Worcester Palladuim. All photos taken by Miguel Crespo for RESPECT.

EDM heavyweight Steve Aoki brought the Kolony tour to the Palladium in Worcester, Massachusetts highlighting tracks from his Hip-Hop collaboration album, Kolony. The album featured some of music’s biggest names including Lil Uzi Vert, Migos, Gucci Mane, Rich The Kid and more. The emergence of EDM and Rap collaborations is becoming more common and Steve has been in the forefront of it all.

Aoki didn’t hit the road alone. Brooklyn rapper Desiigner was a special guest on tour. Known for his number 1 charting single “Panda,” the GOOD Music signee was the perfect way to start the show off. Desiigner is an energetic, crowd-moving artist that had fans raging for his entire set. Cuts from his debuts mixtape New English, and singles like “Outlet” spun as Desiigner proceeded to throw water and surf the crowd. Life Of Desiigner the album is slated to drop sometime this year.

Desiigner

The stage was set and the fans were ready for what they came to see. Loud electronic sounds filled the room and the crowd screamed. If there’s an artist who’s concerts can actually be described as a party, it’s Steve Aoki. Aoki played a bass-pumping set for an incredible 2 hours. Bright lights flashed across the venue and ceiling-touching smoke fired from the stage. Truly engaged with the crowd, Aoki kept the atmosphere electronic.

“It’s time for the moment you all came here for.. Cake.” Aoki is well known for throwing big sheets of cake at fans during his show. Fans love the thought of going home and cleaning frosting off their faces and hair. Big signs read “Cake Me” and fans raised them over their heads. The cakes started flying from the cloud. Desiigner even got in on the cake throwing and tossed one at a fan in the front row. Concluding, the opening artists and Aoki shared the stage one last time to take a bow and wish the crowd a good night. EDM and Rap fusion is something we shall continue to see emerge and as fans of both genres, we’re not mad.

Steve Aoki

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The post RECAP: Steve Aoki and Desiigner Present The Kolony Tour (Worcester, MA) appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

Aoki also explained how the collaboration came together (source):

T-Pain was in Vegas and I was FaceTiming him until he woke up and I got him to come over my house and jump in my pool, it’s kind of initiation… After we were having fun, I played him the beat and he’s wildin’ out. I got him in the booth and gave him an idea of the songs I’m going for. I kept singing ‘All I do is win’ over and over again and then he came up with this hook, T-Pain style. He sings a Queen line and I’m like, we’re never going to get this cleared. But he got it cleared, it was fucking crazy. Then we said we need to get Gucci on this, it will be sick. I sent it over to Gucci’s camp and he loved it and he did his thing and then Yellow Claw touched it up.

Enjoy the video for “Lit” above, which is taken from the new album Kolony. If you missed it, you can also check out RESPECT.’s recent sit-down with Steve Aoki here.

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Image credit: Press Photo/Ultra Records

Genre-blending is a sign of contemporary music making. As Steve Aoki will put it in his interview, it goes farther than mixing and matching music genres, but all forms of expression and knowledge- mixing science with electronic dance music, hip-hop with rock, long hair with Bad Brains t-shirts. Inevitably the outcome is going to stray down a path of innovation above all else. On his latest venture, Steve dabbles in the already intersecting genres of hip-hop and electronic music and adds his own twist to it. Kolony has guest appearances from many of hip-hop’s prominent figures; Lil’ Yatchy, Migos, Gucci Mane, 2 Chainz, amongst others.

As aforementioned, the blend is always going to stray down a different path than what’s typically heard. Many of Steve’s tracks are dirty; heavy distortion on top of heavy bass that emphasizes the trap influence. The latest single, “Lit,” with Gucci Mane and T-Pain, features a drop that aggressively drags itself across the record, with the wobble’s distortion being the most noticeable effect. The entire track-listing won’t be one big head band (despite Steve’s clear affinity for punk-rock), since the next track, “Without U,” is much softer in tone, though still emphasizes rhythmic structure and fast pacing over a peaceful aesthetic.

“How Else” features a beat that “jumps,” a style known and popularly used by ILoveMakonnen, and sees Steve Aoki dabbling more in different vibes of trap. He very much so has slow bangs and head bangs on this record. Rich The Kid adds to this with his usual energy and charisma. The hook on “Night Call” features Migos crooning over it, alongside bars from Yatchy, similar to those off his recent drop Teenage Emotions.

