Rap/Rock/Rave: The Unholy Alliance of Steve Aoki and Linkin Park

Three weeks ago I got an email from Linkin Park's publicist with a YouTube link and a press release that I didn't read. The title was "STEVE AOKI AND LINKIN PARK'S WORLDS COLLIDE ON NEW SINGLE."

I, of course, went straight home and began packing my favorite shirts into a suitcase so that I could patiently await the four horsemen of the apocalypse to drag me down into hell. After all, this unhallowed union of rap-rock and festival EDM could only mean one thing, and that's the immenent arrival of the anti-Christ. But after an hour or two of twiddling my thumbs I looked outside and the birds were still chirping, the leaves still falling in dramatic spirals. So I opened my laptop, cracked a Mr. Pibb, and watched Linkin Park's lead singer jump on stage with Aoki—the living, breathing, cake-throwing brand package—to deliver a heartfelt rendition of their new single live from Tokyo.

Aoki did something like a YMCA dance when he wasn't pretending to touch buttons. Mike Shinoda—LP's lead singer (duh) and the subject of today's interview—almost got carried away and jumped in for a crowd-surf, but appears to have been held back last minute by a security guard. The other homie from Linkin Park rapped a hurried verse after repeatedly ordering the audience to "Jump!" and "Make some noise." YouTube comments on the official music video include quips like "LP and Steve Aoki worked on this for more than six months, and it still fucking sucks," as well as poorly translated nonsense like "This is dubstep, LP is sold" and the requisite defensive responses: "If u were true fans u wouldnt be complaining about them youd be supporting them."

The whole thing was kind of awkward and low-budget, but you can't pretend that any of this is surprising. Like many other business savvy commercial music endeavors, Linkin Park have hopped the bandwagon (or jumped the ship? Jumped the shark? I don't know) and are following the mass exodus of fans away from the time-tested rock concert model to the far more immersive—and lucrative—EDM festival Experience (yes, with a capital "E"). And when I got an email from Mike Shinoda's team asking if I wanted to interview the Linkin Park frontman I immediately started scheming about how to troll him publicly for the benefit of you cynical VICE readers out there.

Unfortunately, he was, like, totally nice and articulate. And this makes me a failed troll. While I am not convinced that Linkin Park & Aoki is what the world needs now, Mike Shinoda makes some salient points about rap-rock and rave, and admitted that he'd "rather make a loud mistake than be timid and not take any chances."

THUMP: So you released a collaborative EDM track with Steve Aoki. What's it like working with him?
Mike Shinoda: Right so, when the track was shaping up, Steve sent me an email saying, "I did a ton of interviews at the Grammys yesterday, and I can't tell you how badly I wanted to tell them I was working with Linkin Park!" And he didn't say a word about it—that's professionalism. A lot of artists would have tweeted about it or whatever but Steve knows better than that. Sometimes it takes a while for a song to be ready and you don't want to hype somebody on something they can't have for a while.

I read an interview with Steve where he was like, "Oh my god. Linkin Park are my heroes."
It's so rad to be getting the kind of love we get from electronic artists like Steve. We're putting out an album full of remixes and a lot of the artists on there have been fans of Linkin Park for a while. I feel like a lot of people who were rock fans or who would have been rock fans have moved in the direction of electronic music. It's a different kind of scene for them and a different kind of outlet, and to me there seems to be an obvious connection.

In your most recent interview you said something like "There's something so punk rock about the EDM method"—do you think that's part of the appeal?
Absolutely, because the idea is DIY, right? In the most raw form—and I know this isn't true for everybody—all a DJ needs to have is their laptop and know how to use software that's probably not that expensive. I mean, how far from punk rock is that? You just throw together a band with your buddies, you buy the cheap instruments, you go out and you go get it. And that's what these guys started doing.

The thing about people like Steve—his work ethic is insane. Last month he did five shows in two days and we laughed because we're on the opposite end of the spectrum from that. We've got this massive production and a massive crew, and we can't possibly do two shows in a day or three shows in two days. It's just hard to drag it all from place to place. He just needs to show up with a couple guys.

Yeah, put the laptop in a bag and get out of there.
Exactly.

Do you think dance music is the future? Do you think the rockers are jumping ship?
There's room for everything. As a music fan, it's not like I only have room for three albums this month, or like, 20 singles—it's not like that. It's always ebbing and flowing. I wrote an op-ed blog post this month, and it was actually a response to a piece that blog did called "Rock Music Sucks Right Now and Is Depressing." I basically agreed and explained my feeling that rock music right now needs more innovation and excitement. People need to get over themselves. The artists are so precious about their fan base and about being seen with any other band or artist that they don't want to do any songs together; they don't want to get on tour together; they don't want to do anything with anybody else. And the rest of the music community is doing it and reaping the benefits both creatively and financially.

