Steve Aoki traces his success through Blue the Color of Noise, a memoir inspired by his 2015 Netflix documentary I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, blending art, trauma—like his father’s hepatitis C-linked death—and futurism via collaborations with Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey de Grey. His $6K-per-pill Cellurgen obsession contrasts with Rogan’s lion’s mane mushroom experiments, while both critique psychedelics’ Schedule I classification despite potential benefits like micro-dosing for focus. Aoki’s Las Vegas shift (2013) capitalized on tax breaks and a 16,000 sq ft foam-pit mansion, mirroring how electronic music replaced gambling as the city’s cultural engine. They debate Bruce Lee’s legacy, dismissing Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s portrayal while celebrating his martial arts fusion—ultimately framing progress as personal accountability over external excuses. [Automatically generated summary]
And more about like how I got there, you know, the story and different piecemeal stories that are thematic and, you know, with this overarching idea of blue, which is like the different shades of blue of my life.
It's my favorite color and actually my last name means blue tree.
And try, you know, if you always do the same thing over and over again, you're never really learning.
So it's, it's, it's been like a great learning process, you know, putting out this memoir and, and, and, And like actually opening up this vulnerable side to who I am that I don't necessarily – I don't talk about really.
For people that know me, like my fans or my music fans or anyone else that knows Steve Aoki, they don't really know what's in this book.
They might have a glimpse of it from my documentary, which I did, because I talk really deeply about my relationship with my father and this drive that I have as a kid to make it.
And it shows you enough where it's, okay, now I have a little bit more than...
My live shows and what's already out there.
But this goes, you know, obviously a lot deeper because it's a book and we're going through emotions and the vulnerability.
And I want to tell stories of the hardships.
And at the end of the day, I want to speak to young kids out there, young people out there, even older people that are trying to figure their own thing out.
And because the documentary related in so many ways on a personal level, That I shared there.
This is how I wanted to share that through my own words.
Do you find that writing these things down and just thinking about your life and trying to express it in a way that's going to resonate with people, that this helps you think about it and helps you sort of Categorize it and put it all in your head.
For retention on what I gather or take away from what I'm reading.
So I'm always like reading and writing or writing and scribbling in my book or like writing off the side in a notepad or like now, like a tablet or something.
But it's like you need to gather your headspace so you have retention.
And when he said it to me, I was like, God damn it, I don't write enough like that.
I write more...
Comedy stuff, trying to write material and essays on things and pull jokes out of them.
But I think there's probably a great benefit for anybody to just sort of write about your thoughts.
Dear diary.
You know?
I mean, there's something to that because in that time, I mean, you could speak to this because you've written a book on yourself, but in that time of writing about yourself and reflecting upon your life, you probably learn a little bit about who you are and why you're the way you are.
Yeah, and, you know, thinking about this, I never really thought about it to this point or found the parallel here, but when I started seeing a therapist to go into my past and try to break down what, like, why I make the decisions I do or, like, why I spiral out here or do something that I am not comfortable with or I want to change, a lot of that I'm able, like, after these sessions, I go and start writing, you know?
And then a lot of that, you know, eventually makes it in the book.
Yes, it does because, I mean, when I think about – first of all, when I think about the process of making music, I think about it very similar to what you're doing when you write for your comedy skits and you're efficient.
You're like, okay, this is going to work because I'm going to be able to – Share it this way.
You're not just writing your thoughts down.
When I'm in the studio, I'm very efficient.
I'm going to make a club banger just for the festival so the crowds go crazy.
And it's less about the emotional message.
With this, being able to talk about that side, that adds that other layer.
That I'm seeing now more than ever in the last three or four years when I started making songs with lyrics that actually I've seen the fans come out in droves saying how much it's gotten them through hard times.
Because the lyrics were able to speak to them a certain way.
And that's the essence of collaboration at the end of the day.
Working with songwriters and singers.
And being able to be pulled in that direction is incredible.
As an artist.
Instead of just having like, alright, we're making this record to make everyone go crazy.
Even though, essentially, electronic dance music is all about the music.
It's not about the touching lyrics.
They might be...
The flavoring on top, but the foundation is all about the beat.
But now it's about mixing both worlds as much as possible.
At the end of the day, when you think about my shows, it's a very full-on experience.
When I put on a show, I'm trying to, like, I'm trying to compound all the senses, you know?
I want it to be entertaining as hell.
I want it to be fun, engaging.
I want you to leave knowing that you saw Steve Aoki's show.
So that's why I try to do different, unique things like, you know, I cake people.
I don't know if you know this, but I cake people at my shows.
So, you know, I'm like, you know, your brain's always thinking.
So I got an idea after a song that I released on my label.
I have my own label.
And we released this artist where the video was cakes exploding in people's faces.
Super slow motion, high def, really beautiful.
And then I was like, you know what?
I'm going to go to a bakery.
I'm going to buy a cake, scribble the song on the top of the cake, and let's just see what happens.
It'll be a funny little thing.
This is 2011, mind you.
So this is seven years or however long ago that was.
A long time ago.
I didn't do the math.
Anyway, so it was a long time ago, and I walked around the front of the stage, and one of the kids in the front, one of the guys in the front was just like, Why is he walking around the front?
Am I supposed to grab it?
And then he just starts pointing at his face and then all his friends around him are pointing at him.
And the whole place was just staring and waiting and watching and wondering what the hell is going to happen.
So I caked him.
We filmed it.
This is pre-Instagram.
Put it up on YouTube.
It's like, I gotta do this every show.
This is incredible.
