MAKJ

MAKJ — real name Mackenzie Alexander Johnson — spent 15 years building one of dance music’s most recognizable big-room and electro house names, and this year he closed that chapter on his own terms. He picked up DJing at 15 while living in China, later training under DJ AM to sharpen his scratching, and by 2013 he was already touring alongside Bingo Players and Bassjackers. That same year his collab with Hardwell, “Countdown,” shot to #1 on Beatport within three days of release — the kind of fast, unmistakable signal that a new name belonged on main stages. Billboard backed that up in 2014, naming him one of its Top 10 Artists to Watch at Ultra Music Festival.

From there MAKJ became a festival mainstay, playing everywhere from Electric Zoo and EDC to Coachella and TomorrowWorld’s main stage, and racking up collaborations with Steve Aoki, Deorro, Timmy Trumpet, and Showtek along the way, several of which landed in Beatport’s Top 10. Outside of touring and releasing, he’s also hosted Revolution Radio on iHeartRadio’s Evolution channel, keeping his name in rotation even between big drops, and he’s charted on DJ Mag’s Top 100 DJs list.

Then, this past June, he announced something few artists ever pull off cleanly — he retired the MAKJ name entirely. After a decade and a half under that alias, he told fans on Instagram it was simply time for a new chapter, and he’s wasted no time building it: he’s now releasing music as KENZ, backed by his own KENZ Records imprint, with the track “Rake It Up” already picking up steam. It’s a genuine reinvention rather than a rebrand for rebranding’s sake, and it’s rare to see an artist with this much festival-circuit history walk away from a known name to start building something new from scratch.

Whether you knew him as MAKJ or you’re just now discovering him as KENZ, the throughline’s the same — a producer who’s been chasing the next big room moment since he was a teenager, and who’s clearly not done evolving.