Dance

Steve Aoki is obsessed with numbers. It’s why the Grammy Award-nominated producer and mega-DJ has a seven-page rider specifying the exact weight and dimensions of the sheet cakes he hurls into the delirious crowds of fans who flock to his shows holding signs that say, “CAKE ME!” It’s why, despite an “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” tattoo on the back of his neck, he knows per one epigenetic measure that he has slowed his aging process down to 0.8 out of 1 thanks to a rigorous biohacking regimen that includes tracking how much REM sleep he’s getting on his WHOOP watch. And it’s why, when asked why he wants to live so long in the first place, he equates life to winning the lottery and quotes the statistical probability of simply being alive on this earth as 1 in 400 trillion.

But there is one number Aoki prefers not to know: the amount he’s getting paid per show. He worries that knowledge might subconsciously affect the energy he brings from one massive outdoor stage to another, that it might cloud the sacred union he feels between himself, the lucky lottery winner, and his fans, who tend to embody the rollicking frenzy of a punk show that Aoki has injected into electronic dance music (EDM).

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It’s a high that he says he has grown ­addicted to, which explains why he DJ’d 209 shows last year and holds the 2012 Guinness World Record for most traveled musician in one year, and (though they’ve since been broken) the 2014 records for longest crowd cheer and most glow sticks lit simultaneously. It’s fitting, then, that on this Wednesday evening in April, Aoki is Zooming with me from a lounge at the San Francisco International Airport as he prepares for a flight to Australia, where he’ll DJ five shows in 48 hours before headlining the Siam Songkran Music Festival in Bangkok. At 46 years old — or 36.8, if you take into account his 0.8 aging rate according to TruDiagnostic, an epigenetic testing company — Aoki has little interest in slowing down.

“I still have the thirst,” he says. “I still have the enthusiasm, and with music, there’s no greater energy force. There’s no greater high than playing your records at your show in front of a crowd that knows your music and everyone’s just f–king lit up. Like, there’s nothing greater than that.”

Whatever you might make of his persona as a fist-pumping, hair-shaking, Takis-munching, EDM-spinning, sheet cake-throwing party bro who seems to have perpetually lost his shirt, it’s hard to dispute that over the last two decades, Aoki has firmly established himself as a pioneering figure in the world of dance music. That he has done so globally and exuberantly — despite the reserved Asian American stereotypes he grew up absorbing — is a testament to his unabashed confidence, unrelenting work ethic and entrepreneurial instincts, which extend far beyond music.

For starters, there’s the all-electric race boat team he recently purchased to compete in the UIM E1 World Championship against competing owners Tom Brady and Rafael Nadal; the Hiroquest graphic novel he published in April with comic book legend Jim Krueger, about a genetically augmented meta-human who journeys into the multiverse 400 years into the future; and his various forays into science and tech, from investing in brain research through his Aoki Foundation to ventures in cryptocurrency, esports, non-fungible tokens and cryogenics. In 2022, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa selected Aoki as one of eight civilians to join his SpaceX moon trip, with a yet-to-be-determined launch date.

“There’s always a new thing every year, and the whole team kind of shrugs their shoulders like, ‘OK, let’s go learn how to do this,’ ” says Matt Colon, Aoki’s business manager of 20 years and the global president of music at talent management agency YMU.

“He embodies that spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship that is so inspiring,” says Paris Hilton, a friend of Aoki’s since she was 16 who released her first-ever collaboration with him late last year. “Every venture he takes on, he does it with a sense of style and purpose. He has turned his artistic vision into an empire, and that’s something that I deeply respect and connect with in my own business endeavors.”

Balenciaga hoodie and jacket.

Jessica Chou

Colon sees it as his job to foster his client’s excitement — even if he admits that roughly half of Aoki’s business ideas “get dismissed kind of out of hand because once you get into the details, they don’t really make sense.” Still, Colon notes that it was that out-of-the-box thinking that allowed Aoki to break into the industry in the first place, by way of Dim Mak Records, the Los Angeles-based label he founded in 1996.

In the early ’00s, Dim Mak became a tastemaker by signing acts like The Kills, Bloc Party and Gossip. But perhaps more significantly, Aoki became godfather of the scene that coalesced around Dim Mak Tuesdays, the indie sleaze Hollywood party he threw from 2003 to 2014 to promote the label. With then-rising acts like M.I.A., Lady Gaga, Kesha and Justice clamoring to perform and buzzy guests like the Olsen twins all enshrined by the famed nightlife blog The Cobrasnake, the party took on a life of its own.