An entire career making EDM hits, and popularizing his name through the sound of that world, it isn’t surprising Steve Aoki would want to switch up the vibe. Hip-hop just passed rock as the most popular genre in the U.S., with some of the most popular sounds including the trap-esque sound dabbled in on the album, Americanized dancehall riddims, and autotuned R&B crooning over dark, slow instrumentals. Steve’s album is a sign of the times; a blending of genres, though very much geared toward “the now.” It’s abundantly clear that he can do hip-hop; after all, both popular EDM and popular hip-hop are very much geared toward finding and maintaining a consistent atmosphere, most of the time being an upbeat one. All in all, the album does exceptionally well for its purpose, which is mainly to turn up to. It’d be doubly interesting to see Steve try out hip-hop production for rappers and singers whose main focus is lyricism and aesthetic; the Kendrick‘s, the Frank‘s, the Tyler‘s.

Steve sat down with RESPECT. to discuss his fears of scorpions, musicians being influenced by non-musicians, and his lack of care for critics.

Image credit: Ultra Records

RESPECT.: What are you afraid of?

Steve Aoki: What am I afraid of with this album?

That, sure, but I meant, like, generally speaking.

So in life then? Uh… scorpions. Definitely scorpions (laughs). In Las Vegas there’s a lot of them, especially by my mom’s house. And one scorpion walked up my brother-in-law’s leg and it just, like, attacked him. He didn’t even know what was in his leg, and he felt the creep and started freaking out, and so did the scorpion, so it just attacked him.

He’s okay though, right?

Yeah he’s good (laughs). I always remember that story and, like, I don’t want a scorpion crawling up my leg but you don’t have to worry about that in New York City.

Alright, we got rats over here, though.

Yeah I mean, maybe a big rat that like jumps on you, you know with like teeth coming out- I don’t know about that. Alligators too, and swamps and stuff.

Sounding like you don’t like animals too much.

No I love animals! I just don’t want any of the ones that are gonna eat me in any sort of way; I don’t wanna go in their territory and like, be their prey.

I definitely wouldn’t wanna fuck with that either, I understand. On a different note, the list of collaborations on your album is extensive, and it also stretches across genres; Louis Tomlinson all the way to Lil’ Yatchty. I wanted to know what you think your average listener looks like.

Well, when you think about how music is listened to now, there’s not a barrier between genre to genre. I think the same fan that loves Migos loves Louis Tomlinson, along with Martin Garrix or Steve Aoki. And they may not know all the music from all the artists, but they can hold a conversation and say “yeah, I fuck with this, I can definitely sing along to that,” you know? And I’m lucky because I’m living in that kind of climate, especially with streaming music and how accessible it is, you know? It’s like, what is the underground anymore? As soon as a song is out in the internet, it’s just there and accessible. It allows the underground to be heard, like, all the time. Then it goes back to genre bending because so much music is out there, which means an average listener can look like anyone.

I want to work with everyone. People that inspire me. I’m not even talking about only musical artists; I wanna work with scientists and the like. Having JJ Abrams on a song was a big deal to me. I got Ray Kurzweil, the guy who popularized the idea of Singularity, on a song by me (and on an interview). Those songs don’t get talked about but they’re, like, humongous deals to me. If I could choose, living or dead, someone to do a record with me, it would be Bruce Lee. I love to do records with people who inspire me no matter what they do.

Not even rapping or singing on there. Just, like, to be on the record.

Yeah! I even hit up Elon Musk to do a record with me. And I mean, Neil deGrasse Tyson already did a record with Logic, but I hit him up too. I got Bill Nye on my next record. I just want that energy, ’cause at the end of the day that’s what it’s all about. Energy will spawn creativity, and the thing about that is you don’t know where it’s gonna go. You might be one particular kind of producer, or musician, or artist, but if you’re inspired by something that’s like, outside of your norm, it’s gonna lead you down a path that’s gonna surprise people.

So many artist nowadays, to add on, say they’re inspired by movie directors. I forget who it was, but someone I was watching said they were inspired by Quentin Tarantino, and somehow incorporated elements of his filmmaking into their music.