And then six months later, people started coming out with cake me signs.
I mean, you have to treat yourself like an athlete, that's for sure.
The way I think about my regimen is different, and I'm obsessed with trying out new ideas and Using myself as a guinea pig to work with different scientists,
sleep doctors, different people in various fields that are testing new ideas to deal with jet lag or things that I'm dealing with that are on the road that can wear you down and make it not sustainable.
But I... At one point, I wasn't down the same road as Ray Kurzweil doing 250 vitamins a day, but I was probably experimenting with about 50. Have you met him?
Well, a lot of what he's saying is irrefutable, but what's interesting is the way he sort of coalesces it, the way he combines it all, and you really get a sense of, wow, this is what a person is.
And I have the Aoki Foundation, which I'm wearing.
I'm obsessed with the human brain.
So all of our money that we raise goes to brain research organizations, brain science orgs, but also orgs that deal with anti-aging or anything that's interesting that relates to living longer, healthier lives, and one of which is the SENS org, which is Aubrey's org.
And then he, I mean, he was surviving with hep C for decades, changed his interferon and the things that were keeping him going before there's a vaccine or cure.
This is all before then.
I'm not sure if there is, but I'm almost positive there is.
It's like someone dies close to you and then, like, something like that happens.
Yeah.
So, this is all happening, right?
And I see him die, and I'm also like...
I think I know about health.
I'm vegetarian, this, that, and the other.
I'm sort of healthy.
But after I saw him die, I read books on cancer.
I started reading, trying to research, what could I have done to help my father?
And I still have people in my life that I absolutely love that I want to learn and share, like my mother, like anyone else that's close to me that's getting older.
And then it just, I just went on this like bender, like, you know, reading books on anti-aging and then, you know, I'm really big sci-fi nut.
So, if anything, I love living between the world of science fiction and science fact and finding out in that gray area what is going to be science fact.
In our, you know, as long as I'm alive.
You know, and there's a lot of things happening because I do agree with that curve that we are not moving at a linear rate.
You know, we are moving, I don't know if it's exponential, but it's definitely between linear and exponential.
With technology, with what we're learning in science and medicine.
And as I'm learning more about this stuff, my music career is also raising my platform as a personality is also getting raised.
So then now, I get to go and make a phone call to Ray and he'll answer.
And I could get to meet him.
And then I want to have fun, too.
So I'm like, let's make a song.
Let's do a video.
Let's do an interview.
So I created this whole Neon Future session so I could meet, you know, Stan Lee.
Rest in peace.
Like, I got to meet him, hang out with him, did an interview with him, took some photos.
It's a weird one, because we went to this, I think it's called a 2045 conference in New York City, and the idea behind it is that they think that somewhere around 2045, There's going to be some sort of a technological singularity with the exponential growth or perceived exponential growth,
whatever it is, the leaping, the new innovation, creating these new possibilities that somewhere around 2045, there's going to be So many changes and so many new innovations that they believe they're going to be able to put your consciousness either into some sort of a hard drive, some sort of a quantum computer, or perhaps even a physical embodiment of a Steve Aoki.
Well, I think he found out something unfortunate in that the idea – As far as time travel as we know it will only exist from the time the time machine is invented forward and backward to that moment.
The idea like Terence McKenna described it the idea that you cannot travel where there are no roads and so once a road is established then things get really fucked up because if you create a time machine At least in terms of what they understand or what Dr. Mallet believes about time travel right now, and I hope I'm not butchering.
I'm sure I'm butchering it, but I hope I'm not butchering it too bad.
You can only travel back to the moment the first time machine is invented.
So once that door is open, then time ceases to become linear.
The end of time till the invention of the time machine happens all at once.
Because anyone can come back to that moment.
Because the time machine exists now.
It's made, so of course they're going to innovate.
Anyone in the future is going to innovate.
These people that do innovate are going to have a much superior version of this time machine.
And everyone is going to be able to go back to the moment that the time machine is invented in any point along the way.
If it was a World War V 100 years from now, and you were like, fuck this, I'm going back in time 100 years before World War V, and I'm just going to live there.
And they decide to do that, or World War III, or World War IV. They just keep going back in time, and forward in time.
You could go...
If you had a time machine, and the time machine was...
Again, I'm butchering this, I'm a moron, I'm not a scientist.
If you had a time machine and time machines existed from now until, you know, the perceivable end of the lifespan of the earth, right?
When the sun supernovas and there's no more life left on earth, you could kind of go anywhere you want from now to a million years from now as long as there's a place to go.
And the idea is that time as we know it will cease to exist because our time now is dependent on, you know, our biological entities waking up, moving forward.
What time is it?
Oh, it's 3. My meeting's at 5. Better hurry over to downtown.
Traffic's rough this time of day.
All that stuff's going to be nonsense if there's time machines because you're just going to be able to move anywhere you want at any point in time.
Sounds ridiculous, but so does the internet.
If you brought the internet up to some guy who lived in Victorian times and say, look at this, this is my phone, and you can ask it a question, it'll give you all the answers, anything you want.
That would be the most astounding form of witchcraft ever invented.
And now my 11-year-old daughter has one of those.
She asks that thing questions all the time.
She gets answers to stuff all the time that we used to have to go to a library for.
She could watch videos that just come out of the air.
So if everybody gets access to it a year from now or three years from now, it doesn't matter because the time machine's already been invented so they can travel back to that moment and forward from that moment.
So the moment they turn that fucker on, everything goes haywire.
I used to have a bit that I used to do about the Big Bang because they were – everyone has always tried to figure out like what was the universe like before the Big Bang?