It's one thing among many that makes me go "I don't get it. I don't understand why rock artists aren't willing to take a leap outside of their comfort zone." Even if it sucks at the end of the day I'd rather make a loud mistake than be timid and not take any chances.

You debuted your collaboration in a live setting in Japan. Do you think there's a different feeling to an EDM show than a rock concert? Is there a different energy?
I think there definitely is. Part of it has to do with the fact that it's more production-focused, and if you just have the DJ and the gear they brought and nothing else on stage, it's definitely not the same experience as a rock band on stage with no production. A rock band in its rawest form has a lot more energy, but then you add the production element and the rock band has to spend money getting their technicians out and their gear and all this elaborate stage setup, whereas the DJ gets to spend all that money on LED screens. You go to an electronic music festival and you've got something that's pretty visually stunning.

The other thing is that the crowd isn't necessarily all focused on the performer; they're doing their own thing, as opposed to a rock show where people are definitely focused straight ahead on what's going on onstage.

There are also more drugs at the EDM shows.
I would venture to say that's probably true [laughs]. As wild as that sounds it's kind of always been that way. The thing is, I can't tell if there's less drugs now than there used to be, because I went to raves when I was in college and it was nuts. Like, I don't think I've seen it like that these days. Then again, I went to raves where they played a lot of jungle and hardcore techno, and they were a little more agro anyways. Hardcore techno back then was like the heavy metal of electronic music. People were kinda fucked up—not just on drugs, but they were, uh, potentially unstable [laughs].

The whole environment was a little scary.
It was a little scary. I loved it but I couldn't live there.

Did you listen to Korn's dubstep album?
I did.

Do you think that influenced the way you integrate electronic music into your own albums?
Both bands were definitely doing it independently well before that. If you listen to even the first song on Hybrid Theory you can tell that we were integrating elements of jungle and hip-hop—not specifically the styles that we integrate now, but from then until now, it's been a constant progression. Somebody else said to me that we almost always had electronics in our music, it's just that it was turned down until now. Now the guitars are underneath the electronics; we flip-flopped it in the mix. If you were to go back and listen to Hybrid Theory, and there's a non-live element playing, you'd ask, "What is it referencing?" And it's always electronic and hip-hop.

So it's almost just a question of engineering, then?
Here a little philosophy: in our music you've always got a lot of tracks. If you're a band like the White Stripes where you have a guitar, drums and a vocal part, you don't have a problem considering which ones to put up front, because everything can be turned up and you'll be fine. If you're a band like us—and we have six band members and you're constantly layering lots of sounds—then you may have twenty sounds to choose from and you can't just turn them all up. It'll sound like shit. You have to choose the hierarchy of elements, so over time as our tastes changed, different sounds get put up front.

On Hybrid Theory the guitars and drums got turned up really loud, and few albums later you find that some of the electronic parts get turned up a little more. We started actually letting our bass player turn his tracks up, which is funny because it didn't really happen on the first record. By the time we got to our last album, all the electronic elements are turned up and the live elements sit behind that. So on the next album it might be flip-flopped again. It remains to be seen.

So you've got a ton of collaborations on the new record. Can you talk about some of your favorites?
There's a lot of variety on there, from Datsik and KillSonik to Money Mark, and a couple of rap features from Pusha T and Bun B. I really enjoyed working with all the different artists, and with some of them I didn't touch anything—I just let them do their thing. Other artists wanted to collaborate, so I added some stuff and played around with it, and then I did two remixes myself.

Did you have any fun studio time with any of those people?
It was mostly long distance, because everyone is on the road. There was a lot of sharing files and stuff—occasionally I'd meet up with people. Like I remember Datsik was in Cleveland when we were touring and we hit Cleveland the same night. We got to hang out there before he left and went over to his show. It's fun chopping it up with the guys who are younger, who are now just now experiencing the attention of these fans and a different phase in their career and in music in general.

Have you been to Steve Aoki's infamous green room?
[Laughs] I actually have not. We met up in Tokyo and I hung out with him a couple other times, but never really at the shows.

What's the most fun you've ever had backstage with a collaborating artist?
Usually the Linkin Park backstage culture is really mellow. It's real family-oriented and we want to keep it cool for them. Plus it's harder for us to do our thing when there's a lot of chaos going on.

One time, when Jay-Z was kicking off his album, The Blueprint III, Rolling Stone asked me to be their reporter on the scene, like their Twitter journalist or whatever. I didn't realize a part of his ritual was to have a shot of Patron and a glass of Ace of Spades before his show. He said, "If you're covering the show you gotta do the ritual." So we had the shot of Patron and the Ace of Spades, and I immediately said to management, "We gotta do what Jay does because this was awesome." It's a great way to do the show.

Have you been doing that before every show?
Actually I think we have a pretty good thing going on and I'm fine passing it up.