Aoki only started DJ’ing to fill the time before performances at Dim Mak Tuesdays, and in the beginning, “he admittedly was not a great DJ,” Colon says. But Aoki attributes his success today to his willingness then to keep trying, to fail in public, sweat bullets and then ask for help. “I don’t have any kids, but if and when I do, that’s one of the most important things I want to share: You need to have that shamelessness,” he says. “It’s such an important rule of thumb.”

“He’s an early adopter,” Colon adds. “It’s in his blood, and it’s often because he doesn’t have the shame of being afraid to ask. Most people just wait until it’s offered to them. Steve will always ask.”

Despite his far-reaching business interests, Colon says DJ’ing remains Aoki’s primary revenue stream, both internationally and in Las Vegas, where he lives and maintains residencies at three venues. As a producer, he has proved agile at working deftly across genres, collaborating with everyone from Linkin Park and Hayley Kiyoko to Lil Jon and Diplo.

“When you’re on the road that much, you come across new people, new trends and new sounds,” Lil Jon says. “He’s just really easy to work with. He’s not overly pushy in the studio — he lets me do my thing but still has input. Neither of us half-ass anything.”

Versace shirt.

Jessica Chou

Aoki’s reach also spans continents, having worked with South Korea’s BTS, Mexico’s Danna Paola, Japan’s Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and Colombia’s Maluma. This hodgepodge has bolstered Aoki’s international appeal; he says his global fan base is particularly receptive in Central and South America.

He plans to release his ninth album this summer, featuring collaborations with Big Freedia, a rework of Lil Jon’s “Get Low” (called “Get Lower”) and a lead single with Ne-Yo called “Heavenly Hell” — a phrase he’s quick to point out inspired the title of a chapter he’s working on in the sequel to Hiroquest, which also happens to be the name of his last two albums that also spawned a line of trading cards meant to bolster his graphic novel’s intellectual property (IP) across platforms.

This is the way Aoki’s mind works — seemingly at its best when it has at least seven tabs open, all the better to connect the various dots that compose the Aokiverse. It’s an impulse he attributes to his father, Rocky Aoki, the wrestler turned powerboat racer turned founder of Japanese restaurant chain Benihana, who died in 2008 but remains Aoki’s North Star, a larger-than-life figure who seemingly did it all.

“He would just fly in like Superman, coming in to pick me up and take me on an adventure, and then drop me off [at] the humble abode of my mom’s house,” says Aoki, who was raised by his mother, Chizuru, whom he calls “my rock,” in Newport Beach, Calif. “So when I was with him, I just experienced all these things that he was doing. Like ‘Oh, my God. This life is crazy over there.’ ”

I was in college while you were coming up in the early aughts, and it felt kind of shocking to see someone who was Japanese American, like I am, take up so much space so aggressively in alternative culture. Were you thinking about ideas of representation back then?

I’m not going to go down memory lane too deep, but I remember when I first got into music in high school, the first thing I did was sing. You just didn’t see Asian singers. You just didn’t see Asian people in music, period, and if you did, they were really quiet, like the singer of Hoobastank, whom I looked up to. Actually, I am reworking [the Hoobastank song] “The Reason.” I guess we can announce it here: There’s a Steve Aoki-Hoobastank record coming soon. But it was cool to actually work with that guy [singer Doug Robb] because I remember looking up to him when I was in high school.

The other main artist I looked up to big time was Chad Hugo from The Neptunes. This is when I first got into production, around 2003. I was in L.A., and I remember hiring someone on Craigslist to teach me how to use Pro Tools because I just started dabbling on the computer. And I was like, “Chad Hugo, that’s my hero because he’s Asian, but he’s also quiet.” I’m always like, “Where are the loud ones?” I wanted to see someone Asian that’s just loud and in charge and commanding audiences.

Balenciaga hoodie, robe, jeans and shoes.

Jessica Chou

Did you become that character because you wanted to see it, or did that exuberance onstage come naturally to you?

