In Which We Accompany Afrojack to a Weird Press Party and Witness the Countdown to His Collapse at Miami Music Week

Readers, when you last joined me I had just finished interviewing DJ Afrojack regarding his curious new line of jeans.

During the interview, Nick van de Wall was surprisingly open, kind, and seemed to be going at full-speed like an excited ADD kid. This made it all the more sad that he was hospitalized the next day for exhaustion. Let’s go back to the day of the interview.

I had not heard at the time, but the night before I interviewed Nick he had collapsed off a stage while popping champagne bottles, face planted onto the cement floor, and was hospitalized for head injuries. He told at the end of our chat that he wanted to talk philosophy with me. He wanted to talk about Socrates and mirrors. “Alan Watts is the shit!” he said and began to get into the views of Alan Watts before being interrupted and whisked away by a publicist to prepare him for another interview. I felt a longing to discuss philosophy with Afrojack, and became passively enraged when his publicist got between us. He made sure to invite me to that night’s private press party at the Wall club at the W Hotel to listen to his new album with him.

Looking back, it is easy to see the Afrojack was operating on a superhuman level of energy. The next day, Avicii, Laidback Luke and Afrojack were all hospitalized. Afrojack claimed exhaustion. The other Ultra headliners cancelled their sets and it was announced that Afrojack was uncertain if he would play. People (read: EDM festival goers feeling robbed of their $500 festival tickets) have been quick to call foul and blame the absences on drug use. However, Afrojack came out of the hospital like an EDM Messiah and performed on Sunday:

During Miami Music Week, DJ’s—especially the bigger names—have stupidly hectic schedules. They are either DJing, promoting, at a party, or in Nick’s case, releasing three-dimensional legwear. The parties will often be upwards of twelve hours long. The DJ’s job is to keep the party going, no matter what happens. Eventually, something’s gotta give. Like Icarus who flew too far into the sun, you can only party so hard before you stall.

When I was walking over to the event from the interview, I saw three Lamborghinis, each gaudily labeled “Afrojack” on the side, driving in the same direction. Afrojack would later mention these cars in a speech, justifying their existence by saying “I keep doing extravagant shit to show people what’s possible. You see four supercars with Afrojack on them, you know you can do anything. But it’s certainly not saving me any money.”

This was the first private press party I’d ever been privy to, and it was a combination of fucked up, boring, surreal, flabbergasting, and exhausting. When I got to the door, I was asked to check in my phone with a phone valet. Nobody would be allowed in with their cell phones. This was a curious demand considering people were allowed to record anything they wanted with their cameras. I learned it was a request made my Afrojack and his manager, themselves. Inside the club, there were two stools set up in front of the DJ booth with a table between them. Two bottles of water were on the table and a spotlight shone on the area. I had seen this image before: there was going to be an unnecessary Q&A. Oh no.

Afrojack was introduced to the stage by a Dutch journalist and interviewer. The room went silent as we listened to a rather dull interview session punctuated by the fun and exhausting energy of Afrojack. His way of speaking is strangely enthusiastic and infectious, burdened by its kitchen sink and no-filter approach. As the music played, he would only get more and more intense. They pressed play on the first song. Afrojack closed his eyes, snapped his fingers and air-produced the beat of the “Home Sweet Home,” the first song on the album. He turned imaginary knobs, mouthed beats, and imitated drops with his hands. After the song ended, the interviewer asked him about the song for about twenty minutes. I came to the harsh realization that this was going to be the pattern of the night for around two hours. One five-six minute song, followed by twenty minutes of inane conversation. At that point I just wished I was back in a room with Nick, shooting the shit about dating and jeans.

Afrojack mused on the state of EDM. “I don’t like listening to the same thing twice—there’s a few gems here and there but [EDM music] is all the same shit.” I noticed throughout the entire Miami Music Week that every DJ, no matter who they are, likes to separate themselves from “EDM music.” The shpiel is that EDM is artless commercial bullshit made for teenagers. Most DJ’s, or at least the trendy ones, will say they specialize in something like deep house, but can play an entire range. Everyone is quick to say that they are not part of the EDM scene. But not everyone is eloquent in explaining why, and it is nearly impossible to find what separates electronic genre musicians. It mostly screams of marketing. He talked mirrors, faces, and philosophy: “Alan Watts said, that when you’re making music, it’s like you’re going into the sun.” At this point, everything was coming out. The filter was completely off. He was addressing the crowd like they were his personal biographers.

