evil.
Over the course of your career, you’ve picked up some of the most recognizable accolades in music. What is something you still wish to achieve musically?
I hope one day I can create a company that is based on the things I just said. One day I want to have a company, at one point be a competitor to current major label distributors and other major companies. But be based on positivity and kindness and trust versus being based on numbers only and not “me first, fuck everybody”. You know? I really want to stay away from that mentality. That’s really what I love about dance music, that everyone’s very collaborative, especially the people. The people that go to the festivals and in the clubs, they are open minded, collaborative people, because no one cares if you’re gay or black or white, big, small, rich, poor, no one cares. It’s more so that we’re there together, we love dance music. I want to push that message through on the industry side, too.
You recently tweeted about Safemoon, I take it you’re into crypto currency? What are your thoughts on the space, as well as NFTs. Would you do one?
Let me just preface this with *I am not a financial advisor* – I want to get that t-shirt! I have a lot of friends that know everything about this space. I have billionaire friends that have over half of all their assets stuck in crypto, that’s how much they trust it. They didn’t make that money by investing in crypto, but they’re safeguarding it by investing in crypto. So if you can tell me someone is willing to put half their shit that they earned over their entire life into this, I’m pretty sure it’s safe. So I’ll trust their judgement.
Through that I got in Bitcoin, Ethereum and now riding the wave of Safemoon, but… I don’t know what that is really. It’s kind of the same thing as Dogecoin, you know, it’s not backed but somehow it’s working.
On the NFT side, I’m working on it, but I’m not at the point of developing the actual NFT. I’m at a point of developing the concept of the NFT. If you look at Beeple, it’s actually art, it’s very cool. A lot of work went into it, you even get a little physical thing to represent it. There’s a whole effort, there’s a passion. You also see a lot of NFT’s that are people just shitting and flushing it down the toilet and calling it an NFT. “Get my NFT, give me some money!”. I’ve been approached for this many times and I thought about making some money. But I think in the long run, it really damages your brand to just shit things out like that. So I’m really looking to see what we can do, which is really special. I’ve seen Zedd’s NFTs, which I think are really beautiful. Because it’s music and art completely symbiotic. I’ve seen Don Diablo’s one of a kind NFT where he did a full Live Set, it was not as good quality wise as Zedd’s but it’s something special, you get an hour and a half exclusive set only for you. That’s is NFT worthy. So I’m just thinking, what am I going to do that’s going to make it really special.
Listen to Afrojack’s latest team up with David Guetta, ‘Hero’.