Yeah, when you think about Quentin Tarantino and the feel of his movies, you immediately think of the soundtracks too. So you think about Django Reinhardt and you think about how he played an impact on that movie. Or Hans Zimmer in Interstellar. You know? You can’t watch that film and be moved without Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack for that. Which goes to show how everything’s interconnected.

It’s like, what you see, what you hear, what you feel, and whether it’s what you wear, or how you represent yourself, or… how you have your hair- your hair like that (very long up top), or my hair being very long- or the shoes you wear: it’s all connected, it’s all just playing connect the dots and figuring out the person.

Totally. Relating back to all the people you just listed- Neil deGrasse Tyson, JJ Abrams- have you ever felt, because of your international exposure, creatively stunted? Like, not experimenting with a certain sound/aesthetic, or wanting to put someone you were personally inspired by on there but feeling like you’d get judged by fans for it? 

I stopped caring what people thought I really long time ago. I mean, of course it does hit me, and my team weighs in and gives me insight on if something doesn’t sound right, so I keep my ears open. But, the critics out there, if I worried about what they thought, I wouldn’t be here.

Your sound would be totally different. 

Yeah! And of course I’m gonna have critics, especially for this album. People that loved my previous work but don’t like the new stuff- it happens all the time. But I can’t let that guide my decisions and what I wanna do.

So I’m very much “in the now” you know? Like, whatever’s a part of me now is what I wanna make, because whatever you make is like a timestamp. It’s like your tattoo of this time period, and 25 years later I’m gonna be thinking about something else. Even six months later, I’m gonna be inspired by something else, and I’m gonna act on that in that moment. And it’s funny too because you’ll go back and listen to your old music and be like “Oh God, oh God! I can’t believe I was like that!” And I stopped doing that too. Because that was a very important point in time, where you made that, and of course it’s gonna be different.

Everything is a timeline. Genres included. 

Yeah exactly. I also think about, like, old tattoos. I tattooed a band’s logo (Gorilla Biscuits) on my back when I was 18. And I don’t listen to them as much anymore, but it’s what I fucking loved when I was 18!

A post shared by Steve Aoki (@steveaoki) on May 6, 2017 at 4:20pm PDT

Check out Kolony (most of it) below, and keep up with Steve Aoki on Twitter, Instagram, and SoundCloud.

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Each contributor brings plenty to the table on the track, a perfect blend of Electro House and Trap Hip-Hop. The clip sees Chainz spitting his bars amongst painted dancers while the producers party along in nearby portraits.

Enjoy “Without U” above. Kolony (which you can pre-order here) also sees appearances from Wale, Ma$e, Gucci Mane, T-Pain, ILOVEMAKONNEN and more. 2 Chainz new album — Pretty Girls Like Trap Music — is out now.

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Twitter / @steveaoki

Steve Aoki has just dropped off a hot new track titled “Night Call” featuring Migos and Lil Yachty.

In anticipation of his upcoming project Kolony, Aoki has released this single to prepare fans for the star-studded album. Kolony is set to drop on July 21st and will consist of features from Wale, Lil Uzi Vert, 2 Chainz, Gucci Mane, T-Pain and more.

Dropping soon! Big announcements this week…stay tuned ? @kolonyofficial

A post shared by Steve Aoki (@steveaoki) on Jun 12, 2017 at 7:04pm PDT

“Night Call” was first debuted at JMBLYA festival back in May.

? #NIGHTCALL. FRIDAY. @migos @lilyachty @kolonyofficial ? Pre-save it in ur @Spotify playlist now before it’s out ? in bio

A post shared by Steve Aoki (@steveaoki) on Jun 14, 2017 at 12:06pm PDT

Give the new track a listen down below.

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The post Listen To Steve Aoki’s New Track “Night Call” Featuring Migos And Lil Yachty appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

The cover of Kenna Zemedkun‘s first album, New Sacred Cow, is nearly blank. For his second album, the story goes, Pharrell urged him to reveal his mug, to give his audience a face to the name. He didn’t, of course, titling it Make Sure They See My Face in joking rebuke. And four EPs later, he’s still yet to heed his friend’s advice.

But far from a camera-shy Weeknd-type enigma, Kenna’s face has been seen in a variety of other mediums in the six years since his last full-length. There he was on the pages of Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, as a case study of the virtue of intuition, and on MTV, leading a pack of celebrities to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro in support of clean water. For the most part, though, he stepped out of the music world, fashioning himself into more of a philanthropist-entrepreneur than singer-songwriter.

