Pausing With Steve Aoki: Producer Talks New Music, Anti-Asian Hate & More

Steve Aoki has a lot on his mind nowadays. He's outwardly admitted that he functions like a marathon runner, but with the pandemic still in effect, the super-producer is finding other ways to navigate life. In fact, while his consistent output of music hasn't stopped, he has pivoted his focus to catching up on the rest that he's been missing out on during his 20-year plus career.

"I have a charitable foundation, where we focus all this research and funding on the human brain, and I'm still working on my sleep. My [Netflix] documentary is called I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, so you know how I felt about sleep and now it's changed. I almost want to cross out 'dead,' and put 'tired.' I'm prioritizing sleep more," Aoki told iHeartRadio at rehearsals for the second annual SHEIN Together Fest, which will be streamed via SHEIN's free app on Sunday (May 2). "There's a lot of different things. There's a lot of big changes. In a way, [the pandemic] has been a major game-changer for me, personally."

Nonetheless, Aoki has kept the music coming this year with multiple offerings, including a cross-cultural team-up with Farruko called "Aire," as well as an ode to Millenials called "Used To Be," which samples the Matchbox Twenty smash, "Unwell." "You have to get people on their toes, surprise them. I think it's really important for artists to always challenge their fans and try something different, try something new that the fans wouldn't expect," he said, adding that he uses release tactics to drop records with different sounds. "You always want to go back to the core, but you got to always stretch and expand."

"Used To Be" strikes a personal note with Aoki because the Matchbox Twenty record was released amid his move to Los Angeles in the early 2000s. While it lifts a page of Rob Thomas' playbook, particularly with the singer's vocals on the acoustic version of the song, it ultimately drives home the feeling of nostalgia and that's a space that Aoki likes to bask in regularly.

"That era was their time to shine and it's a song that was part of culture," he explained. "I love nostalgia. I love things that like, 'Oh man, I remember this period of time.' I love Pokémon. I love sports cards. I love things that bring me back to when I was a kid or to what it was like when I was younger. I think, especially during COVID, a lot of us have gone back into our past, dug up different things from our toy box to our music box to whatnot, and brought that out and brought that out to a new light, to a 2021 light."

Besides evoking nostalgia, this year has also seen Aoki continue his activism in the wake of increased hate crimes against Asian Americans. In late March, he announced a limited release T-shirt capsule benefiting StopAAPIHate, the non-profit organization addressing anti-Asian hate amid the pandemic. "It's clearly present. It's not isolated. It's happening all over the place," he said of the hate crimes. "Thankfully, there are cameras to catch this thing, so that the world sees what's happening. That's the one thing about now versus the past. A lot of the violence and a lot of the racism that's been happening across the board, not just to Asians, but to obviously to Black people, to brown people, to all different minorities, people of color, it's a good thing that these cameras are catching these atrocities, just so people realize. There's a lot of people that don't even realize how pervasive it is, how it's just happening and people just walk away from it like it's not a big deal."

Aoki was raised in the predominantly white Newport Beach, California, and went on to cite the impact of growing up in an environment, where racism gets "perpetuated and enabled" because the majority of people don't call each other out. "Just stop and listen, and actually just try to lead with empathy, to really understand where other people are coming from, on both sides," he suggested. "Just stop and just listen and have that conversation and positive communication and building. That's essentially what I do as an artist, what I love to try to do, is build bridges. I love the idea of building bridges with different cultures, different communities and different worlds. It's my favorite thing to do. I travel the world and all I want to do is build a bridge [and] connection between my music and wherever I am in the world. It doesn't matter what language you speak, where you came from, what you look like. It's about the emotion and about the feeling. That's the most important thing. Because underneath our skin, we all have the same organs and heart, and we're made up of muscles and fibers and have very different brains, but we're not born to be racist. We're not born to hate. You learn those things."

Expect more from Aoki when he appears during the 2021 installment of the SHEIN Together Fest. The online event, which will donate $300,000 to three different charities, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Together We Rise and Ecologi, will also feature performances from Nick Jonas, Maren Morris, Tinashe and Lunay.

Photo: Getty Images/Emma McIntyre for Getty Images