Billboard‘s current cover star Mau P swung by the Billboard House @ SXSW on Sunday (March 15) to talk about music and more ahead of his headlining set at Austin’s The Concourse Project. (This show was originally scheduled to happen as part of Billboard Presents THE STAGE at SXSW 2026 at Moody Amphitheater, but was moved due to severe weather.)
Speaking with Billboard senior music correspondent Katie Bain, the Dutch producer reflected on his earliest inspirations, sharing that he grew up listening to “a lot of Snoop Dogg and Pharrell, and my dad would always play jazz in the car that I had no interest in at the time, but it always stuck in my head.”
The artist in fact grew up in a highly musical household where his mom was a singer and his dad was a session musician, music teacher and conductor, with the first floor of the family home occupied by a music studio.
“I could always just go downstairs and play whatever instrument was available,” Mau said. “To me it was just like, ‘If I don’t know what to do later in life, I can always fall back on whatever my parents were doing. Music was almost like the last resort, if I didn’t think of anything else to do that was not music.” (He also revealed that before music, he considered becoming both a designer and a camera jib operator.)
Of course, music has worked out very well for Mau P, who’s skyrocketed to headlining status over the last four years with a signature sound that’s at once darkly groovy, sexy and playful. He arrived to this style after years cutting his teeth in the mainstage EDM world under the name Maurice West.
“When I transitioned into Mau P, it felt like my whole background of doing Maurice West was being put to use for a different kind of direction,” he said. “I had this knowledge of really big sounds that were made for really big stages, and the only goal was to get everybody jumping up and down. My thought was, ‘How do I package that into a sound that’s sexier and also approachable for the clubs and not just for the big stage and the big speakers, but also just for your earbuds.”
Landing on this sound has also made for Mau to play both massive festival stages and trendsetting parties. “It’s a very thin line between me being able to play CircoLoco, but also me being able to play an hour at Coachella in a headline slot and still make it entertaining for people,” he said of his viral show at the festival last April, “and not just in a way that it’s fireworks and flames, but where I’m mixing for a very long time. I wanted to show people that I’m actually taking my time DJing and doing this craft.”
Between all the shows, Mau is making time to work on the debut album he announced in January. Finding the vibe for this collection has found him back in the studio making songs “that you can play on a piano and you can sing it, and it still holds up nice,” he said. “I’m not trying to follow what’s popping right now. I’m just trying to take it back to the core, so it’s not going to be dependent on like, ‘I mixed those drums really well and that has the fattest bass ever.’”
“Like, you know me, it will have the fattest bass ever,” he continued. “But it still has to be timeless.”
