Where this was said
Grammy Nomination, 80K-Person Crowds & the Wonderland Era
At 1:06:40 · chapter starts 1:06:00
The Wonderland chapter marks the apex of Steve Aoki's mainstream crossover — a Grammy nomination, the highest-grossing dance act in North America, festival sets where the crowd stretches as far as the eye can see. Standing in the DJ booth at EDC with 60–80,000 people directly in front of him, the scale becomes almost incomprehensible. What grounds the moment is Steve's genuine emotional honesty: he still feels like an impostor. 'How did I get here? I'm not supposed to be here.' This is the kid from Isla Vista who made zines at Kinko's and hosted 30 people at underground shows. He arrived at the Grammys — an institution he'd spent his punk years mocking — and thought: this is a mix-up. That dissonance between where he came from and where he ended up never fully resolves, and Steve seems to think that's actually healthy.
The EDC festival in Las Vegas draws approximately 200,000 attendees per day, totaling 600,000 over three days, making it one of the largest festivals in the world.
The EDM world runs on MDMA. Steve Aoki ran on nothing. His straight-edge roots meant he never touched cocaine, meth, heroin, or MDMA — even while performing for hundreds of thousands of people on drugs. The only substance he ever tried was acid at age 13, alone, which terrified him so badly he never touched anything again.
