Steve Aoki
Steve Aoki
Steven Hiroyuki "Steve" Aokiis an American electro house musician, record producer, and music executive. In 2012, Pollstar designated Aoki as the highest grossing dance artist in North America from tours. He has collaborated with producers and vocalists such as will.i.am, Afrojack, LMFAO, Iggy Azalea, Lil Jon, and Laidback Luke, and is known for his remixes of artists such as Kid Cudi...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusic Producer
Date of Birth30 November 1977
CityMiami, FL
CountryUnited States of America
For me, I guess the general reason for using social media is that the connection I have with people who are interested in my music is extremely important to me. That connection is like the pillar in everything I do. I want to embrace that connection and make it stronger.
To come out here and play on Woodstock grounds, first year ever headlining on the main stage there's nothing more iconic. [Mysteryland] is one of those festivals that holds down the legacy of dance music it's been around for so many years. It's been part of what we do for so long. It kinda makes sense to bring the tradition over here to America. The festival grounds of Woodstock, that's pretty epic.
Grateful to The Kerry Gaynor Method for saving my manager's life. He quit smoking thanks to their genius Method.
I have been doing merch' since I was 15 and in bands when I was a teenager - silk-screening shirts, making the emulsion in my mom's closet I converted into a dark room, through college. That's essentially how us bands survived was selling homemade t-shirts.
'Boneless,' even though we were thinking about servicing it to radio, it made more sense putting a vocal on there. This was actually the first time that I really looked at doing a song for radio and kind of let go of some control and listened to a lot of different radio pluggers and had Ultra come in and help out with ideas.
My life, I swear, is, like, 75% public. I have a very small percentage of my life that is private. But I do keep that private life private.
'Neon Future' is, in short, a positive outlook on human progress and technology, looking forward to a bright, colorful utopia. It's embracing the future and looking toward the future in a more optimistic way.
It's a really diverse time in music, with all these different DJs and all these different categories, and we are all taking footnotes from everyone else. There are no real genre boundaries anymore; you can take a trance idea and put it into a trap record - it's not that uncommon.
I never cake someone who doesn't want to be caked - at least, I try not to. Sometimes I miss my target. I'm pretty much going through the crowd making sure I find someone who wants to get caked. If you don't want to get caked, shake your head or tell me you don't want to get caked. It's that easy.
I wrote probably my phattest banging record with Knife Party: 'Pile Driver.'
A lot of my building blocks - who I am kind of as an artist - all came from being in L.A.
I love to work with artists that were able to find a brand new name and create something really exciting and fresh.
I love working with producers, like doing the record with Laidback Luke on 'Turbulence' and working with Afrojack on 'No Beef.'
The craziest thing I've probably done during a show is the balcony dive - it was pretty scary. I was like, 'This could result in an injury of mine,' but somehow I survived.