Steve Aoki on Not Being a Diva, His New Music, and Latest Collaborations
I love music and my wife and I recently interviewed Steve Aoki for Popdust, Here’s the article below:
Wearing a Dim Mak logo t-shirt and white pants splattered with black paint accents, we found Aoki stretched out on the living room couch of his suite — presumably resting and relaxing after his last flight and before his next show. With over 200 shows per year (sometimes two per day), in addition to his busy schedule writing, producing and running Dim Mak (his record label) among other things, it’s clear the occasion for rest is rare. Not wanting to take up too much of his time, we jumped right into it.
We met Steve Aoki at his hotel room in Las Vegas on July 4th. He had been in Vegas for a show the night before, then flew off to Texas for another show, and arrived back in Vegas just in time for a 4th of July set at ARIA’s JEWEL Nightclub.
You were here in Vegas a night ago, went to Texas for a day and now you’re back here in Vegas again. You’re doing over 200 shows a year, sometime more than one in a day. What keeps you going?
Aoki: I don’t have a choice (laughs). It’s also like, once the ball is rolling it’s not difficult. I think a big part of it is that the ego itself can be your biggest problem, so if you can deflate your ego and know your work is the primary concern — at the end of the day, I do these shows so I’m connecting with more people around the world wherever I’m playing and as long as that’s in my sights then the hard part of waking up or not sleeping or all that effort — you just just have to get through it. I mean I’m a bootcamp type of personality, I’m tough love, I was raised that way. I don’t like being coddled, I like a bootcamp mentality and I kind of train my team like that too. Like we gotta get up, we gotta do these shows, if you can’t hack it then it’s not for you.
So nobody is going to say Steve Aoki lacks effort?
Aoki: Yeah, it’s a discipline too. You have to have a discipline and know what you’re priorities are too. You can’t be a diva. As soon as you’re a diva, you just can’t, you can only go so far. And you realize what’s stopping you is superficial. At the end of the day, if the show is executed the way you want it it to be, if it’s connecting with people, that’s the whole point of everything I’m doing.
We’ve been listening to your recent single Back 2 U. It’s a really uplifting, fun song and seems sort of different from your usual sound.
Aoki: Yeah actually a lot of the music that I’m working on right now is just generally a whole new palette of colors, it’s a whole new sound set, a whole new energy, a whole new vibe. Just like everything, from Wonderland, my first album, to Neon Future I, Neon Future II, to now Neon Future III, it’s like and I’m also producing for other artists as well so that’s opened me up in a different way. And also the state of electronic music is changing, so because of that I’m changing the sounds I’m using. The lead elements of the songs that are distinctive of what people remember are different. So the way I think about finishing a song is totally different, and the collaborations I choose are also different.
What goes into how you choose your collaborations?
Aoki: Can’t Go Home with Adam Lambert and Felix Jaehn, like I reached out to Felix to do a song. I was already working on a song and I wanted it to have a Felix touch. I wanted someone outside of my world to attack it and get into it and massage it to find this like special name . The same with Boehm and Back 2 U. Boehm is a musician, he can play a lot of different instruments and he added a lot to the record that I wouldn’t have thought of. And if I work with someone that I always work with traditionally, we probably would have used the same wheelhouse. So essentially the most interesting collaborations I’ve done have — I mean some of the more effective collaborations that people know about Steve Aoki music have been in a very traditional wheelhouse like me and Afrojack, or me and Laidback Luke, or whatever it might be — But if I want to spread my wings and do something new, which is the whole point of all this new music, then I’m going to think outside the box. And I’m not necessarily thinking about notoriety, I’m thinking about just who’s going to add the colors that I wouldn’t normally add to it, not like what name could I add to it. Boehm is a very brand new producer but we put out this music already and it was a really great collaboration. There’s a lot of that going on, like working with younger artists that are doing some really interesting stuff.
You started Dim Mak before you started DJ’ing, but a lot people know you as a DJ. How do you see yourself: as a DJ, a label owner, a producer — what do you identify yourself with the most?
Aoki: It’s like I wear most of my hats and I wear them at different times, sometimes I wear them all at the same time. I think that’s just how it is nowadays. I mean if you ask any DJ that’s successful in their own right, they’re wearing multiple hats. Whatever people want to label me as, whether it’s as a DJ or Dim Mak, or whatever you know.
Whats your favorite thing that you do?
Aoki: I guess it’s just making music and playing music. Before I was even starting Dim Mak, I was in bands, so I’ve always been making music and playing music whether it was playing guitar or singing in a band, or recording on my TASCAM four track recorder, or recording in a live room studio, or making music on a lap top. It’s like a different medium but it’s all the same thread, just creating something and then being able to perform it and play it out
What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen a fan do for you?
Aoki: I’ll tell you the most thoughtful is sometimes I get these really massive oil paintings. Like I got one that was probably 10 ft. tall and 5 ft. wide. I put it in my house because it’s so good. This woman is incredible, she’s painted like 50 different paintings. She’ll spend like 5 hours a day for 30 days doing these pencil sketches.
Well you’ve got such an iconic image, your look is very recognizable. I know you’ve spoken about your dad’s marketing with Benihana in the past and just having fun with the brand, does that inspire you?
Aoki: Yeah of course. I mean the thing is he just had fun with what he was doing, and people loved that he had fun. He just pushed the limit with everything, and it always lead back to his brand. So it was like, I’m going to have fun and go watch boat racing and do some really crazy extreme sports but I’ll do it with Benihana on the side of my boat or Benihana on the side of my hot air balloon. So at the end of the day, it’s kind of like he loved doing it and he didn’t really have to pay for it. Or he did, but in a way it went back to the brand. So I definitely am the same concept, like I’m having fun doing what I love to do and creating this whole scene or being part of this scene and helping out other artists develop and find their vision. I mean I was into that before I was even finding my own vision personally.