Like what happened?
How was it created?
And when you look at the progress of technology, my thought was that if you look at where we're going and we're constantly innovating and people are constantly coming up with new and more impressive forms of technology, that one day we're going to create a big bang machine.
And that this is what happens.
Every five billion years or so...
And things get so intelligent, they develop a big bang machine.
And they sit around, these dudes are on Red Bull and Xanax.
What is a simulation if everything is a simulation?
It's still life, right?
Like your existence is still everything you're accustomed to and everything you experience.
And if it is a simulation, at least some aspects of this are comfortably...
Or comfortingly obvious.
Work hard.
You can get better at things.
Be nice to people.
They're nice to you.
Be a good friend.
You get good friends.
Eat healthy food.
You're healthier.
There's some comfort to the lack of...
I mean, there's certainly some variables that are very difficult to account for, but there's also a surprising amount of life that's pretty straightforward.
So if it is a simulation, it's not the most difficult one to follow.
It's pretty crazy and chaotic, but there's a lot of comfort in it.
Like, as much as we try to dwell on the horrors of humanity, and certainly a lot of them, because God has a lot of beauty in people, too.
In terms of a public intellectual who's responsible for so many groundbreaking technologies, the number one electric car in the world, SpaceX tunneling under LA with a boring company.
I mean, I think one of the most important things is inspire people more about brain, the brain.
I mean, obviously it's to raise money for brain research orgs.
For one, finding cures for degenerative brain diseases.
Just understanding the brain more, working with orgs that want to understand the brain more so that we can expand what our limitations are in the conversations that we're talking about.
Bring some of the science fiction and the science fact.
I love this idea that telekinesis is when you can move things with your mind.
Fact check that, but it was not 2019. It was like years ago.
So whatever they're doing at DARPA, whatever they're doing at Google, whoever's got these research orgs and labs, I would love to jump in there and just put my ear out there and just listen and find out what's going on.
Because I have my own interest and passion on what the breakthroughs are.
And I would also love to try some of these things.
Well, there was an internal memo where they were referring to Ben Shapiro and someone else.
I think it was Jordan Peterson and maybe Dennis Prager as Nazis, which is hilarious because both Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager are both Jewish.
So it's like their perception of who a person is.
This was brought up This is brought up by people in Congress.
They had to have hearings on it.
Trying to figure out, what is Google doing?
How are you allowed to define people internally in your memos?
And then, of course, once you call someone a Nazi, then you can act as if they're a Nazi and stifle people.
Any sort of search on them or stifle results or point people in the direction that you think would be better for humanity versus just pure information.
And it gets very weird.
But as a technology company, look, they're amazing.
Just what they're doing with Android and Google Searching and Google Assistant and Google Maps is by far the superior map Right.
power.
It's too much power for one company to be able to influence people one way or the other.
I need to rely on people that have actually spent real time studying the effects and understand it from a very deep level.
I don't.
I understand it.
I understand that it's problematic.
I just don't understand what the solution is, and I don't know if it's just a free distribution of information across the board, because then what do you do about actual Nazis?
Like, if there's a new Hitler, and he arises, and he really does want to exterminate the Jews, what happens there?
Do you just allow that guy to be on Google?
Is he on Google Hangouts with a little Nazi Hangout?
They're planning on exterminations, and where's the next Auschwitz?
No.
I don't think that shouldn't be the case.
So what is the case?
Do you allow white supremacists on there to organize rallies?
Fuck.
Where does freedom of speech end?
Very complicated questions that we're all learning to navigate.
I think in many ways, and this is a weird thought that I have and I repeat it over and over again, but I think technology is going to provide us with a new way of communicating that's not dependent upon language, but rather can read actual intent.
Like, an actual mind-reading technology.
And when I see Elon's Neuralink, this thing that he's trying to do where they're opening up the bandwidth to humans and information through use of implants and some sort of a Bluetooth wearable device, like, that I think is like a step in that direction.
And I think Elon...
In many interviews, he said that he thinks that human beings are the organic biological bootloader for artificial intelligence.
So if we're a bootloader for AI, the way to sort of combat that...
And the idea is that we don't know what the fuck we're doing either.
Like, why do we need 5G? Is 4G not good enough?
Goddamn, I get on the internet pretty goddamn quick.
What are we doing?
Well, it seems like 5G's better, and 6G will be better than 5G. And if you want to get that mind-reading software, you've got to get 7G. And we're going to do this to the point where one day there's going to be a real thing sitting in front of you.
It's interesting because my whole point with Neon Future is the convergence of, I mean, the ultimate goal is the convergence of technology and our humanity to the point where we live forever through this downloading system that we're talking about earlier on or whatever seemingly makes sense in the trajectory of where technology is going.
So we do live indefinitely.
I mean, that's like, for me as well, my insurance policy for if I don't make it to this point, like my dad didn't make it to that cure, is obviously cryogenically freezing the body.
After your biological body ceases to function, you move into a new realm of reality that is a completely different dimension that's filled with love and understanding.
Well, here's, okay, this is what I know, because I don't know, I mean, we both don't know what's really going to happen.
That's likely.
I mean, anything is likely, okay?
I'm not saying that, I'm not like, I don't believe in God, or I do believe in God.
I just don't know what's really happening afterwards.
But I know that...
What I've seen as me, what I understand of what's around me and my feelings is that if I wake up tomorrow or if someone I love wakes up tomorrow with an incurable disease that's going to kill them, it would be the most horrific thing.
