Steve Aoki

“My favorite country to visit is Japan.”

“Vegas is a very fickle market that's about fun. It will change to what people want.”

“I like looking at a future where we're expanding our creativity and brightening our lives. I believe that eventually we'll get to a point where we'll be able to live indefinitely through our technology.”

“On my YouTube channel, I put up 3-4 videos a week, and I spend a lot of money to maintain that content. When I travel, I travel with a videographer and a photographer no matter what.”

“Whenever I work with different artists, I expand as a song writer, as a producer, and I always want to try and find the bridge between my world and their world.”

“Self-discovery is so important in identity processing: who you hang out with, what clothes you wear, what shows you see. As a kid, I found out about things through friends. I would go to hardcore shows with 50 people.”

“I love working with producers, like doing the record with Laidback Luke on 'Turbulence' and working with Afrojack on 'No Beef.'”

“Dance music is my love, is my passion, is my life. I live for my fans and take my art very seriously.”

“My favorite book is 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' by Bill Bryson.”

“'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.”

“Artists are creating their own genre sound, and other artists are building upon that sound and already creating a huge subculture created around one particular sound created by one artist. So, with all that happening, the genres are going to break down, and there's going to be a multitude of sound coming out.”

“I wrote probably my phattest banging record with Knife Party: 'Pile Driver.'”

“Being a musician since I was a teen, Guitar Center is the staple. You need anything to create, it's there. You need a Guitar Center. You gotta give it homage. It's a tool shed, and without the tool shed, it's hard to create.”

“No matter what I do, I can't help but feel that I'm under a microscope. Some of it is completely silly, and some of it is meant to be hurtful. For example, a website accumulated all of my music videos to point out perceived Illuminati images. I loved that one. Of course, it was all ridiculous but funny.”

“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 love to work with artists that were able to find a brand new name and create something really exciting and fresh.”

“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.”

“I always tell up-and-coming DJs you have to really love what you do and find that interest to drive you. It requires so much attention to detail, and it takes up a lot of your time. You hear a song, and there are so many little pieces that make that song work. It requires a lot of patience, diligence and resilience.”

“'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.”

“I've been doing my record label for 15 years called Dim Mak. I started my label when I was 19 in '96. I started putting out an eclectic roster of artists. In 2003, we found a band called Bloc Party, and in 2004, we started getting remixes for Bloc Party, and at the same time I was throwing Dim Mak parties in Los Angeles.”