Don Diablo
Real name: Maurits Jan Westveen
Date of birth: October 26, 1996
Place of birth: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Aliases: Mau P, Maurice West
Genres: Tech House, House, Techno; formerly Big Room House, Electro House and Progressive House
Years active: 2014–present
Key labels: Repopulate Mars, Insomniac Records, Experts Only, Afterlife, Black Book Records, Defected, Diynamic, Nervous Records, Columbia Records
Mau P is the stage name of Dutch DJ and music producer Maurits Jan Westveen, who achieved international recognition with the single Drugs From Amsterdam. Before launching Mau P, he spent several years performing and releasing festival-oriented electronic music under the name Maurice West. The change of alias in 2022 marked a complete reassessment of his creative direction: moving away from big room and progressive house, Westveen shifted his focus towards tech house, house and harder-edged forms of club techno.
Early life
Maurits Jan Westveen was born in Amsterdam on October 26, 1996, and grew up in a family of professional musicians. His mother was a singer who performed with several folk groups, while his father worked as a saxophonist, session musician and arranger, including on orchestral productions. The ground floor of the family home had been converted into a studio, making musical instruments and recording equipment a natural part of Westveen’s everyday life from an early age.
He experimented with piano, drums and guitar, while his first independent attempts at producing electronic music were made in GarageBand. Westveen later switched to Ableton Live and began developing complete tracks. His interest in dance music emerged at around the age of twelve to fourteen: video games and YouTube introduced him to dubstep, electro house and the music of Skrillex, before he discovered Swedish House Mafia and other leading acts from the festival EDM era.
Despite growing up in a musical environment, Westveen did not establish his career through family connections. His early development was driven by independent studio work, sending demos to record labels and gradually learning how the club-music industry operated.
Career as Maurice West
Westveen’s first official release, Formula, arrived through Spinnin’ Talent Pool in 2014. At the time, he was working under the Maurice West alias and producing predominantly big room house, electro house and progressive house—styles that occupied a central place in the programming of major EDM festivals during the mid-2010s.
In 2015, Maurice West released Medusa, Yin Yang, Kung Fu with Kenneth G and Blaze (Sweet Lies). He subsequently became the first artist signed to Mainstage Music, the Armada Music-affiliated label founded by the duo W&W. Their support helped the young producer enter the professional festival circuit and introduce his music to audiences on major stages.
Further releases followed, including Poseidon, Dojo, the D-Block & S-te-Fan collaboration Temple, Disco Weapon with MOTi and Festival of Lights with KSHMR. After Mainstage Music evolved into Rave Culture, Maurice West continued working with W&W and joined them for the 2019 single The Matrix.
Maurice West’s music was designed primarily for large-scale venues. It was built around prominent synthesiser leads, abrupt transitions, dense drops and melodic themes that translated effectively into festival sets. His tracks were supported by Armin van Buuren, Tiësto, Hardwell, Martin Garrix, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike and other major figures from the EDM scene. Westveen also appeared onstage at Tomorrowland alongside KSHMR in 2017 and W&W in 2018.
By the end of the decade, the established big room formula had begun to feel restrictive to him as a producer. Although Westveen continued releasing music under his existing name, he was gradually moving away from the sound with which audiences associated Maurice West. Rather than making minor adjustments to the project, he decided to close that chapter of his career and create a separate artistic identity.
The launch of Mau P
The Mau P alias emerged in 2022. Derived from a shortened form of Maurits, the name represented more than a simple rebranding: it marked the beginning of a separate discography with a new musical direction and visual identity.
Mau P’s debut single, Drugs From Amsterdam, was released through Lee Foss’s Repopulate Mars label on August 19, 2022. The track was built around a heavy bass groove, a stripped-back synthesiser motif and a repeated vocal phrase. Westveen initially recorded the vocal concept himself before MC Stretch performed the final version. According to the producer, the core demo took approximately two weeks to complete, although the arrangement and finer details were refined over a longer period.
Drugs From Amsterdam reached number one on Beatport’s overall chart, rather than merely topping its Tech House category. This distinguished the release from many club records whose popularity remains confined to a single genre market. The track received widespread DJ support, crossed over beyond the specialist club circuit and accumulated hundreds of millions of streams across digital platforms.
The success of his debut single immediately established Mau P as a prominent name in contemporary house music. His subsequent releases, however, demonstrated that the project had not been created around one successful record alone.
Development of the project in 2023
In January 2023, Mau P released his second single, Gimme That Bounce, through Insomniac Records. The track retained his characteristic use of weighty bass, short vocal commands and clearly defined climactic sections. At the same time, he embarked on his first North American tour under the new alias.
His next release was Your Mind Is Dirty, issued through John Summit’s label, which was then known as Off The Grid before being renamed Experts Only. On the track, Mau P combined a hard-edged tech-house rhythm with a provocative vocal sequence that gradually becomes the central element of the build-up preceding the drop. The record had already become a regular feature of his live sets before its official release.
In the summer of 2023, Mau P and German producer Kevin de Vries released their collaborative single Metro through Afterlife. Compared with the direct tech-house approach of Mau P’s earlier releases, the track featured a more extended progression, a dramatic synthesiser theme and elements of melodic techno. Metro introduced the project not only to house audiences but also to listeners associated with the wider Afterlife scene.
