Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it too? It is estimated that world renowned electro house DJ Steve Aoki plays roughly 300 shows per year and has earned somewhere around $23 million in 2014. The incredibly animated Aoki is a showman on stage, spraying bottles of champagne, crowd surfing in a raft, and provoking fans with cake before tossing it at the audience member that is begging for it with the most tenacity. But Steve has come under fire from, well, people on the internet, who suggest that he is not a “real DJ” because of his theatrics.

But that couldn't be further from the truth. I first witnessed a Steve Aoki performance in 2007, a scaled down, traditional opening for She Wants Revenge on a pair of turntables, during an era in which it was much harder to fake it. Back then he was spinning tracks from Bloc Party interspersed with Justice and was a member of the Deckstar DJ collective / talent agency alongside his friend DJ AM. Aoki’s DJ sets matched the sound of his music at the time, as his 2008 debut mix album Pillowface and His Airplane Chronicles reflects.

The timing of AM’s passing and the genesis of the stateside EDM boom are hardly coincidental events. However Steve openly embraced the new sound, arguably an extension or evolution of the post-punk and French electro sounds that were already peppering his sets. As he descended upon Las Vegas in 2010, Aoki landed residencies at Wynn Resorts’ megaclubs, Surrender/Encore Beach Club and later, XS. These days, Sin City clubgoers can find him at Hakkasan, Omnia, and Wet Republic.

Steve Aoki and the author in 2012 [photo: Danny Mahoney]

It was at XS that I began to spin with him regularly, getting a behind the scenes look at what he really does behind the booth… which is DJ. Steve’s show riders requested a raft, several bottles of champagne, and at least one cake reading “Autoerotique: Turn Up The Volume,” a nod to the music video from his Dim Records artist that inspired the cake launching tradition. Steve was playing on the exact same equipment that I was, a Pioneer DJM mixer, two CDJ-1000MK3s and Serato Scratch Live. Except that he figured out that he needed to animate the then new style of music for the crowd. These props and stunts engaged the crowd in a way I hadn’t seen before. Like a circus ringleader, he was getting a bigger reaction from the crowd by simply addressing them in unique ways.

And while he may seem like the most “turnt up,” out-of-control dude on stage, he leaves that persona behind when he exits the DJ booth. Steve is actually a humble, mellow, and super-personable guy, who doesn’t use drugs or even drink. As a teenager, he was a fan of straight-edge hardcore bands and through that adopted a non-substance abuse lifestyle, which he still lives by today. So the champagne spraying and spouting is the extent of his abuse of alcohol; a closer look will reveal there’s ne'er a glass in his hand.

Steve addressed his over-the-top performance style in an editorial for The Daily Beast last year, entitled “To Cake or Not To Cake,” finally pulling the curtain back on the “controversial” pastry-throwing practice.

“When I perform, I don’t think about the haters, the Internet trolls, or anyone else. I care about giving the person in front of me something they won’t forget. And that’s why I bring the cake and raft out,” he wrote.

While Steve has ceased from throwing cake at festivals, reserving it only for his solo shows, he’s embraced the ritual in the title of his new book, Eat, Sleep, Cake, Repeat. This gorgeous photo journal documents his world travelling adventures and celebrity encounters. I spoke to Steve to get the stories behind a few select pics from the book.