Los Angeles Times

SWEET DREAMS

Star DJ Steve Aoki has his cake and eats it too as he cooks up a career

- BY CHRIS LEE

LAS VEGAS — It was just past 2 a.m. on one of those “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” Saturday nights, and a capacity crowd of more than 3,000 revelers inside the Strip’s epic-proportion­ed nightclub Hakkasan Las Vegas were tripping the light fantastic. To the pummeling oontz- oontz-oontz of electro bass, they were dancing and drinking with hedonistic abandon when Steve Aoki decided it was time for cake. A live wire in skinny jeans, the superstar DJ leapt from behind his turntables to a narrow ledge ringing the DJ booth, a vanilla-frosted layer cake the size of a small Boogie board poised for launch in his hand. Between signs bearing the messages “Please cake me” and “I need the cake,” Aoki spotted his quarry: a grinning twentysome­thing bro with outstretch­ed arms. The DJ hurled the cake, splatterin­g the guy and everyone him around with enough of the sugary confection to provoke an ecstatic release that rippled through the crowd like electricit­y. This was hardly a spontaneou­s gesture. Up to a dozen times each show, performing worldwide more than 225 days a year, Aoki f lings cake at the crowd.

“Some people are like, ‘That’s so … wrong!’ ” Aoki explained earlier that night. “But I’m not caking people out of hate. It’s a love connection. Dance music is an emotional journey. It’s how well you can make people feel something that they haven’t felt.”

In a conversati­on laced with Fbombs, Aoki added, “The best part to me is post-cake. After the cake has hit their face, they turn around so the whole crowd can see: They’re on top of the … world!”

But as much as the scene at Hakkasan was business as usual for one of electronic dance music’s busiest touring acts — a DJ turned indie record label owner and music producer who earned his stripes as the rowdy figurehead for Los Angeles’ trend-setting dance music scene in the late-’00s — Aoki’s cake toss that night could also be viewed as a kind of opening salvo. As the performer embarks on a gamechangi­ng suite of new initiative­s, he’s lobbing more than cake to change the shape of his career.

Cross-section mix

Late next month, Aoki will drop “Neon Future Vol. 1,” the most ambitious — and uncharacte­ristically intellectu­al — effort of his career. The first installmen­t of a two-album collection focused on themes of futurism, evolving technology and scientific innovation, the record features Aoki’s synth-driven, rapid-beats-per-minute collaborat­ions with a cross-section of modern musicdom including multi-platinum hitmaker Will.i.am, arena-rocking emo-pop quartet Fall Out Boy, Empire of the Sun singer Luke Steele and rapper Machine Gun Kelly.

“His stage show is mad crazy,” said rapper Kid Ink, who collaborat­ed with Aoki on the track “Delirious (Boneless) ft. Kid Ink.” “We weren’t concerned about the words so much as just vibing and letting the words come to us by thinking about being in the club. What we would want to do in the club. We wanted to be instructio­nal.”

Already, “Boneless (Delirious) ft. Kid Ink” has become Aoki’s biggest hit. It has sold more than 225,000 downloads, is getting major airplay on Top 40 radio stations and has racked up nearly 24 million YouTube streams.

Meanwhile, a companion video series called “Neon Future Sessions” will likely upend expectatio­ns for the long-haired headbanger who sprays champagne on his audience as a matter of course. In the videos, Aoki interviews such techno-eminences as scientist-inventor Ray Kurzweil (behind the “singularit­y” theory that envisions the melding of human brains with supercompu­ters), author-theoretici­an Aubrey de Grey (whose books portend man’s ability to overcome the aging process) and digital media mogul Arianna Huffington, earnestly grilling them about the future.

“Whenever I learn something, I want to share it,” Aoki said. “Now I’m in this position where I get to interview the futurists of today, the people involved with my main interests: artificial intelligen­ce, brain research, technology.”

But it’s his family lineage as son of Rocky Aoki — the flamboyant, philanderi­ng, speedboat-racing founder of the Benihana restau- rant chain — that grabbed the attention of David Gelb, filmmaker behind the documentar­y “Jiro Dreams of Sushi.” An as-yet-untitled documentar­y produced by Gelb (directed by his protégé, Justin Krook) chroniclin­g Aoki’s complicate­d relationsh­ip with his father is set for theatrical release in January by Relativity Media.