And I think at the end of the day, the human race is going out to find cures for those kinds of situations.
And that's where my conquest or my interest and passion led to anti-aging, the future.
And then building on that for the ones that I love that are alive now and doing whatever I can to share the information so that they live as long as they possibly can in the healthiest way possible.
So I'm just gathering information as I go.
And it's exciting because, as I was saying, as I get bigger as a personality, You know, sometimes I do jump into these rooms.
And in one case, just recently, there's a doctor that I've worked with.
I've done some stem cell injections with him in Denver.
And he came to my house and he was with some other doctors and they're like, oh yeah, there's a doctor convention.
I live in Las Vegas.
There's conventions all the time there.
So they all came over and like, hey, you know, there's some breakthrough, groundbreaking stuff that's happened this year.
You can now find out on a cellular level cancer detection for at least 16 different cancers.
You know, so like, it's like very, very preventative, you know, far along the line.
So I was like, I want in.
So I got the information and I just like that was a Christmas present for everyone.
And I did that, and then about a year later, I was with Dr. Grossman.
He's the doctor I work with, and he wrote the book with Ray Kurzweil called, I think the subtext of the book is Staying Alive Until We Reach Singularity or something like that.
It's like a book on being healthy, basically, anti-aging book.
He wrote that with Ray Kurzweil.
So that's why I heard about him.
I went to him a few years back to get the full blood work going for me and my family.
We did two days of testing, all kinds of stuff to learn more about our bodies and see what we're deficient in, what we're not, what vitamins we need to take to supplement the things that we're deficient in.
And I came back just maybe a year ago to do his version of stem cells because in America it's a different Panama is obviously out of America, so they're doing the umbilical cord stem cells, or they harvest the stem cells from umbilical cords.
So they have day zero stem cells.
He's doing stem cells.
It's almost like a plasma therapy.
When they took my blood, spin it, and they're pulling out the stem cells from my own blood.
So it's 41-year-old stem cells.
But his point that he's saying is that the size of the stem cells, they're much smaller, so they're able to travel past where it ends up clogging, which is like the lungs and like certain areas of the body.
So it does travel more.
It's not the day zero stem cells, but it's still effectively doing its work.
It's a place that I originally started going to for Regenikine.
Do you know what Regenikine is?
Regenicene was originally invented in Germany.
And a lot of guys like Peyton Manning and Kobe Bryant, they had to fly to Germany back in the day to get this.
And what they do is it's a more advanced form of platelet-rich plasma, right?
Like they're taking your blood out.
They spin it in a centrifuge and heat it through some process and they add things to it and in the process it creates this incredibly potent anti-inflammatory agent that's from your own blood.
It's like this yellow serum.
Then they inject this yellow serum directly into areas where you have injury and or inflammation.
It has a radical healing effect.
And it's really, really good for bulging discs.
People that have disc issues and back issues, and I had a pretty bad one in my neck that was keeping me out of jiu-jitsu.
My hands were going numb, you know, because the bulge was pushing against my nerve.
Now it's gone.
Like, I got an MRI six months later after the procedure.
There's no more bulge.
Now, most of the time when you have a bulging disc, sometimes it can go back and heal, but most of the time it does not.
Most of the time what happens is you wind up having to get a disectomy.
Where they go into the disc, they remove the offending piece that's sticking into your nerve.
But now you have a smaller disc.
You have less disc tissue.
So your discs start to collapse.
Your actual spinal column, the actual hard bone moves closer to the other hard bone.
And it becomes a real problem.
Arthritis forms, scar tissue forms.
The more disc tissue you have, You know, the better off you are.
And they're able to do that now to the point where they...
But stem cells have been shown to start to do that too.
They've actually started injecting stem cells directly into disc tissue.
And I was talking to Dr. Roddy McGee out of Las Vegas.
He's one of the guys that's really at the cutting edge of all this stuff, working with UFC fighters.
And they're doing that with them.
And he was the guy I originally went to to treat my shoulder because of Dr. Davidson from the UFC, who's the main doctor for the UFC. He was telling me he had shoulder surgery.
He's a little bit older than me.
And his shoulder surgery took...
He was still having issues with it.
He was trying to figure out what he should do because he was still having pain when he was swimming.
Went and got some stem cell injections.
All the pain went away.
So he was telling me about that.
He's like, you know, you got some pretty significant tears.
You might really need surgery, but maybe this will help you for now.
So I went there, and the amount of help that it...
The amount of alleviation of pain and discomfort was stunning.
I was like, I can't believe this is a real thing.
You can just shoot this into whatever is bothering you, and then all of a sudden, like four months later, you're like, hey, where's the pain?
Like, anytime he's a young guy and he's really enthusiastic and super brilliant, and anytime there's any sort of cutting edge medical practice, that guy's...
He's on it.
Like, for instance, one of the things they're doing now is when people get ACL tears, which usually, when you get an ACL tear...
Usually you need reconstruction.
And usually what that reconstruction is is either a cadaver graft where they take the Achilles tendon out of a dead person and shove it in your knee and then your body re-proliferates that with its own cells.
It takes about six months and then you have a functional tendon again.
It's great.
I had it done myself.
It works.
But now they're able to reattach the actual torn ACL. They have some special technique they do.
And they've had people tear an ACL and then compete in the Olympics four months later.
I actually saw a life coach before because I'm like, I'm terrified.
I don't want my demons or whatever anxiety or whatever things that I have creeping up where they're like, okay, you're mine now.
You can't talk to someone about...
I'm scared, but I got through it.
I'm a very busybody kind of person, so I just scheduled.