Now, he’s back in the role of musician, with a slew of brief releases produced by the likes of RJD2 and Chad Hugo out on Dim Mak Records this year. We sat down with the Virginia Beach-bred Renaissance man to chat about his new sound and old image.

**********************************************************************************************

 RESPECT: Your new music is out on Steve Aoki’s label, Dim Mak. How did that come about?

Kenna: Aoki and I have been friends for a few years, and Dim Mak is a hungry label. I wanted to license my records, I wanted to own my masters, and he afforded me that opportunity. At the same time, he’s a fan of my music and put his team on task to make sure that it gets heard. And that’s all I ever wanted from a relationship with a label. It’s a true partnership. The other thing is that—maybe I shouldn’t say it—it’s an indicator of where, sonically, I might shift a little bit in the near future. I’m not sure exactly how to explain it, but I definitely have always had an electronic twinge to my music anyways; there’s gonna be some interesting dynamic shifts from my album that don’t sound anything like the Imitation Is Suicide EP, doesn’t sound like any of the Land 2 Air EPs. It’s gonna change completely. And in the meantime, I’m just saying, “By the way, remember this? By the way, I can do this too. Don’t try to limit me, ‘cause my next record’s not gonna be anything you expect.”

You’ve been working with a range of other artists lately, from Vic Mensa to JoJo. How would you describe your approach to collaboration?

Here’s the thing: I don’t think that the world is flat anymore. People listen to everything. Diddy came out today and said he loves country music. Did you hear about that? We’re influenced by a lot of different music, and it only makes sense for me to find the best  breeds in all different genres and wanna work with them—at least the ones that I love. Working with Jo, she’s one of the illest vocalists on the planet—forget what genre she’s in. Working with Childish [Gambino] is like working with one of the best in the world. It’s not about what genres they’re in, it’s about whether or not we can make great music together.

What does the EP format allow you to do that can’t be done on a full-length? What kinds of ideas can you get across in three tracks?

I look at myself as a new artist. I stepped out of the focus on music for a minute to do some other business and philanthropic work. And to come back to it, I have to acknowledge to my fans that I’ve been doing other things, and I have to come out with music that matters and is relevant now. So for me, it was about being able to create little bite-sized packages for people to get into but not be overwhelmed by. Who wants to hear a whole album of anybody right now? So to me, it’s like, “Here’s three records. Love what you love, hate what you hate. Here’s three more. Oh, here’s three more.” And being consistent. The other thing that’s happened over my whole career is that, being stuck to some label systems, I haven’t been able to put out the records when I wanted to. And there have been a lot of delays. I hated that. It wasn’t my fault. But now that I control it, I want to make sure I’m consistent with putting out music that matters and being relevant in what I make. And respecting my audience and being sure that they know that I’m fucking working. The hustle’s on.

Are you still recording in Virginia?

No, I haven’t recorded in Virginia in a minute. Chad, we do some stuff satellite, so Chad’ll be working in Virginia. I’m mostly working in Los Angeles now.

What’s it like working with Chad in a post-Neptunes world?

Don’t sleep. It seems like they don’t work together as much, but it doesn’t mean they don’t work together as much, if that means anything. They still work together. It’s not official, on multiple levels, but Chad and Pharrell will always be allies. They’ll always work together on things here and there. You never know when Chad’s involved with something. It may not be titled “Neptunes” anymore, but he’s always close by. When it comes down to the big picture of evolution, we all have different things to say with our lives, and naturally, there’s a progression there. I’ve always been kind of tangential to the Neptunes’ mast, but at the exact same time, I’ll see Pharrell this week, and I talk to Chad—Chad’s in Charlotte on the way back to VA right now. We’re far from each other on multiple levels, but we’re just making other things.

I just put out another song, “Love Is Still Alive,” from Chapter II of the EP, and that was the first time—well, not the first time, but one of the first future soul type of records I’ve ever fully produced myself, and wrote, and produced, and played everything. It’s that kind of time right now, where we have to evolve and shape our futures. Pharrell’s always produced his own shit, and I commend him for that, because he’s always pushed himself to do that. My focuses are different. We all do come together, though. I’ll be there to talk to him about his mix on things, or a record that he’s writing, and assist, and give him—I guess, the word is a 30,000-foot view on something when he’s in the middle of it. Same with Chad—Chad will do the same thing for me. We’ll always work together, so it’s really dope to see the cycle. Great music comes back. You look at Pharrell, and the things that are happening this year, and what’s gonna happen next year with him, it’s great to know that music and great melodies will always return to the forefront no matter what.