Later that year, Dress Code was released through Black Book Records. Mau P also delivered three official remixes: Miracle by Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding, Armand van Helden’s I Want Your Soul and Ray of Solar by Swedish House Mafia. These commissions demonstrated how quickly he had become sought after not only as a club producer, but also as an artist capable of reworking material from musicians with distinctly different creative identities.
Releases and independent projects in 2024
In January 2024, Mau P returned to Repopulate Mars with BEATS FOR THE UNDERGROUND. The track had been tested in his sets for approximately a year and revised several times before its release. It subsequently reached number one on Beatport’s overall chart, becoming Mau P’s second release to achieve that result after Drugs From Amsterdam. The production draws on old-school house and hip-hop techniques, incorporating scratches, the signature phrase “Ayo, get ’em Mau P” and a deliberately dry rhythmic framework.
During the year, he released On Again through Insomniac Records, collaborated with Diplo and Gunna on Receipts, and issued MERTHER through Defected. The latter incorporates the recognisable vocal passage from Ini Kamoze’s World a Music. It was Mau P’s first release on Defected, one of the most enduring and influential house labels in the contemporary club-music industry.
In parallel, the producer continued developing his own Baddest Behaviour concept. The name was initially used for clothing and visual branding before evolving into an independent event series. Its first major shows took place in New York, Miami, Denver and Los Angeles. Rather than functioning as conventional tour branding, Baddest Behaviour became a dedicated platform through which Mau P could curate line-ups, stage presentation and the musical direction of each event.
In 2024, he also launched the weekly XXX Radio programme on SiriusXM and Minatrix.FM, and joined the resident DJ roster at Wynn Las Vegas venues Encore Beach Club and XS Nightclub. At Coachella, he performed alongside Diplo on the festival’s newly introduced Quasar stage.
The 2025–2026 period
In April 2025, Mau P performed a solo set on Coachella’s Sahara stage. Unlike his joint appearance with Diplo the previous year, the performance was centred on his own catalogue, new edits and compositions that had yet to be officially released.
On May 23, 2025, Mau P released his first EP, Too Big For B-Side, through Solomun’s Diynamic label. The record contained two tracks: Like I Like It and People Talk People Sing. The former is driven by a fluid acid bassline, while the latter explores a more restrained form of late-night house built around a dense low-frequency groove.
Another major release from this period was Mau P’s reworking of Tame Impala’s The Less I Know the Better, issued through Nervous Records. The track reached number one on Beatport’s overall chart. In August 2025, he followed it with TESLA on Insomniac Records, having first introduced the single during his festival performances.
During the summer of 2025, Baddest Behaviour secured a weekly residency at Pacha Ibiza. The series returned to Pacha in 2026, with events scheduled on Wednesdays from August to October. Announced guests included Seth Troxler, Sven Väth, Loco Dice, DJ Tennis, Carlita, Adam Ten, HAAi, Nic Fanciulli and other artists representing different branches of house and techno. The varied programming underlined Mau P’s intention not to confine the project to the boundaries of commercial tech house.
In February 2026, Mau P released the single neck through Black Book Records. An early version had first been played during his Sahara-stage performance at Coachella, after which the producer spent several months testing and refining the track in his live sets.
In 2026, Westveen confirmed that he was working on his debut full-length album. According to the producer, the aim is not to follow current club trends, but to create music capable of existing beyond short-lived genre cycles. At the time this biography was prepared, the album’s title and final release date had not been announced.
Musical style
Mau P’s contemporary sound occupies the space between tech house, classic house and techno. His productions are generally structured around bass and rhythm rather than extended melodic themes. He frequently uses short vocal phrases, scratches, spoken-word samples and carefully placed pauses designed to provoke a response on the dance floor.
Unlike his work as Maurice West, the newer material relies less heavily on large chord progressions and the standard festival arrangement built around a lengthy build-up before the drop. Mau P favours a more economical approach, allowing a limited number of elements to evolve gradually through automation, filtering and spatial processing.
His background in festival EDM has not disappeared from his music entirely. It remains evident in the precise construction of climactic moments and his understanding of how a track will translate in a large-scale setting. As a result, Mau P’s productions can work in both club sets and on festival stages without reverting to conventional big room structures.
The producer has cited classic soul, jazz, R&B and traditional house among his personal musical interests. In interviews, he has mentioned Sade, Stevie Wonder, Bobby Caldwell and Steely Dan. These influences are not always directly audible, but they help explain his interest in groove, vocal sampling and music whose impact depends on more than the power of its drop.
Place in contemporary electronic music
The transition from Maurice West to Mau P represents a comparatively rare form of artistic reinvention within electronic music: Westveen stepped away from an established audience and a recognisable festival brand to pursue a fundamentally different direction. The project’s success was not based on a new alias alone. Mau P developed an independent catalogue, a distinct visual language, an event series and a radio programme.
In 2024, Mau P entered the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs poll for the first time at number 91, before rising to number 77 in 2025. The ranking is based on a public vote and should not be regarded as a measure of production ability, but it does reflect the continued expansion of his international audience.
By the middle of the 2020s, Mau P had established a position across several segments of the dance-music industry. His releases appeared through both major American companies and specialist club labels, while his performance schedule combined festivals, large-scale headline events, extended club sets and his own Ibiza residency.
Studio work nevertheless remains at the core of the project. Westveen continues to test new productions during live performances and often revises them for several months before their official release. This approach connects his early experience in festival music with contemporary house culture, where the final form of a track is shaped not only in the studio but also by the immediate response of the dance floor.