Crossing the foyer of his new home, a 15,000-square-foot mansion with sweeping views of Las Vegas, Aoki grew nostalgic, recalling how little more than a decade ago he commanded just $50 a night for his DJ services and still viewed himself as an outsider. “I’m 36, but I still feel like a punk kid with $200 in my savings account,” Aoki said. “I feel like I stole this house! The [stuff] ain’t real, man.”

In June, Aoki traveled from Seoul, where he had performed before 35,000 people at Korea’s Ultra Music Festival, to Las Vegas, where he has lived since relocating from L.A. last spring. On touching down in the privately chartered plane he christened the #aokijet on his 1.2million-followers-strong Instagram account, the DJ met with Tony Hsieh, chief executive of Zappos.com.

Hsieh has made a personal crusade out of rehabilita­ting blighted downtown Las Vegas into a burgeoning hipster enclave. During their meeting at a funky outdoor shopping and entertainm­ent center, the two discussed ways Aoki might help Hsieh, including potentiall­y setting up a DJ school for kids or a pop-up store in conjunctio­n with the performer’s Dim Mak record label and fashion line.

“He’s mellow, down to earth,” Hsieh said. “Right now, we’re just brainstorm­ing things in the vein of ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if …’ ”

Contrary as it may seem to Aoki’s self-styled image as ringmaster to dance music’s decadent demi-

monde of Molly pills and Patron shots, the entertaine­r establishe­d his earliest cultural bona fides in the SoCal hardcore and punk rock scene, where building community and fight-the-power politics speak louder than bling.

Growing up in affluent Newport Beach after his parents’ divorce, the musician was effectivel­y cut off from his father’s Benihana fortune — estimated to have been worth as much as $100 million — thanks to the elder Aoki’s insistence that his six children attain success without his financial help. Still, the misconcept­ion the younger Aoki grew up a “rich kid” has dogged him ever since (not helped by Aoki’s early DJ moniker “Kid Millionair­e”).

“Hardcore was about going to shows, singing unity lyrics and the DIY lifestyle,” he said, seated in the back of an Audi speeding down Interstate 15. “The more you can bring creatively, the more respect you get. If you come in with Daddy’s money, they’re like, ‘Get the … out!’ ”

While enrolled as an undergrad at UC Santa Barbara, Aoki launched Dim Mak Records to release the kind of independen­t music he loved while also tirelessly writing critical pieces for hardcore fanzines and touring with his punk band, This Machine Kills. Epiphany in L.A.

After moving to Los Angeles in the early ’00s, however, Aoki experience­d an epiphany once exposed to the aggressive sound of acts such as MSTRKRFT and Justice that melded rock ’n’ roll aggression to an electronic dance infrastruc­ture. Learning to DJ specifical­ly to bring the sound to a larger audience, Aoki began promoting raucous Hollywood party events and cultivated a following. “It was the punk rock of dance music,” Aoki said. “And I was the ambassador for Los Angeles and bringing worldwide electro to L.A.”

Over time, the DJ transition­ed into producing his own music, recording electro remixes of alt-rock artists signed to Dim Mak before releasing his debut solo album, “Wonderland,” in 2012. And as EDM remade the Top 40 in its own image, the performer emerged as one of its biggest draws.

Last October, Aoki landed at No. 8 on DJ Magazine’s Top 100 DJs, the highest-ranking American on the list. And that reputation is borne out by his summer performanc­e schedule: a dual residency at Hakkasan and the notoriousl­y decadent Pacha nightclub in Ibiza, Spain; a packed touring roster of big music festivals across Europe as well as Aoki’s bring-thehouse-down set before a crowd of 130,000 at Las Vegas’ Electric Daisy Carnival in June.

An August date for Aoki to headline Madison Square Garden was postponed after the release of “Neon Future Vol. 1” was delayed, but according to Aoki’s management there’s been a bidding war between Brooklyn’s Barclays Center and Madison Square Garden to book Aoki. Meanwhile, Aoki will pull cross-country double-duty at Budweiser’s Made in America Festival, performing prime slots on back-to-back days in the fest’s Los Angeles and Philadelph­ia installmen­ts on Aug. 30 and 31.

Although Aoki declines to place a specific dollar value on his earnings as a resident DJ at Hakkasan, he ranks among the town’s top-earning EDM performers, whose marquee presence has revolution­ized Las Vegas’ entertainm­ent culture. Where nostalgia acts once ruled the Strip, dance music all-stars such as Calvin Harris, Afrojack and Hardwell have turned Vegas into a beacon for block-rocking beats with hundreds of millions of dollars in tourism revenue tied to their bookings.