It just occurred to me—the nexus, the meeting point of you, Pharrell, and Chad, might be Steve Aoki. Isn’t P on tour with him right now?

[Laughs] Steve Aoki is the nexus! It’s interesting. Things are just not written. When you circle each other in a creative space, you’re bound to bump into each other. Steve Aoki circles that space, so does Pharrell, so does Childish Gambino, so does Santigold. The nexus in LA is the Record Plant studio where we all run into each other and run into each other’s sessions and cut vocals. You wonder why those collaborations ever happen—it’s because they were all in the same studio on the same day by accident. And they all love each other’s shit.

Talk to me about your extracurriculars. You and Pharrell took a couple years to step into entrepreneurial mode, making waves in the world of online media. What exactly do you do for MySpace?

Justin [Timberlake] is a co-owner of Myspace. I’m his partner at MySpace. As the Chief Vision Officer, which is in tandem as one of the chief creatives here, my gig is pretty overarching—basically, where MySpace is gonna go, what it’s gonna do. For example, why it looks the way it does right now is a part of my work.

The side scroll, right? Was that you?

Yeah, the new design, the side scroll, the UX, the UI, how we build the team around it. I brought Joseph Patel, who was at Vice before. Now he runs editorial and content at MySpace. I’m pretty much a change agent. Let’s just call it that.

Ten years ago, if I told you that you and Justin Timberlake were gonna own MySpace and Pharrell’s gonna be on tour with Daft Punk, what would you have said?

You know what’s funny? There was a moment ten years ago when I sat down with this kid in college, and I was like, “Yo, I need you to make a MySpace page with me,” and he was like, “Yeah, but I don’t have a computer.” I said, “Cool, let me get you one,” and I bought him a computer. I said, “Because I’m giving you this computer, I want you to run my MySpace page from now on. You just keep it up.” And he did that, and he’s gone on to do a lot of things. He directed music videos, he’s over at Karmaloop now—

Shomi?

Yeah, Shomi. He’ll tell you this story. He said, “I’ll do that for you,” and I said, “Look, one day when I run MySpace, we’ll do a lot of shit together.” That was ten years ago. Then, literally ten months ago, I went to have a meeting with MySpace and Karmaloop, and he walked in and told that story to the whole room, and it was like, “Oh shit—we’re here to actually do shit together.”

I think it’s manifest destiny, man. You build what you believe is your future in every word you speak, in every action you take. I’m here for a greater purpose. I’m here to help people get clean water. That’s my legacy. I’ll climb mountains for that. I’ll write records for that. I’ll run social networks for that. So everything I do is to build towards that goal. That first Kilimanjaro climb I did ended up being a part of pushing $400 million into clean water. At the end of the day, I went and dug a well 50 yards from where my grandfather tried to build a well in Ethiopia so that he could get water 50 years ago with my father. These are the things that matter in this life, and my music is a conduit for that kind of change. So every time you guys post stuff, every time I get put on here and there, the opportunities rise for me to be able to do more of that. I appreciate this conversation. And at the end of the day, I know Pharrell, and Chad, and everybody else that I work with, they know what my purpose is. Pharrell always says, “Make something greater than yourself.” And that’s what I try to do with every single melody that comes out of my mouth and every sound that comes out of my teeth. That’s my goal, so that I can actually do what I’m here to do: make change.

The post Kenna Is Making Sure You See His Face appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

A few weeks ago, it was announced that Steve Aoki had signed Florida-bred emcee Will Brennan to his label Dim Mak.  Then, we also got the new track from Brennan produced by DJ Burn One, in the form of “Pressure.”  With the track, Brennan explains his mission statement telling listeners who he is and who he wishes to be.  With his new track, “Bet That” Brennan hooks up with his label mate Keys N Krates for production.  This track is Brennan‘s first collaboration with label mates.  For the track, Brennan once again takes a introspective view talking about his transformation from child to the emcee we see today.  I’m definitely a fan of Brennan and can’t wait to see what else he has coming in the works.

The post New Music: Will Brennan – “Bet That” appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.