It was like going back to college, but with things that I needed to train and get better at, like get better at piano, get better at meditation, get better at twisting the knobs, engineering, whatever it might be that I want to be better at.
I just brought more people into my world.
Then I finished, like, an album that month making music with different people.
So I just was just so focused on creation and learning and reading and, you know, all that good stuff.
So when I left, I was like, okay, now I know how to do TM meditation or Transcendental Meditation and, you know, I'm more comfortable doing the things that help me be a better artist.
It's called text to talk when I was in my meetings because, you know, I run various different, you know, businesses and I have to, you know, be on call.
The half cyborg thing is going to be really weird when people start replacing legs.
Because I think if you could develop a leg, like a cybernetic leg that's better than a normal leg, someone's gonna say, chop my leg off and give me one of those.
Someone.
Someone somewhere is going to do that.
And if that becomes seamless and, you know, you get some Steve Austin, $6 million man type shit going on, things can get real weird.
You know, that whole idea that, like, first we use the technology to heal the people that need it, but at the end of the day, it's going to be used for advancing humanity.
Yeah.
You want to help people that need to walk first, right?
But then it's like, just like you said, if it becomes very normal, then the upgrades will be used as well to advance the people that don't need it.
Yeah, he's an interesting character because that arm, I mean, you really get this I am robot kind of feel from seeing his arm and his leg.
I mean, I'm sure he would tell you that he's much better off with his arm and his leg back, but when you see the guy walk around, man, he fucking just walks around.
He looks normal.
I mean what they used to have in comparison to what they have today.
I mean it is leaps and bounds.
And I'm sure the future, so that's his actual arm.
It's kind of polarizing to some people, though, right?
Because, I mean, I think your music sounds fucking amazing, but for some people, they want to hear an actual string of a guitar, the rap of a drum, you know?
People have this very narrow idea of what music is.
It's a, you know, blue, obviously, my book's called Blue, is my favorite color, and I want the feeling to feel futuristic, so it's the neon future cave.
Now, if you look up at the ceiling, if you scroll up in that picture or whatever, you'll get to see, maybe it's not in that picture, but I have, yeah, so you have, like, these, like, LED lights coming through the ceiling as if you're in, like, a cave.
I bought my house in 2013. What made you move to Vegas?
I was living in LA, and my career broke in Los Angeles, so there's no doubt about it, being in LA as a musician, as an artist, someone in music, that's where you, if you want a break, you're going to have all the connections and build your network here fastest than anywhere else in the world.
New York, I feel like, is the media hub for fashion, and then LA is a music hub, and then Atlanta is like the hip-hop hub, Nashville's country.
But I broke in LA when I started touring.
In 2009, 10, 2008, 9, 10, 11, I was just gone.
I wasn't living in LA the way I lived in LA, going out to all the places I loved to eat, all the culture of what LA has to offer.
I was only there 50 days of the year, maybe.
So I was like, well, just signed a residency in Las Vegas when the nightlife boomed for DJs from 2010. It was a big shift of what nightlife has to offer in Vegas, and DJs were a big part of that.
And I signed a big residency deal.
And then I was like, I mean, I'm here more than I am in LA. And, you know, it's a good tax situation there.
There's no state tax there.
And I'd have to leave LA my home turf, but I'm not even there.
So I just moved ship entirely, bought a house, bought the dream situation house.
There's so many perks for me because LA, I had like a 2,000, 2,500 square foot, maybe 3,000 square foot house, which was nice.
Million dollar house in the hills.
And that's when I finally made it.
Before I lived in an apartment on DeLong Preen El Centro, East Hollywood, I guess Hollywood and Binarya, $900 for 900 square feet.
That's where it all started for me.
That's when I first moved to LA. I started making money.
It took time to get there.
I kind of talk about that in the book, like the hardships to get there because one of the best lessons that my father shared with me was this tough love attitude where, you know, he was a very rich, flamboyant restaurateur.
Benny Hanna's had fancy cars, was very flashy, very American.
He's the one that broke through the American dream.
The Japanese, one of the few Japanese people that actually did that.
So he's just like, yo, look at me with, you know, flying hot air balloons, offshore boat racing.
And then like, you know, I guess the traditional thing is like that he would financially help me, you know, because he has the money to do that.
But one of the most powerful things he did was he just financially – he didn't financially help me.
And I had to figure though my issues, my hardships, my business plans, my – Financial issues that I was going through on my own so I had to start there and Because of that I was able to succeed through some of the hard stuff and and Have that drive to want to make money for myself.
So during that time in LA, you know, I'm kind of digressing here You know, I lived in this apartment for about seven years and then the DJing My first priority was my record label.
That was like why I moved to LA. Sign artists, develop them, help them.
And then I was DJing, building the brand of the label, and we created a really cool scene in LA. And we were breaking some of the biggest acts.
Not breaking, we were the underground hotbed, you know, like the comedy shop or something, where everyone would hang out.
So, like, Lady Gaga was playing for free at our shows.
Skrillex was there every single week.
Will.i.am was dancing in the corner and then going back to the studio making Black Eyed Peas hits because 2007 through 2009, Black Eyed Peas were the biggest artists.
LMFAO was there every single week.
And then they became the biggest acts.
So we're like this hotbed of music culture in LA, but it was my parties.
And then that's how I made a name for myself is that I was throwing these parties and I was DJing them, but no one cared that I was DJing them.
The only reason why they were going is because these acts would always be there.
And then the celebs would come in.
That's when I met DJ AM in 2006, 2005. And then we got together and he brought the celebs in.
