At 13, Steve Aoki found his tribe in the straight-edge hardcore punk scene. The appeal was radical accessibility — you didn't have to be good, you just had to show up. Playing in garages after school, making zines at Kinko's, and silk-screening T-shirts taught him that any creative endeavor was achievable. That ethos became the backbone of Dim Mak Records.
Where this was said
At 23:00 · chapter starts 16:00
There's a wry absurdity to the image: a Japanese immigrant woman who speaks broken English choosing to settle in Newport Beach when a comfortable Japanese-speaking community was 10 minutes away in Irvine. Steve laughs about it now, but the reality was rough. [1] — Steve Aoki "Steve Aoki's Japanese-immigrant mother inexplicably moved to the whitest neighborhood in Orange County — Newport Beach — when she could hav…" 15:56 He was put in school a year early — physically smaller than his peers, culturally invisible in a white suburb — and bounced between Catholic, Christian, and public schools, failing academically and getting sent to the principal's office constantly for being the easiest target. The era mattered too: being Japanese in 1978 America was a fundamentally different experience than it is today, before anime, sushi, and Japanese pop culture made Asian identity something to aspire to rather than hide. Steve makes the larger point thoughtfully: social media now acts as an education tool for cultural norms, but back then there was no such corrective. The damage was done in real time, at the age when kids are most impressionable and most vulnerable.
Steve Aoki estimates roughly 70% of Benihana's business comes from birthday celebrations, a figure he noted from working there as a teenager.
Reggae didn't emerge from thin air — it was built layer by layer from mento in the 1940s, ska in the late 1950s, and rocksteady in the mid-1960s. Each stage absorbed new influences, from transistor radios picking up Miami R&B to the distinctive 2-and-4 rhythmic accent that defines the genre.
Before hip-hop existed, Jamaican DJs were already doing it. Electricity spreading across Jamaica enabled mobile 'sound systems,' and DJs developed toasting — speaking and singing over recorded music — a tradition that DJ Kool Herc brought from Kingston to the Bronx at age 12.
Joe Higgs is reggae's great unsung hero. This Kingston musician took teenage Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer under his wing and taught them how to sing, write songs, and make music — at a time when most artists would have focused on their own careers. Without him, the Wailers probably just would have sucked.
Reggae archivist Roger Steffens' analogy says it all: Bob Marley was reggae's Martin Luther King Jr., making the music universally palatable; Peter Tosh was its Malcolm X, inserting fierce militant political energy. Together, they gave the Wailers a depth no single voice could achieve alone.
King Tubby built his own hardware from cast-off recording gear to strip vocals and create dubbed-out instrumental reggae — essentially inventing electronic music in Kingston before Kraftwerk did it in Germany. The dubplate he created became the raw material for DJs to toast over, seeding hip-hop.
Two days before the 1976 Smile Jamaica anti-violence concert, gunmen shot Bob Marley in the chest and shoulder, shot Rita Marley, and wounded two others. He showed up and played anyway. The concert had already drawn accusations that Marley was a tool of the PNP government — a charge that frustrated him deeply.
Peter Tosh's killer was a man Tosh had taken in after prison, giving him shelter and food. The man repaid that generosity by holding Tosh hostage, torturing him for money, and shooting him in the head. It is one of the most brutal betrayals in music history.
The Windrush Generation brought Caribbean music to London after World War II, and reggae's 2-and-4 rhythm lodged itself deep in British culture — giving birth to ska bands like The Specials, pop acts like UB40, and even punk. Johnny Rotten was a reggae fan, and Public Image Limited has the dub influence to prove it.
Reggaetón didn't come from nowhere. It emerged from underground Spanish-language reggae-rap scenes in Panama and Puerto Rico, drawing directly on Jamaican reggae's rhythms and attitude. The line from Kingston to Bad Bunny's Super Bowl performance is a straight one.
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