Mau P’s Run From “Drugs From Amsterdam” to Dance Music’s Center Stage
From big-room alias Maurice West to "Drugs From Amsterdam" and Coachella headline sets, Mau P has become one of the defining dance artists of the 2020s.
Four years ago, nobody had heard the name Mau P. Today he's headlining Coachella's Sahara tent, running his own Pacha Ibiza residency, and promising an album, a label and a clothing line before the year is out. Few artists have defined the 2020s dance boom quite like him — so here's how it happened.
The twist most newer fans don't know: Mau P is a second act. Maurits Jan Westveen, 29, from Amsterdam, spent 2014 to 2022 as Maurice West, a big-room mainstage act who played Ultra and Tomorrowland and collaborated with the likes of KSHMR and W&W. By his own account he ran out of ways to push that sound forward, fell back in love with house music during COVID-era parties with friends, and made the genuinely risky call to kill a working career and start over.
The reboot took exactly one song. “Drugs From Amsterdam,” released on Lee Foss' Repopulate Mars in August 2022, hit No. 1 on Beatport's overall chart and camped there for over a month, drew congratulations from David Guetta and Tiësto, and has since blown past a quarter of a billion streams. “Probably when I played it for the first time… the whole place just turned upside down,” he told Billboard. “It opened up a lot of doors for me that I've been banging on for years.”
What separates Mau P from the average one-hit tech house guy is what came next: a deliberate label-hopping run that reads like a tour of dance music's most respected imprints. “Gimme That Bounce” on Insomniac. “Your Mind Is Dirty” on John Summit's Experts Only. “Metro” with Kevin de Vries on Afterlife. “Merther” on Defected. An EP on Diynamic. And this February, “neck” — debuted during his Coachella Sahara headline set — landed on Chris Lake's Black Book Records.
The bookings tell the same story. He headlined the Sahara tent at Coachella 2025 in front of roughly 20,000 people, has climbed to No. 77 in DJ Mag's Top 100, holds a Wynn Las Vegas residency, and is currently in the middle of his second consecutive Baddest Behaviour season at Pacha Ibiza — ten Wednesdays running into October, with guests like Sven Väth, Seth Troxler and Carlita.
As for what's next, he said it himself in January: “In 2026 I will give the world: an album, a label, a clothing line.” No album title or date yet — but given his track record of doing exactly what he says, we wouldn't bet against him. “I feel like I have this responsibility because I love everyone that listens to my music so much,” he told Billboard. “They put me up front, so I better live up to it.” So far, so good.