So now there's a spotlight of pre-TMZ kind of like, oh, what's going on over here with this electro sound?
You have Daft Punk there unmasked and And like really cool underground like Kid Cudi there and Connie West coming through and then there's Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton and all these different people all like in this small room.
And people wanted to know what the hell is going on in that little space.
And this is what's great about this time was that it was pre-Snapchat, pre-social media.
It was just MySpace.
So you had to be in that room to experience what was happening.
So people would fly in to just be in that room to hear what was the cutting edge sound that was going to be eventually popular.
People wanted to play in that little 300-400 cap room.
So a guy would have to bring a camcorder in, right?
And this one guy, Glenn Jayman, he would always film those parties.
We had Cobra Snake.
He was my best friend who would just run with me to all the shows and parties.
Because back then I would play like five nights a week in LA. And he would photograph and he would document and that's how you would find out about the lifestyle, the clothes, the look of what it was to be on Cahuenga in Hollywood.
And then you see Kid Cudi there and you see Kanye West there and you see whoever else that was just hanging out, absorbing the culture that we were creating there.
And then eventually that was what got me out of my I was a pretty bad businessman when I was running in Denmark.
I thought I was doing shit right because I was signing acts that actually mattered and were taking off, but I just didn't know how to, you know, I was just spending, spending like, yo, we gotta keep going with this.
And then, you know, then I started bringing the right people and I was like, okay, I need to build a team.
I need to build some people that have some sensibilities in this world while I'm creative.
And then the DJing just took off as I was getting more into production, getting more into remixing, getting more into creating myself as an artist.
And then that is what people know about me now.
But really, people knew about me because of the Dimock.
And it's interesting how sometimes the evolutions of the eras of who you are change over time.
And then, fast forward, 2013 is when I was like, Okay, LA helped grow me to who I am.
You know, like if you have video footage, if you get somebody to edit that and put together a documentary of that time period, because it's a really interesting time period.
You know, for the, the, the creation of electronic music.
And what you pointed out that's so interesting was that 2010 was really somewhere around the time Vegas started becoming these electronic music shows started taking precedent.
They're the biggest fucking thing.
I was staying at the Wynn recently and the hotel room we were at was overlooking the pool.
And I forget who it was that was playing there, but it was fucking chaos!
And like you don't, and especially when you're, you know, we're like above, like high above, looking down in the pool in the hotel room.
I mean, it's like he's always seeming to find a way to troll people in a social or political critique, just like he did with the art sale of the shredded painting.
Like, it's funny that we're talking about this because sometimes I forget, like, you know, we're having a chat and I realize, oh, there's a lot of people listening in on this, so maybe I shouldn't give away some of the stuff that I've learned about it.
That's like one of the things that we talked, like, you know, when we talked about how I'm sustainable, is that you have to not do the certain things that make it unsustainable.
I guess like what seven eight hours, but every second is like a minute, you know, because you cannot sleep, you cannot stop thinking about what you're in.
I mean, there is like, it's like this exaggerated emotions, like the first part of my acid trip.
I was so funny.
I was laughing at everything.
It was the best thing I ever did.
I was like, oh my god, everything is so funny.
I'm just laughing.
I'm in pain because I'm just laughing at everything.
Everything is joyous.
Then I went into this upside-down world like Stranger Things when I got dropped off at my friend's house.
Everyone went dark.
My friend's 14. He doesn't do drugs.
His mom was coming down, you're okay, everything's okay.
Yeah, I mean, I have to say like, strangely enough, that's the first thing you think about, right?
Why is a guy in women's studies like trying to understand?
I mean, the reason why I was in that department is because my favorite teacher's uh were the ones teaching those classes so i just was like all right i'll try this one and then i was like wow this is actually pretty interesting i'll try another one and um and then i was like wow i'll just i'll finish off the major and uh you know i'd have to say like the stuff that i learned in school it's in large part of how i kind of look through kind of like navigate through my life like Sociology,
I am a sociologist.
I want to study people, like, why they do certain things, you know?
Like, how do I navigate them in different directions?
There's no fucking way you could do 250 shows a year and get fucked up 250 days a year.
In that business especially, the business of electronic dance music, there's a lot of people doing Molly, right?
There's a lot of people doing all kinds of...
Amphetamines and all kinds of crazy shit and you're gonna think like you do that every night man You're gonna look like an 80 year old man Because you've literally burned the candle with a blowtorch you use that Elon Musk not a flamethrower You know,
I mean it's but you know what I always say if whenever I have the opportunity is that For the people in my crowds, and I have to say, country by country, they're very different as far as what I think if they're doing drugs or not.
It's like literally the dream come true, you know, to make people happy, get to be...
I always say, like, I feel like I'm the chef in the kitchen making the food and I go out and I get to watch people eat my food.
And then they're like, oh, this is really good.
I'm like...
I'm like, yes!
Since I see that feeling, I'm like, let's go back and make more food, but we've got to sprinkle more truffle on that, and then let's deliver and then get a C. And then they're like, you're the chef, Mike.
That's me.
So it's like I get that lucky position to be able to make my music and then share it and hope that they have the same feeling that I have sharing it.
At Hakkasan, Omnia, Jewel, smaller club of theirs, and Wet Republic.
So there's four properties that I play, which is nice, because if I had to play 40 shows in one...
I mean, it wouldn't necessarily be that bad because the thing about Vegas is it's a transient crowd, right?
So it's always – no matter what, even on one weekend, I might be playing possibly three or four times for one weekend.
Right.