According to Nightclub & Bar Magazine, the top five Vegas clubs combined to bring in a staggering $335 million last year. And in a clear indication of how important EDM acts can be to the bottom line, casino tycoon Steve Wynn recently admitted to paying DJs who perform at his venues up to $400,000 a night.

“It’s not the ticket count on those gigs but the spend — all that pricey liquor that gets consumed — that’s important,” noted Gary Bongiovann­i, editor of Pollstar magazine, which estimated Aoki’s tour earnings at $3.9 million last year without considerin­g his summer music festival or nightclub residency earnings. “The value of money is already distorted in Las Vegas. That’s why you see so many EDM gigs and $1,000 bottles of champagne.”

Dr. Dre drops in

As the clock wound toward 3 a.m., a menagerie of beautiful people and bold-faced names jostled for position near Aoki inside the Hakkasan DJ booth. Then several Tropic Beauty bikini modeling contestant­s and hip-hop icon/reality TV star Flavor Flav were suddenly displaced by a platoon of burly bodyguards. They hustled in none other than Dr. Dre. The gangsta rap trailblaze­r — who recently sold the company he cofounded, Beats Electronic­s, to Apple for a reported $3 billion — had come in from L.A. to see Aoki spin.

Just then, Aoki leapt out of the booth again to introduce another signature prop to the nightclub throng: an inf latable raft. He ordered his friend, the profession­al poker player/bon vivant Dan Bilzerian, into the river-rafting vessel, which was held aloft and passed along by dozens of clubgoers’ hands. Aoki innovated the gambit by manning the raft himself for his pandemoniu­m-inspiring performanc­e at the 2009 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. But these days, although the raft comes out every show, he seldom takes the trip.

“It sometimes feels like that movie ‘World War Z,’ ” Aoki said with a hint of regret. “People climbing on top of each other. It got too intense.”

Still, not everyone in EDM is enamored of the performer’s stagecraft. In May, fellow producer-DJ Seth Troxler challenged Aoki in an invective-filled op-ed on Vice.com, calling him an “overpaid, untalented, cake-throwing performing monkey” — an attack that prompted soul searching.

“You see the comments come in: ‘Aoki’s a clown, a poser.’ I do feel a bit insecure about it,” Aoki admitted. “I thought, ‘ Maybe I should stop caking.’ But then I thought, ‘I can’t let these people dictate the way I live.’ In this space, it’s all about the moment.”

After Rocky Aoki died in 2008, his children spent years locked in legal battle with the restaurate­ur’s widow, Keiko Ono, over his will. In May, a court awarded Steve and his half-sister, Devon, 50% each of a family trust that stipulates that when the siblings turn 45, they are set to inherit ownership rights to Benihana and income from the restaurant chain.

For his part — having independen­tly amassed a fortune of his own, in part thanks to his father’s unique brand of tough love — Steve Aoki has no plans to go on a wild spree with his inheritanc­e. Instead he said he intends to maintain the business and views the court verdict as a victory for his family against the woman he says cut off Rocky from his children in his dying days.

Looking to the future, the superstar DJ grew introspect­ive. He acknowledg­ed that balancing his public image with his personal goals can be tricky.

“The crazy parties! The cake face! It does come across as ignorant fun,” Aoki said. “But I have this whole other aspect that I really want to expose — to show I’m not some dumb, spoiled brat. I want meaning in my life.

“I want to help the empowermen­t of whatever I’m doing,” he said. “I never want to be watching on the sidelines.”

 ?? Photog raphs by Jay L. Clendenin
Los Angeles Times ?? SUPERSTAR DJ STEVE AOKI works the turntables in his booth for capacity crowds of more than 3,000 revelers partying in the Hakkasan Las Vegas nightclub.
Photog raphs by Jay L. Clendenin Los Angeles Times SUPERSTAR DJ STEVE AOKI works the turntables in his booth for capacity crowds of more than 3,000 revelers partying in the Hakkasan Las Vegas nightclub.
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across a crowd in a crammed Las Vegas club is all part of a night’s gig for music producer and top-tier DJ Aoki.
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ABOUT A DOZEN times a night, Aoki jumps from his booth to hurl a sheet cake at receptive members of his adoring audience.
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 ?? Jay L. Clendenin
Los Angeles Times ??
Jay L. Clendenin Los Angeles Times
 ??  ?? STEVE AOKI is aware that his expanding business aspiration­s may appear to be at odds with his public party image.
STEVE AOKI is aware that his expanding business aspiration­s may appear to be at odds with his public party image.

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