One of the really important things that music gave me was a voice because I really, truly felt invisible. Growing up in Newport Beach, the statistic was 96% of the population is white — this is in the ’80s and ’90s. So I’m already kind of out there, I’m already different, and Asians, generally speaking, don’t rock the boat. Japanese people are quiet. My mom’s quiet.

Your dad wasn’t quiet.

No, he wasn’t, but I was raised by my mom. I mean, I’m sure I was inspired by my dad going, “Holy sh-t, my dad’s doing his thing and is successful, and it’s not bothering him that he’s Japanese, he’s just connecting with the world.” That is what I loved — the idea that it shouldn’t bother you.

But when I was a kid, I was bothered, and that’s where music gave me the voice. You could just belt your sh-t out. A lot of it was just understanding who I was, finding my identity through the music and allowing me to be unabashed about it. I grew up in the punk hardcore scene, and they thrive off that. It’s thriving off these underrepresented voices. That’s how the culture grows. So I was in the right place to foster this kind of attitude to be heard.

As someone who’s known for being a prolific collaborator, how do you connect with other artists? Do you still reach out to people?

It goes both ways for sure. In some cases, if we meet in person, the energy of that meetup ends up becoming something. When I met up with BTS in 2016 at a house in L.A., we just hit it off really well, and in 2017, I ended up remixing “MIC Drop,” which later led to [the BTS collaborations] “Waste It on Me” and “The Truth Untold.” But sometimes I just do cold DMs. I’ve always been very unabashed about that. Whoever I want to work with I just send a DM, and if it hits, it hits.

What’s your success rate?

I would say my success rate is pretty low. You know, of all the collabs I’ve done that are out, I’ve reached out to far greater [than have reached out to me], like 80%.

How does that make you feel?

It’s like a game of baseball. That’s how I see it. I don’t have a problem as long as I hit the ball and I get the home runs, you know? Like the best baseball player in the world hits the ball three out of 10 times. So if you hit the ball two out of 10 times, you’re actually above average. If you hit the ball once, you’ve made the cut. If I can make a record that’s meaningful to culture, meaningful to my fans, meaningful to what I’m doing, what my purpose is, then it’s worth it and I’m excited. I never lose my excitement on this stuff. I think that question would provoke a different answer if I was tired. If I was jaded. If I wasn’t really into what I do. When you love what you do, you still fight for it. You still have the hunger.

Balenciaga hoodie, jacket, pants and shoes.

Jessica Chou

What do you like about collaborating with such a wide range of artists? I think some producers would find that really challenging.

It is. It’s extremely challenging. It’s challenging on many different levels, too. It’s not just challenging on the creative side, but it’s challenging to your fans. Like whenever I started collaborating in a different space, I would get a lot of hate; I get a lot of criticism.

What’s an example?

When I started working with hip-hop artists in the early 2010s, there was a lot of negative criticism, even when I did Kolony, which was an entirely hip-hop album that I produced in 2017. You know, I’m a sensitive guy. I don’t like seeing negative sh-t just pile up.

Do record sales matter to you?

Honestly, no. In the beginning, it does matter, when you have your first hit, when you have something that’s just catching steam. But then, going back to your question about collaborating across different genres, I can’t think too much about what the world thinks. Of course, it’s incredible if I have a song that breaks 100 million streams on Spotify. That’s pretty f–king cool. But I can’t put my emotional place there. That would probably make me jaded. That would probably hinder my creative spirit, 100%. It’s more about, “How does it penetrate the culture? Do the fans at the festivals and the shows sing along? Are they connected to it?”

It sounds like the measurement for your success is more experiential than data-driven. How else do you gauge that?

Yeah, it is something that grows over time. You could sort of gauge it on some level of metrics, but then there’s a lot of other layers. You can’t just type in “What’s Steve Aoki’s biggest song on the festival circuit?” If you type that in, you might not get the correct answers. [Artificial intelligence] cannot generate that. For example, “No Beef” is an old song of mine that I made with Afrojack in 2011. That was before streaming was actually a big deal, but everyone knows the vocals to that at my shows.

As an artist, what are your thoughts on AI?

I’m still a novice in the usage or utility of AI, but I use it mainly for lyric generation. It has actually helped me quite a lot. If I have an idea of what lyrics I want to put down on a record, I’ll work that out with AI, and if I have a songwriting team in my house and we get stumped, we can always use AI. As far as sampling, I’ve used AI to get a particular female sound using certain words, and that has been fantastic.