And every show I do, whether it's a day party and a club, the club is a complete different influx of people coming in.
Because the people that saw me at the day party are going to go see Chainsmokers or Marshmello or whoever else or Calvin Harris or whatever is playing on the strip.
The competition is as thick as it gets.
Every night there's the biggest DJs playing alongside each other.
It's really amazing if you stop and think about what a crazy change that is to an entertainment environment.
Like the Vegas, the transformation to that electronic music around, like you said, 2010. There's not a thing like that that you can point to anywhere else in the world.
Where like all of a sudden this one dominant form of entertainment has taken over the entire nightlife of a city.
If you go to New York, if you go to LA, if you go to all places all around the world, there's no other thing that has transformed the nightlife of a city the way electronic music has transformed Vegas.
Transformed.
Changed everything.
Went from non-existent to number one with a bullet.
There's not even a close second.
It's all electronic music.
Anthony Bourdain used to hate it.
It was hilarious.
He was old and crotchety, being at these places, all the music, and it just wasn't his thing.
And they have to think differently about how they're going to get them to, you know, do what Vegas is meant to be, you know, what the economy is serving, gambling.
It's like somewhere, I'm sure you can find it, but he did a prediction where...
Whenever he was alive, I guess, probably died in the 60s or 70s.
So he said, like, the future will be one person with some sort of computer or something that's going to be devised electronically or something like that, and that one person will be making music for people and performing that.
...indigenous to this country are the black music, blues, and the kind of folk music that was brought over from Europe, and I guess they call it country music, or the kind of West Virginia high and lonesome sound that Those are the two main streams of root American music.
There might be others, I don't know.
But, like, ten years ago, what they called rock and roll was kind of a blending of those two forms.
I guess in four or five years, the new generation's music will be...
It'll have a synthesis of those two elements and some third thing.
It'll be entirely...
Maybe it'll be...
It might rely heavily on electronics, tapes.
I can kind of envision maybe one person with a lot of machines, tapes, and electronic setups.
They were taking mind-expanding psychedelics, and the culture had shifted to embrace these mind-expanding psychedelics.
And there was also the resistance to the Vietnam War.
There was this rebellious movement.
There was these young, compassionate...
People that were trying to figure their way through life in a way that didn't resonate with the way their parents had set boundaries and standards, and they wanted out of all of it, that Goldwater Republican shit.
They wanted to be free and flower children and hippies and Woodstock and all that craziness, you know?
There was also the sweeping psychedelic act of 1970 that made everything schedule one, and they were locking people up in jail.
There was a civil rights movement that was happening at the same time, and they were passing laws that were directly targeting The people in the civil rights movement because they knew that they were smoking grass and they were doing mushrooms.
So they were going after them with these drug laws and then, you know, they would arrest one person and they would turn on everybody else and then, you know, they would do like mob tactics on people.
And, you know, the whole thing, they just poured water on it.
It took, you know, it took like 10 or 20 years before shit started popping again.
You know, in terms of like the influence of psychedelic culture again.
Really more like 30 years.
It's like the 2000s where things started happening again, where people started becoming more and more aware of the positive benefits of psychedelic drugs and altered states of consciousness, not trying to escape reality, but trying to get a grip on reality from a different perspective.
That's an interesting, like, when I think about psychedelics in that regard of mind expansion or, you know, at the same time, it's like this uncontrolled situation that, like, okay, we're going to jump into this world, but there's no way to really control your lane.
It's just like this...
It's like, yes, we can go there, but it might not end up – you might get stuck there.
I think that is one of the biggest problems for why people are not finding their own success.
Because they keep blaming other people for problems when they could use that same time to actually focus on a small success that's realistic in their trajectory or whatever they're doing.
And I've seen that a lot with some people I know.
They get stuck in that framework.
And then there might be people that enable that same mindset.
Well, I think also for them, they see the success of other people, and they're like, they want to be that, but they're like, they obviously can't with...
They just blame everyone that they can't be that person, right?
Instead of just going, well, we've got to take these small baby steps to get out of this funk, and then eventually stop comparing yourself to other people, but compare yourself to yourself.
That person doesn't have to feel like you're fucking giving them the sour face because you're jealous and bitter and weird and you're looking to be critical of them and find flaws in them.
Look at what they're doing.
If you were a guy who's coming up and you wanted to be a guy who makes electronic music, I'm sure you have haters.
I mean, actually, the strange thing is when I think about, like, Like fame or whatever, celebrityhood.
When I walk through certain areas, I have to just go, okay, I have to accept the photos.
I have to accept people coming up to me.
I want to be the asshole because I've been that kid going up to someone and they're mean to me and I'll be like oh that guy's a dick you know and they'll think of you that way for the rest of their life even if you're just in a bad day or some you know you just the one that bothers me the most is people coming up to you I had a guy come up to me last night in the middle of literally cutting food in a crowded restaurant.
You know, there's like a thing for New Year's Eve.
I stopped doing shows a couple years ago on New Year's Eve because every time I would do them, I was like, why does everybody think it's okay to be an asshole tonight?
But the crazy thing is his nose looked like the worst situation that you could possibly get in, and his nose now looks pretty normal, where the other guys' noses are just like that one guy with the bulge right by his eyebrows, and his nose is still curved to the right, and he's smiling like...
You'd assume Mike Perry would have that kind of nose after that kind of situation.
Well, maybe for someone that really understands how to do that.
But like, you know, I wanted to get there and I just like, when I work out, I kind of work out just on being healthy and cardiovascular and just like, you know, just staying in shape.
