By Virangna Pal.
Breda has been no stranger to housing the greatest DJ acts for a while now, but when Hardwell transcended EDM’s heavyweight champion Armin van Buuren last year to be crowned the world’s best DJ, the small Dutch town knew they’d more than just marked their place in the hall of fame.
It all started in a shabby room of a 14 year old named Robert Van de Corput. Inspired by the likes of Tiesto and Fedde Le Grand, Robert experimented with combining his talent of the keyboard with computer generated blips and beats. The young Dutch struck gold when Tiesto found him and offered to be his mentor. However, despite having remixing debut and consequently winning a Dutch music award in 2005, but it wasn’t until two years later when he gained international recognition for his bootleg of “show me love”.
From there, it’s been an uphill ride. From the times where he’s had to take his dad along to his sets because he was underage, Robert aka Hardwell has come a long way. Shooting up the same trajectory Tiesto took, from being rated 24 to 6 to 1, the DJ Hardwell of 2014, a lot more than an internationally acclaimed act. He owns his own production studio by the name of revealed, home label to many upcoming dj’s like Dyro and Dannic. Looking back at the little boy who wanted to be No.1 DJ, the world’s best DJ has only got one thing to say- “if you can dream it, you can do it”.
Irrespective of how famous he gets, the one thing that sets him apart is the fact he never stops experimenting. Every new track of his has something new, like dash of hip-hop or trance, to add to his signature energetic, progressive, big room style of music which fans like to term ‘Hardwell’ music. To get a dose of pure progressive-electro-energy-fused Hardwell magic, check out his weekly “Hardwell on Air” podcast. You won’t be disappointed.