What about the fear of it replacing producers and DJs entirely?

See, of course that’s the conversation topic because the possibilities are endless. But when that happens, I’m assuming, just like everything that we do with technology, we’re building safeguards. And you can’t stop AI. It’s not like, “Oh, f–k. AI is going to take away our jobs. F–k technology, it’s going to take away jobs.” You can’t. You just have to ride the wave with it and just start building safeguards as we go. We’ve been doing this the whole time with the internet.

Versace top, shirt, jeans, and shoes.

Jessica Chou

Let’s pivot to another serious topic: How does it feel to throw a sheet cake into someone’s face?

OK, there’s a lot of points here. One, I think it really goes along with this idea that people are singing your songs at your show and your music is their music. So we’re all part of the same culture. You’re partially responsible because you created that music and that experience. That’s what the cake is. I’ve been able to share an experience that was such a silly idea, and now it’s a thing. As a culture, people want to get caked, and it’s a very Steve Aoki thing.

How many years have you been doing it now?

Thirteen.

Wow. That’s a lot of cake.

Yeah, over 20,000 cake faces. It’s pretty epic.

How consciously are you aware of yourself, Steve Aoki, as a brand?

It’s interesting because when I see “Steve Aoki” on things or I see the logo, I look at it as a company. And I’m just part of that company.

You’re just another worker?

(Laughs.) I mean, really. It’s like, “Oh, my God. There’s a person with a Steve logo or a tattoo on his arm.” It does excite me. I’m like, “Wow, that’s so incredible.” But that’s the music, you know? It’s not me personally. So I finally started separating myself from that because I’m the same kind of fan. I have a band [tattooed] on my back that inspired me when I was in high school called Gorilla Biscuits. It’s not someone’s name, but Steve Aoki is like a band to someone. So I understand the way music moves people and why you do that. It’s a community. That’s how I see the brand.

I think a lot of this is not just about the music, too; it’s the experience, you know? And the experience itself is something that can last a lifetime. That’s why the live show is so important. It’s not just about being a producer in the studio and getting the music out there and having people connect with the music in their homes. A lot of my IP is based on the actual experience [of a live show], and unfortunately, I can’t clone myself because as an entrepreneur, you would think, “How do you scale that?”

Is that why you play so many shows?

Yeah. It’s like you get this momentum going when things are happening, and I’ve seen a lot of friends, a lot of artists, taking their brick and just disappearing. And they didn’t have the same momentum to come back as strong as they were.

Are you scared of that happening to you?

I am. I think I am. I mean, I don’t want to say that, but I think it does have this effect on me because the thing is, I love what I do. Like, to be able to be onstage and the high that you get after a show, it’s just incredible.

What’s the secret to keeping this so fun after doing it for so long?

I’m glad you asked this question. I just was in South Africa and I did two shows out there, and during my extra time, I worked on music with two South African artists. I actually connected with more African artists from different regions as well and their beats, like Afrobeats and amapiano, have definitely been coming up inside my beats. The sounds, the rhythms, the percussions, I have a strong affinity to this music. That was so much fun. That’s what keeps things going.

I think being a global artist, being able to travel all the time, my natural way to connect with different cultures is to musically connect and collaborate with different people of that culture. And fortunately, they’ve allowed me to work with them in different capacities that have brought out some of these incredible global records that connect my sound to their sound. And the more and more I do it, the more exciting it is and the more it’s connecting with a whole different world of people, with a different culture. You see it at the shows. It just becomes more exciting to do more outside of what you normally do. It’s a challenge, too, and I love the challenge.

This story will appear in the April 27, 2024, issue of Billboard.

On a hulking gray building on a wide boulevard once bisected by the Berlin Wall, a silver call button grants access to an expansive, shadowy, unfurnished foyer. Ascend a winding set of stairs and open the door at the top, and you’ll find the office of the CEO: South Korea-born Peggy Gou, who has swiftly become the world’s most in-demand female DJ-producer working in dance music today.
Inside Gou HQ, the bright overhead lights contrast with the early-April rain outside. The sprawling room — which has a vibe that’s more “friend’s apartment” than sterile corporate sanctum — is outfitted with a wooden meeting table, full bookshelves and a plush green velvet couch from which Tasos Filippou, Gou’s touring manager, arises to serve Gou and me black coffee in little terra cotta mugs on peace sign-shaped coasters. Gou wears baggy jeans, a black sweater that covers her many tattoos and sunglasses with silver reflective lenses that offer only occasional glimpses of her eyes. Her hair is piled in a loose bun, her skin is flawless, and even in casual mode, she’s giving cool-girl glamour. She offers a quick handshake, closes the window to make sure the room is quiet, then sits down to attend to business.