Like I said, after I met Ray, I was like, okay, I need to just find out what I'm deficient in.
I'm going to just load up on those.
And then I went to see Dr. Grossman, who kind of gave me my 22-page pack of my telomere links to cancer markers, if I have them, to what I'm allergic to, to what I'm deficient in.
And then I followed that regimen of what the vitamins I was taking, some of which I still take.
One is called Cellurgen.
It's kind of like the closest thing to a stem cell injection if you can, if you can swallow it.
Laird Hamilton has this amazing machine out there that he gave us.
We got one of the first machines, and he mixes coconut oil, coconut milk, turmeric, organic coffee, and it's fucking delicious, and it's actually very good for you.
And then he also has this bag of mushrooms, cordyceps mushrooms, and lion's mane.
You can scoop that in there.
But lion's mane in particular is one I'm really interested in because it supports brain function.
Have you seen the work of Paul Stamets?
Do you know who he is?
is no i'll turn you on to him um and send you a link to the podcast i did with him he'll blow your fucking mind when he's talking about the power of functional mushrooms not just mushrooms like psychedelic mushrooms which he's into that as well he thinks that psychedelic mushrooms in low doses are like one of the most powerful nootropics that you could have like micro dosing yeah
Yeah, but instead of getting blitz out of your mind and going into another dimension, you're taking just a little bit every day, just a little tiny bit, and it gives you this overwhelming feeling of operating at a very high function.
It's a weird feeling, but that micro-dosing psilocybin thing is swept through the fighter community.
There's a lot of fighters that are training while they're micro-dosing mushrooms.
I mean, the best way to find out what it would be would be to grind it up so you know the exact ounces and then put it in a capsule and then figure it out.
And I think that's what a lot of these guys are doing.
It's just very unfortunate that that is a Schedule I drug.
I wish I had, like, someone from my team kind of give me my whole list.
Because I take something for...
I take a lot of brain cognitive stuff that I... Oh, yeah?
Metropics?
Some might be considered that way, but it's from my doctor that, you know, from what...
I do enough research on the doctors and they tell me kind of what I should take and I go, okay, let's try this out and see if my performance increases.
And then I stop.
So I'll do it for like a month and I'll stop and I'll take a different like, you know, I have like two different routes of vitamins and I take a different route and see if that changes my patterns or how I'm, you know, what my performance is like.
And I kind of like just experiment over and over again.
Like, a really true, truly unique human being in the sense that...
He's just talking about breathing.
He's not talking about doing some sort of incredible athletics that, you know, a rare few people can achieve.
No, he's talking about concentrating on your breathing and understanding how you can inhale like deeper breaths and concentrate on the breath and that in doing so you're changing your physiological state and he's got a whole program that shows you how to do it correctly and it enhances your immune system and enhances your awareness and it's Wild shit, man.
So I get whoever wants to join me, we do this group kind of...
You know, huddle, we get in there, we come out, we do the breath work, hold our breath, you know, and it's a great way to get people together and experience something like that, too.
The UFC Training Center, the Performance Institute in Vegas, has this hot bath right next to a cold plunge, and they have people going back and forth between the two.
I don't think there's any evidence that he was ever really like that.
But, you know, Tarantino sort of dug his heels in and sort of defended it.
But I don't think he knows the culture because he's not a martial artist.
I think he looked at Bruce Lee as sort of like...
This historical figure that's, you know, kicking people's asses in movies.
And I think to understand Bruce Lee the way you do or the way I do, where he was my childhood hero as well.
It's like he's the guy that's really responsible for mixing martial arts.
When you talk about mixed martial arts, like, all credit has to go to the Gracies because they're the ones who, you know, Helsing Gracie and Horian and Hoyce and Hickson and that family was responsible for really showing people jujitsu and also Horian invented the UFC. So without Horian and his contributions, we might not have ever known what we know today.
But Bruce Lee was on that path a long time ago.
He had figured out a long time ago that you've got to find what's useful in all different styles of martial arts.
That's like one of the main things about Bruce Lee that I loved about him was his philosophy.
He had a lot of things to say about life.
The martial arts was one thing that's like what made him cool, made him such a badass, but it's his philosophy, the words behind all that, and how it can reflect on everyone.
He's the, like, every, doesn't matter if you're black, white, brown, purple, yellow, whatever you are, you like, you have to honor, like, one of the greats.
And for the time, those movies, you know, people don't like them or do like them.
What's interesting about Bruce is the style of fighting in those movies, like jumping, flying kicks and all that stuff, that's not what he advocated at all.
But what he did do was there was like two big bursts in martial arts and Bruce Lee was responsible in my opinion for the first.
He was responsible for getting people excited about training martial arts and seeing this guy that could kick everybody's ass and like this guy was like he was quiet and humble but you know when it came time to throw down and take his shirt off and fuck everybody up.
And then the next stage was the UFC. Those were like, in my lifetime, the two big, and really culturally, the two big leaps in martial arts was people getting into Bruce Lee because of getting into martial arts because of Bruce Lee movies.
And then, of course, Chuck Norris movies.
And then the next one was getting into martial arts because of the UFC. Right.
So it was a bummer that they made him look like a dope.
I mean, that's where, like, my record label, Dimock, it's, you know, you know what Dimock is.
I mean, it's not necessarily tied to Bruce Lee, but it's my way of, like, you know, instead of calling it Bruce Lee Records, or I love Bruce Lee Records, I was like, well, this is this mysterious death touch.
And, you know, there's, like I said, this mystery around that that's connected sort of to Bruce Lee.