Steve Aoki

At 46 years old, Steve Aoki has this physical status:

Aoki founded his own label, Dim Mak Records, in 1996. The label has released music by other electro house artists such as MSTRKRFT, The Bloody Beetroots, Felix Cartal, and Mustard Pimp, as well as Bloc Party, The Rakes, The Kills, Klaxons, Infected Mushroom, Scanners, Whitey, and Mystery Jets. Aoki teamed up with Blake Miller of the Los Angeles-based band Moving Units to produce remixes. The duo of Miller and Aoki work under the moniker Weird Science. Aoki has also been in numerous bands, including This Machine Kills, which released an album on Ebullition Records, Esperanza, and The Fire Next Time.

In May 2006, Aoki became a board member for MC5 bassist Michael Davis' Music Is Revolution Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides music education support within public schools. Aoki's debut DJ mix album, Pillowface and His Airplane Chronicles was released in January 2008. He had an Essential Mix that aired on BBC Radio 1 on August 2, 2008, and again on October 27, 2012. Aoki has collaborated with fellow producers and thus far has released singles with The Bloody Beetroots, Armand Van Helden of Duck Sauce, Afrojack, Laidback Luke, Tai, Chris Lake, Angger Dimas, Sidney Samson, and Tiësto. In his interviews, Twitter feed or from his YouTube channel he has shown teasers or has discussed doing future collaborations with Diplo, Knife Party, Datsik, Chris Lake, and more.

Aoki has remixed many artists and bands, including The Jackson 5, Drake, Kanye West, Eminem, Lil Wayne, Mike Posner, Girls Generation, All American Rejects, Refused, The Killers, Bassnectar, Lenny Kravitz, Bloc Party, Snoop Dogg, Robin Thicke, S.P.A., Kid Cudi, Fërnando Oviedo, Chester French, BTS and Peaches. He remixed the track "The Wind Blows" that features on the UK edition of The All-American Rejects' 2008 album When The World Comes Down. On November 10, 2009, he released a remix for Drake's song "Forever". The song features Drake, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, and Eminem. The track made it to the top of Hype Machine's chart in December 2009.

Through relentless touring, he gained huge support from colleges. He is widely known for his acrobatic crowd surfing stunts, throwing cake at fans, spraying champagne bottles, and riding rafts on the dance floor. Performing an average of 250 shows a year, he started touring with production via bus tours, like the spring 2012 Deadmeat Tour, when he headlined more than 55 cities in 60 dates across the United States and Canada. Many of the artists Aoki collaborates with make appearances on tour with him. He has played lesser-traveled regions – in 2009 he played a show in Beijing, China, with Diplo at a night organized by promoters Split Works. In July 2012, Aoki was added to the Pollstar Top 100 North American Tours in their 2012 Mid Year Report. The list designated Aoki as the highest grossing dance artist in North America for the first half of the year.

In March 2010 Aoki released "I'm in the House", a collaboration with Zuper Blahq—alter-ego of The Black Eyed Peas singer will.i.am. The song charted at No. 29 in the UK Singles Chart in its first week of release, and later entered the UK Dance Chart and the UK Indie Chart, peaking within the top five in each chart. The song was featured on an Episode of MTV's Jersey Shore, as well as in the feature film Piranha 3D and the trailer for Think Like a Man. Producer-songwriter Lucas Secon confirmed in a May 2010 interview with HitQuarters that he and Rivers Cuomo had recently worked with Aoki on a single.

Aoki's first solo album, Wonderland, was released January 2012 and features guest vocalists and musicians LMFAO, Kid Cudi, Kay, Travis Barker, will.i.am a.k.a. Zuper Blahq, Wynter Gordon, Rivers Cuomo, Lil Jon, Chiddy Bang, Lovefoxxx of CSS, Big John Duncan (former guitarist of the punk band The Exploited), and others. A remix album was released shortly after.

During Aoki's set in the Halloween electronic music festival Thriller Music Park at Madrid Arena, Madrid, Spain, 16 600 people crowded the hall, authorized for 10 600. In the resulting stampede, three young women were crushed to death, two died weeks later and further 29 people were injured.

On December 11, 2012, Aoki released his first EP, It's the End of the World As We Know It, which includes three songs. Aoki was nominated for Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronica Album for Wonderland at the 2013 55th Annual Grammy Awards.

On October 11, 2013, Aoki collaborated with Linkin Park on the song "A Light That Never Comes" that was included on the remix album, Recharged, 18 days later. Several remixes of the song were added on the January 2014 digital download EP A Light That Never Comes (Remixes). "A Light That Never Comes" was used in films such as Expendables 3. Aoki finished in 6th place in the 2013 America's Best DJ competition-a vote and promotion to find out the country's most popular DJ conducted by DJ Times magazine and Pioneer DJ.

From 2011 to 2014, he had a number of other tracks included in television shows, commercials, and film. This included "I'm In the House", used in the music festival documentary Electric Daisy Carnival in 2011, which in 2014 was used in a trailer for the comedy Think Like A Man Too as well. In 2012, his track "Beat Down", featuring Australian rapper Iggy Azalea, was used in a promo for the reality show Bad Girls All-Star Battle. From 2013 to 2014 his track "Boneless" was used in a number of commercials, with companies including Scion, Budweiser, and Sol Republic. His track "Get Me Outta Here" was used in a Scion commercial in 2014 as well, while "Free the Madness" was used in a 2014 Bud Light commercial. His track "Flight" in 2014 was used in a commercial for Sol Republic. Aoki's song "Back to Earth", featuring Fall Out Boy, was used in the 2014 film Step Up: All In, while his collaborative single "Freak" with Diplo and Deorro, featuring Steve Bays, was used in the 2014 film 22 Jump Street.