In the last 12 days, her slick brand of house has taken her to Miami, Mexico City and Buenos Aires. Of course, it’s not unusual for DJs to party hop across continents — what’s less typical for a DJ is having an office. But Gou’s story is defined by a business acumen that could be characterized as corporate hustle if it didn’t also happen inside dark techno clubs.

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A Korean woman in a scene dominated by white men, Gou, 32, has orchestrated her own dizzying rise, immersing herself in Berlin’s electronic scene upon moving here 10 years ago, then ascending to white-hot producer/fashion tastemaker thanks to last summer’s viral single, and her first Billboard chart hit, “It Goes Like (Nanana).” This new ubiquity — ever-higher billing at the world’s major music festivals, a German Vogue cover, a 2024 BRIT Award nomination for international song of the year — has neatly teed up Gou’s debut album, I Hear You, coming June 7 through eminent indie label XL Recordings.

The rare self-managed marquee artist, Gou has achieved much of her success on her own, and the room we’re sitting in functions as an extension of the command center in her mind.

“I remember meeting managers who told me, ‘I can make your life easier,’ ” Gou recalls. “I was like, ‘How? Tell me.’ Even if you take care of all these emails, you still have to come back to me because no one can make decisions for me. Every decision has to come from me.”

Peggy Gou photographed March 26, 2024 at Maison Celeste in Mexico City. Sentimiento tracksuit, Tercer Mundo vest, Cruda shoes, AYANEGUI earrings and necklace.

Aaron Sinclair

These decisions have produced an expansive business that includes heavy touring; A-list brand deals; her label, Gudu Records; and a merchandise line, Peggy Goods. With strong fan bases across continents, Gou will next be raising her profile even more in the United States ahead of and beyond I Hear You’s release.

“Because Peggy has such an incredible touring footprint globally,” XL Recordings head of U.S. campaigns Laura Lyons says, “in the U.S., we’re in a position where, because we haven’t historically had her in the market as much, we need to build on the moments when she’s here in person and also translate the excitement of an international, globe-­trotting DJ to the local market.”

One week and 6,000 miles later, the odds will look clearly in Gou’s favor.

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The first time Gou played Coachella, in 2018, the line to get into her show wrapped around the at-capacity Yuma Tent where she was performing at three in the afternoon. “Even one person not being able to see my set, that upsets me,” she says. “So I was like, ‘Maybe next time, I play a bigger stage.’ ”

On the first night of the 2024 festival, that “maybe” has become a firm “for sure.” Gou presides over the Sahara Tent — Coachella’s biggest and most established dance music mecca — from atop a towering stage as an emoji version of herself smiles at the audience from massive LED screens. With the newly expanded Sahara Tent stretching 320 feet, not including spillover — almost a football field long — it’s likely Gou’s crowd is the largest ever assembled to see a female producer in Coachella history. (After the set, she shares Instagram Stories of herself backstage hanging with J Balvin, getting chummy with Will Smith and then getting a burger from an In-N-Out somewhere in the ­Coachella Valley.)

In March, Gou made her debut at Miami’s Ultra Music Festival, and in May, she’ll play dance mega-festival EDC Las Vegas for the first time. These shows, “from a perception point of view,” Lyons says, “are going to broaden [her] audience from this more underground electronic fan to a more mainstream kind of electronic base.”

Cueva top and skirt, Ket Void jacket, Cruda shoes. Floral Art Installation by Flores Cosmos.