He talked about the nature of art: “What is art? What is great art? The most important thing [to me] is how many people understand it. You’re not a great artist if ninety-nine percent of people don’t understand your art.” He spoke about the nature of the name of the album, Forget the World and how it really means “Fuck the World.” “It’s your life! It’s your life! You don’t need the world!” Coming from an interview where I heard plenty of similar platitudes, the herky-jerky, scattershot nature of the speeches were getting a little exhausting. By the fourth or fifth song, the crowd of journalists was getting restless, began talking over songs, and had to be quieted by Afrojack. Afrojack literally yelled at a room of journalists to shut the fuck up. There were cracks in the steely, chilled out forget-the-world facade of Nick.

Everyone in the room was press, record label executives, or promoters, so no one was dancing or even making very much movement at all. The feeling of listening to music that is intended to make people dance, in a room full of people who either don’t care to or refuse to do so is quite surreal. Imagine if you went to a comedy show and nobody was laughing, but the show went on for another two hours anyways in complete silence. You would be confused and terrified. A song would play while everyone in the room sat perfectly still, some with their legs crossed. Everyone but Nick, who would sing and air-play his way wildly through the whole night. One later song is an ambitious 26-piece orchestral arrangement with no beats. During that one, Nick—you guessed it—air-played everything from strumming of the violins to the plucking of the cellos.

The new album, Forget the World, is comprised of a slew of collaborations. As I am not an expert in the field of EDM, it is hard to say whether or not this is a gimmick. He collaborated with Sting, Jared Leto, Snoop Dogg, and others on the record. A bizarre comment on working with Jared Leto: “He’s the first guy I’ve seen in my entire life doing what I want to do. He is the image I always had in my head when I was a kid of what a rockstar should be.” According to Afrojack, 30 Seconds to Mars is the ultimate rock band. He also revealed, quite sincerely, that he was terrified of working with a legend like Sting.

When it came to the quality of the music, I largely was entertained by it, in spite of stuffiness of the room and the horribly truncated rhythm because of the Q&A disruptions. I was talking to an enthusiastic Swiss journalist named Julian, who was a huge Afrojack fan, and he assured me that the album would make waves and hit the ground running the same way that Daft Punk’s Homework did. The implication is that this album will reinvent, or perhaps reinvigorate dance and house music as the aforementioned Daft Punk record did. While I don’t exactly agree with the Daft Punk comparison, because the album seems like more of a step forward for Afrojack than for the genre, I will say that each song was a club and radio-ready banger, with a few being even dare I say pretty. I would not be surprised at all if some of these songs became number one hits, especially the Snoop Dogg one. One song, “Freedom,” remixes the beat from Nas’ “Hero” to a pretty cool effect. While “Hero” isn’t exactly a top-tier Nas classic, it does contain some pretty prominent synths in the beat, so maybe that counts as an EDM crossover?

I was relieved when the event ended and I could walk out into a humid Miami dusk. Afrojack announced that he would be doing another party that night for a guest list of lucky fans who attended the jeans event. This would be by the pool right outside of the Wall. The maximalist nature of the electronic music states that everything must keep going. The songs must be shockingly long, the party must never die. Like casinos, people at these events are encouraged to stay and keep partying. In Europe, clubs will have couches and beds so you can spend an entire weekend punctuating your merriment with naps. Places in Miami are becoming more like that, from the lounges and cabanas of Nikki Beach to the eight A.M. closing time of Club Space. When DJ’s at these events finish with their set, the music never cuts off. Another DJ takes their place. There is never a gap or a second to breathe. So how can people be surprised when someone takes a fall?

Grab Forget the World on May 19.

For more of Noisey's tentative footsteps into the wide world of EDM journalism, check our report from EDC Las Vegas, where we nearly died.