The first part of Aoki's two-part album, Neon Future I, was released on September 30, 2014, and reached No. 1 on Dance/Electronic Albums in the United States. The second album, Neon Future II, features artists such as Snoop Lion and Rivers Cuomo. In the United States it peaked at No. 32 on the Billboard 200, No. 1 on Dance/Electronic Albums, and No. 4 on the Independent Albums chart. In Belgium, it reached No. 68 on the Ultratop 200 Albums chart.

In May 2015, it was announced that Relativity Productions had acquired the rights to distribute the documentary I'll Sleep When I'm Dead in the United States. Filmed during the making of his Neon Future double album, the film is focused on Aoki and delves into his family history, lifestyle, music, and his business. It is co-produced by Matthew Weaver and David Gelb, who together had previously worked on the 2011 documentary Jiro Dreams Of Sushi. Among the executive producers are Ryan Kavanaugh and Tucker Tooley.

As with the first in the series, Aoki released a number of promo singles leading up to the release of Neon Future II. The second of those singles, "Darker Than Blood", came out on April 14, 2015, and features vocals from Linkin Park. According to Aoki, the song had been a work in progress since 2012. Mike Shinoda rewrote Aoki's original lyrics to make them darker, because Shinoda thought Aoki's original lyrics were "too happy". Neon Future II was released on May 12, 2015, through Dim Mak. Among other artists, the second Neon Future featured Snoop Lion and Rivers Cuomo. It peaked at No. 2 on the US Dance/Electronic Albums chart, among other placements in the United States. In Belgium it reached No. 93 on the Ultratop 200 Albums chart.

The 2015 science fiction thriller film The Hive features tracks from the album Neon Future by Aoki,' who created the soundtrack and also served as an executive producer. Aoki is also the central character in the documentary I'll Sleep When I'm Dead.

Aoki's fourth studio album, Steve Aoki Presents Kolony, was released on July 21, 2017. It features the songs "Night Call" featuring Migos and Lil Yachty, "Lit" with Gucci Mane, "Been Balling" with Lil Uzi Vert and the lead single "Without You" with DVBBS featuring 2 Chainz which was released in April and debuted at Aoki's Ultra Music Festival 2017 set in Miami. After the death of Linkin Park lead singer Chester Bennington in July 2017, Aoki released two tribute singles: "Darker Than the Light That Never Bleeds," a mashup of "A Light That Never Comes" and "Darker Than Blood," and a remix of the group's single "One More Light," dubbed the "Chester Forever" remix. In November 2017, it was confirmed that Aoki would be producing a remix of BTS’s song "Mic Drop" featuring rapper Desiigner, which was released on November 24. That day, Aoki also released a collaboration with Fifth Harmony's Lauren Jauregui, titled "All Night".

In February 2018, Aoki announced the release of his five-track EP titled 5OKI, the follow up to his 2016 EP 4OKI. The EP would feature him collaborating with other producers to produce a "cross-genre" track collective. "I’m really putting an emphasis on EDM and I'm putting an emphasis on cross-genre collaboration. For EDM itself I’m making a big statement of re-claiming it as something [that’s] really important to me – kinda like giving back to my community," stated Aoki prior to the EP's release. The tracks were released at a weekly interval over five weeks from 23 March to 20 April, with "Mayhem" featuring Quintino releasing on 23 March 2018, followed by "Pika Pika" with Loopers, "It's Time" with Laidback Luke, "Anthem" with Hardwell, and concluding with "Moshi Moshi" with Vini Vici.

On May 18, 2018, Aoki released new single "Pretender" featuring AJR and rapper Lil Yachty. In June 2018, Aoki remixed Rita Ora's hit single "Girls" featuring Charli XCX, Bebe Rexha and Cardi B. Later that month, alongside Italian DJ Marnik, they released their version of "Bella Ciao", which garnered controversy. The new dance music version of the track was deemed inappropriate and insulting by many. On July 20, 2018, Aoki released the single "Lie to Me" featuring singer-songwriter Ina Wroldsen.

On August 6, 2018, in an interview, he announced the release of his new album Neon Future III. It included collaborations with Ira Wroldsen, Nicki Minaj, Maluma, Blink-182, and BTS.

On October 25, 2018, Aoki released "Waste It on Me" which features BTS members, RM, Jimin (with backup vocals) and Jungkook. The single, which was also included on Aoki's album, Neon Future III, marked Aoki and BTS' third collaboration as well as BTS' first all-English single. Neon Future III was released on October 9, 2018. In an interview with EDM.com, Aoki announced that his next album, Neon Future IV, would be released in 2019; it was later released in April 2020.

On September 9, 2019, Aoki released "Let It Be Me", a collaboration with Backstreet Boys, which came about after Aoki met Nick Carter at his Vegas show.

On June 24, 2020, he co-released "Ninja Re Bang Bang Steve Aoki Remix" with Japanese artist Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. This is a remix of Kyary's 2013 hit song of the same name. This song is used as a theme song for free-to-play video game Ninjala, released the same day.

On August 21, 2020, Aoki remixed several songs by the anarcho-punk band Crass under a 12" single "normal never was III" with all purchases going towards domestic abuse charity "refuge"

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