Aaron Sinclair

That might be anathema to some purists, particularly those steeped in the techno-as-religion culture of Berlin. But Gou has been able to maintain her underground cred even while blowing up. The early-April screening of the music video for I Hear You’s third single, “1+1=11,” happened at a smoky Berlin club where the techno went until 3 a.m. on a Wednesday, and her friend group includes revered producers like Four Tet and Floating Points, whom she was recently hanging with in Mexico City. “I love those guys,” she says. “So nerdy. Like, ‘Guys, stop talking about how fat your drum is.’ ”

I suggest to Gou that her underground pedigree, paired with a forthcoming debut album that’s refreshingly accessible, might make her uniquely well-suited for the United States, where the so-called “underground” styles of house and techno have become the scene’s prevailing commercial forces in the live space. For her, that idea is beside the point. “Some people are like, ‘She’s really underground,’ or ‘She’s commercial,’ ” Gou says. “I don’t care. I’m just going to keep doing my thing and you can say what you want.”

Growing up in South Korea’s third-most populous city, Incheon — where she was born Kim Min-ji — Gou listened to “sh-t,” “good music” and “everything.” She lived in the shadow of her older brother, who’s “like super genius, one of the crazy Mensa IQ people.” Meanwhile, “Study wasn’t my thing. I was kind of rebel. So if you tell me to stay here, I will not stay there. If you tell me to go, I will stay. I didn’t like people telling me what to do even from when I was a kid.”

Her parents, recognizing that their 14-year-old was not “doing well” in South Korea, asked if she wanted to study English in London; she did. In the United Kingdom, Gou lived with guardians but snuck out to parties, fostering a clubbing habit that matriculated with her into the London College of Fashion. She began DJ’ing, booked her own residency at a club in Shoreditch, finished school, moved to Berlin and worked at a record store by day while she was indoctrinated into techno by night. “After one month, I’m like, ‘OK,’ ” she says flatly of her first trips to the city’s notoriously exclusive techno institution, Berghain. “Three months later” — her voice grows louder and more forceful — “ ‘OK.’ Five months later, I was like, ‘I finally get it.’ ”

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By 2016, she was making her own music, and by 2018, revered dance label Ninja Tune was releasing it. She started her own Gudu Records in 2019; that same year, she released the groovy house track “Starry Night,” which featured her singing in Korean and became a dance world hit.

All the while, she was touring. As her own manager, “I was the only person who was pushing me,” she says. “I didn’t need to be there. I didn’t have to do that. I think I got hyped. I got too excited about the shows and getting many shows.” In 2019, she played in 25 countries, including some, like Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, that are far from the well-trod dance world circuit.

“Imagine a bullet train,” Gou says, speaking rapidly. “This was me in 2019. When it stopped, it didn’t stop slowly; it had to stop super fast.”

When the pandemic started, she returned to South Korea and spent three months at home — the longest amount of time she had been with her family since she was 14. She recharged even as life in South Korea — which introduced what many considered one of the world’s best COVID-19 control programs — continued without large-scale lockdowns. (“Asian culture is different because when you have a flu, you wear a mask,” she says, “so it was not that difficult for Asian people to keep the rules.”)

In Incheon, Gou had the time and head space to focus on music. She echoes a pandemic-related refrain prevalent among DJs who tour heavily: “It was a hard time for a lot of people, but for me, it was one of the best things that happened to me.”

Peggy Gou photographed March 26, 2024 at Maison Celeste in Mexico City. Sentimiento top, Tiempos pants, Tercer Mundo belt, Frank Zapata shoes, AYANEGUI necklace. Batán Chairs by Taller Batán.

Aaron Sinclair

She kept working upon her return to Berlin in mid-2020, finding that the ’90s dance music she was listening to during the pandemic had “changed my taste.” While she had been making her debut album for a while, she decided to make ’90s dance the center of the project, evident in the interplay of the bass and chimes on a track like “Lobster Telephone,” which sounds like it’s sprinkled with powdered sugar. The “It Goes Like (Nanana)” bassline is pure Jock Jams — the 1995 compilation that introduced a generation of suburban adolescents to dance music — and has helped the song aggregate 72.2 million on-demand official U.S. streams and 565.3 million on-demand official global streams to date, according to Luminate. Altogether, the album, on which she sings in both Korean and English, is dance music distilled down to its most polished essentials — and you don’t have to be a hardcore fan of the genre to get into it.

