Maesic had been making electronic music for the better part of a decade when he met Diplo at a club in France. The French producer later DM’d Diplo, asking if he could send over his unreleased music who told Maesic to pass it to his A&R. Maesic sent the files, then waited a year for a response. But when the answer came, things moved fast.

“He was like, ‘Yo bro, the music is fire,’” Maesic recalls the A&R saying. He also told Maesic that Diplo was playing that night in St. Tropez, a short drive from where Maesic was then staying.

“So I drove over there, and I met Diplo for the first time,” he says. “The meeting was short, but it was really good.”

The two artists began working together over email, then text, and in September of 2023, Maesic flew to Los Angeles for a studio session at Diplo’s house in Malibu. He didn’t know it was a test, but after the session was over, he was told he’d passed.

“The [A&R] John [Connolly] was like, ‘We wanted to see how you were in studio, because it’s really important, the human side of the of the music production. You you had a great vibe. You’re perfect.”

Thus began a working relationship that’s resulted in Maesic collaborating on hits including Major Lazer and Jung Kook’s 2023 track “Close to You” and Diplo and Jessie Murph’s “Heartbroken,” among a long list of ghost productions and collabs Maesic has done with other artists. Out in Malibu, Maesic and Diplo often start their work days with a game of pickleball and a sauna session before heading to the studio.

But the biggest perk has been the experience and connections. Maesic calls the last two years “a snowball effect.” Living in L.A. has connected him with the city’s (and Diplo’s) sprawling network of artists, with Maesic spending a lot of time with L.A. scene stalwarts like Wax Motif and Dillon Francis. A meeting with Anyma at a club in Ibiza also lead to Maesic’s credit on Anyma’s May album The End of Genysis.

But happily, his biggest success has been his own. After making the track in his Paris living room, Maesic released his breakout single “Life Is Simple (Move Your Body)” in March. Lyrics about life optimization tips — “if you don’t have enough time, stop watching TV,” demands vocalist Salomé Das — are fused with a simmering beat.

“My roommate showed me the ‘life is simple’ sample and said, ‘You should do a song with these,’” he recalls. “So I put those vocals on my beat, and it sounded really good.” Maesic sent the song to Diplo, who told him the chords sounded like Marshall Jefferson’s 1986 house classic “The House Music Anthem (Move Your Body)” and that he should try to mix the two vocals. So he did, “and it sounded really good.”

Maesic had already released a six-song string of tracks on Helix Records, the label founded by Patrick Moxey in 2022. As it turned out, Jefferson’s catalog is published through Helix’s affiliated company, Payday Music Publishing, so Helix sent it to Jefferson for clearing and Jefferson sent back a few tweaks. French producer Bob Sinclar, a friend of Maesic’s, also gave a few arrangement suggestions.

But by this point point, he’d “heard it so many times I didn’t know if it was good or not anymore.” So he also sent it to his friend Hugel, the star French producer. “He was like was like, ‘Bro, this is a hit.’” Hugel was right. Upon release, “Life Is Simple (Move Your Body)” started getting roughly 4,000 streams a day, then 50,000 a week. All the artists involved in the song seeded it out to the dance community ahead of release, with Helix’s global promo teams working it with partners at DSPs, radio, and beyond.

A clip of dance legend Fatboy Slim playing the song then went viral this past spring, and then Helix commissioned a post from TikTok-er Crazy Auntie Ann, who’d already posted a video dancing to “Move Your Body” and was a longtime fan of Jefferson’s original. Maesic and Jefferson also created content together ahead of the release date, with all of these moments ultimately sending the song to No. 1 on Beatport’s Afro-house chart and putting it at No. 4 on the Beatport Top 10. Maesic says the track is now averaging 300,000 streams a day.

The success has changed his life. “I’ve been making music for a lot of people in the background for so long, and this is finally giving light to my artist project and to Maesic,” he says. “I get like, five texts a day, like people in a coffee shop in Guatemala or at the gym in Ibiza, being like, ‘They’re playing your song.’ People send me vocals wanting to collab. It feels really good.”

He’s been working towards this success since he got into dance music in 2013, when he was in his early teens and Martin Garrix released his era-defining smash “Animals.” Maesic, born Emeric Boxall, not only loved the song, but was inspired by the fact that Garrix was famously just 16 years old when he made it.

Maesic started tinkering on a DAW and absorbing the big room house of the era via the internet, becoming a fan of artists such as Steve Aoki, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike and Tiësto. He started remixing their music and releasing his edits on SoundCloud, sometimes putting up his bootlegs even before the originals were released, a clever move he used to gain traction. His parents and music teacher encouraged him, and by the time he was 16 — he’d done an official remix of Maroon 5’s 2017’s “Cold.” Then at 18, he signed with Universal Music France, where he produced dance pop aimed at radio, a sound he says, “I don’t relate to today, but which got me playing shows and festivals.”

After his tenure with the label ended, he spent time in Paris before temporarily moving to Miami, where, he says, “I knew no one.” But a producer he’d met in France owned a studio in town and, through that connection, Maesic started ghost producing for artists across hip-hop, reggaetón, electronic and beyond. “I learned so much and met so many people during those two years,” he says. He then returned to France committed to working on his own project, a moment that coincided with the rise of Afro and Latin house, sounds Maesic started producing in with a focus on making music to play during his shows. This was around the time he linked with Diplo.

When he talks to Billboard over Zoom, Maesic’s momentum is obvious. Funny and engaging, he takes the call in the sunshine from an outdoor cafe in Corsica. Tomorrow he’ll fly to a show in Ibiza, then in France, then South Korea, Bali, Serbia’s EXIT festival and beyond, with the run eventually landing him at Burning Man at the end of the summer and more shows unrolling from there. For someone who, at 25, has already been working at music for roughly half his life, he seems genuinely gobsmacked by — yet also zen about — how it’s all going.

“I try to enjoy the process and the path, because you can get caught up so quickly in like ‘What’s next song? What’s the next show? What’s next thing?’ I used to be like that. Now, I try to take a deep breath in and enjoy the cities I’m traveling to what’s happening in each moment.” (In terms of what’s next musically, however, a trio of remixes of “Life Is Simple (Move Your Body)” have been released throughout June, with the most recent by French producer Trym out today, June 30.)

Maesic’s humanistic approach to his career also applies to the studio, where he focuses on genuine connections. “Being a producer is like being a vibe creator too,” he says. “I’m emotional and hyper-sensitive, so I feel like I feel the emotions and the vibe of people in the studio and know what to tell them and how to get the best out of them. Makes jokes, talk with people, make them feel good.”

Embodying genuine humanity amid an industry moving at warp speed seems to be setting Maesic up for a fruitful future. His career so far is not just a testament to talent and hard work, but also that being a good hang is both a nice way to live and a competitive advantage.

“It’s like a shortcut in some ways,” he says, “because you just become friends and create relationships with people, and that opens doors.”