Steve Aoki defends cake throwing at fans during gigs

Steve Aoki has defended his cake throwing antics, saying "there is not a lot to do" and it's often a hard decision whether to throw cake or not.

The extract below comes from a rather long piece written for The Daily Beast entitled "To Cake or Not to Cake". It is essentially a long rant from Aoki, addressing his critics within the world of electronic music by contemplating the different roles that certain DJ's take on when they perform. The Dim Mak head honcho argues that he fuses performance with DJing and frequently weighs up whether he should be in the booth or chucking cake. 

Read n extract from the Daily Beast piece below:

"For people that don’t know what DJs are actually doing up there, when you’re not mixing into the next song or out of the previous one, there is not a lot to do. Of course twisting knobs (taking out the lows, turning up the highs to create your own musical story is all part of DJing itself) but it’s not absolutely necessary. Even playing with the effects to exaggerate a sound or diminish a particular sound is great but once again it isn’t necessary to do it every single song. Do I fuxx with the EQs and twist knobs? Yes, of course I do, but I might not do it all the time. And I give full respect to DJs that spend time working each track into their own style whether by scratching like hip-hop DJs do (an art form all its own) or adding effects, looping other tracks or samples, or whatever else one DJ might do to help tell their story.

So then what do we as DJs do when we are up there, when you’re not mixing from one song to the next? Everyone is different but for me I add in another element to my set which is my props. Depending on a particular song I’ll do a particular action that is connected to that track. I really look at each song in its own context in terms of how it relates to the crowd. And I have to make a decision during that song whether I’m going to amplify the feeling in that song by either working the EQs/effects, looping a sample, letting the song just play out without added extras, or doing something outside the DJ booth (rafts, cakes, etc).

…

I still can’t help but ask myself…should I stop caking people? Will that stop the haters from hating? Stop giving the trolls more content to target me with? I even ask myself, are the cakes and the rafts taking away from the art of my culture, DJing? By using these tools instead of standing behind the DJ booth, am I deviating too far away from that culture? Am I embarrassing or insulting it? I’m sure many people feel that I am because things I do are not part of the norm.

I’m going to say this again, I’ve never played a mix CD. So if I’m going to get in front of the DJ booth for an activity, that means that I have to sacrifice time working on the song as it’s being played. It’s a lot of stress to deal with when you have a song that might end if you don’t get back in time. But that is my way of engaging with the crowd. Everyone has their own style and some DJs have mastered the art of using filters and EQs to help connect the audience with a song or a mood. That is their tool. This is mine."