steve aoki, repping hollywood

Aoki overload: LA Weekly's annual LA People issue hits tomorrow and features (once again) indie spinner-to-the-stars Steve Aoki, whose overexposure, in my opinion, is inversely related to his skills. The Los Angeles Times' West magazine also gave him ink recently, in a cover piece.

Actually, the over-coverage fits with many mainstream journalists' grasp (or lack thereof) of DJ culture. Aoki is accessible, travels with his own photog, "Cobrasnake" (who runs his photos in ... you guessed it, LA Weekly), and plays music that is anything but challenging. If you're a reporter and 2 a.m. is too late to go check out an underground dance event (where there will surely be unfamiliar people, music and visions), you can always catch Aoki at a decent hour, at one of his standing club nights, playing music (Gwen Stefani, the Killers, LCD Soundsystem) that you'll recognize -- music that people will be singing along to. Heck, you can even valet park and start a tab with your corporate Amex. Cutting-edge, and convenient!

Maybe I'm underestimating Aoki's genius. He spins music that any modern jukebox can spit out, with similar transitional skills, and yet he somehow manages to market his Top 40, retro-beats and indie-rock as edgy. The familiar becomes exotic when a hairy guy with starlets at his side spins it. It's so Hollywood. Ultra-familiar faces dancing to ultra-familiar music is somehow transformed into something hip. Aoki has done for DJ culture what his father, Rocky Aoki, did for Japanese food. The elder Aoki founded the Benihana restaurant chain. If you've ever been, you know this is the blandest Asian cuisine this side of the California roll (basic ingredients such as chicken, shrimp and beef are tossed on a grill with vegetables, rice and soy sauce). Can you imagine restaurant critics praising this place as hip, edgy and groundbreaking? But that's just how the media have framed the younger Aoki's just-as-bland musical sensibilities.

What makes both Aokis successful, however, is that not content, but context. At Benihana, chefs with large knives juggle food over a flaming grill at the center of a table lined with customers, transporting eaters to some exotic hallucination of Japanese culinary customs. Likewise, Steve Aoki has re-imagined the cult of the DJ at a time when electronic dance music DJs were losing their mystique. As more and more people realize how easy it is to DJ, the aura of mesmerizing mixes fades and reality sets in: It's just blending one song into another. Aoki flipped DJ worship by rough-mixing records and even inviting celebutantes such as Lindsay Lohan to drop a track. It's easy, see? Even Lindsay can do it. All this superstar DJ worship is full of shit, he seems to be saying -- even as he is worshiped as the non-DJ's DJ. He might have a point there. But then again, his performances are just as overblown and overvalued. And, at least with electronic dance music performances, you'll almost always be confronted with the unfamiliar. By countering super-club DJ culture with frat-rock and radio-pop, and veiling it in a mystique of irreverence and hipster chic, Aoki has grilled his bland and predictable music on the flames of rebellion and hype, validating celebrity nightlife's everlasting love affair with crap music.