The sonic opposite of EDM maximalism, I Hear You may very well represent the future of main-stage electronic music. “In my career, I never once thought, ‘I’m on the next level now,’ ” she says. “Only when ‘Nanana’ happened did I realize that people were recognizing my song before my face. That’s when I really realized, ‘F–k, this is different.’ ”

Gou’s North American agent, Stephanie LaFera of WME (which represents her worldwide), says the song’s success has created “significant growth in her U.S. audience” that’s “only increasing the demand for her.” LaFera is focused on opportunities that serve Gou’s “super-engaged fan base that cuts across a lot of different spheres” while also introducing her to new listeners.

“For [“It Goes Like”] to become this global song of the summer and be Peggy’s first song to hit No. 1 on the U.S. dance radio charts was just such a fantastic tone-setter for this album,” Lyons adds, “and for what we believe she’s capable of achieving in the U.S.”

If you’re Peggy Gou, it’s entirely possible that the person seated across from you at Thanksgiving dinner may turn out to be Lenny Kravitz — which was exactly the case when, in 2022, she went to a friend’s house in Miami for the holiday.

“He had absolutely no idea who I was,” Gou recalls. “The only thing I could mention was that I did [two songs] for [his daughter] Zoë’s movie [The Batman].” It was a solid in. The pair talked over turkey, and her friend told Kravitz to check out Gou’s music. Not long after, Kravitz asked if she wanted to collaborate.

She sent Kravitz a track — a song that she had struggled to find a singer for after artists including The Weeknd and Giveon turned it down — and heard nothing back. “So I decided to go to the Bahamas,” where Kravitz lives, she says. “My friend was like, ‘You want to have Lenny Kravitz on your album? F–king book your flight, go there and get it.’ ” There was, Gou says, some “opinion clash” during the recording process, as “I’m a perfectionist and he’s perfectionist.” She adds with a smile, however, that Kravitz did ultimately tell her she was right about a part of the song they had disagreed on. Their slinky “I Believe in Love Again,” the second I Hear You single, arrived in November.

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Gou’s single-minded professional chess moves manifested her deal with XL in the first place, years after she reached out to the label about an internship back when she was a student in London. XL didn’t respond then, but it got in touch after the success of her 2018 single “It Makes You Forget (Itgehane).” “I did make a joke,” she says of her first meeting with XL, “like, ‘Check your inbox.’ ”

Gou acknowledges that working with her can be “very difficult because I push the team always harder… If you have so many opinions and you’re a woman, people call you a b–ch, but [XL] doesn’t see it that way. They think it’s a pleasure to work with someone who has a clear vision.”

XL also most likely enjoys working with a talent who’s changing the face of electronic music simply by being one of the most popular artists making it. “As incredible as it is to see a Korean woman occupy this space in dance music culture,” says Lyons, who herself is Asian American, “it’s not the reason why I’m excited by her.”

While a new level of streaming and chart success would be a nice outcome for I Hear You, to Gou, they’re “very 1D hopes.” She’ll consider the album a success if people listen to it and — she puts a hand over her heart — “get a feeling.”

Bottega Veneta coat, AYANEGUI earrings.

Aaron Sinclair

The feelings are clearly being felt at Coachella, where people in the crowd — many of them, like Gou, also wearing sunglasses though the sun set long ago — are flailing around, arms in the air and dreamy smiles on their faces. A crew of six dancers pop and lock, vogue and gyrate onstage. Gou will take this show on the road this summer for a run that includes European festivals like Primavera Sound, Glastonbury and Creamfields. In August, she’s hosting and headlining her own one-day mini-fest at London’s Gunnersbury Park; the show’s 8,000 tickets sold out within days of going on sale.

Unlike her early years of touring alone, Gou now travels with her tour manager and a road assistant or two. She “doesn’t always fly private,” but says the primary appeal of a private jet is a preference for efficiency that she says is part of her heritage: “I’m someone who [doesn’t] like wasting my time. I’m very efficient. I think that’s from Korean culture. Efficiencies are very important in Korea.”

A private jet “saves a lot of time,” she continues, “and you can sleep half an hour or even one hour more. Also, you don’t need to worry about the baggage weight.” Perhaps most crucially, though, flying private lets her move through the world while maintaining maximum control. “Hotel lobbies and the airport,” she says, “give me so much anxiety.”

These days, Gou’s team also includes a security detail, as she has experienced stalkers and people “waiting at the hotel or waiting at the airport for 10 hours.” She “can’t go to Italy alone” and brings two security guards to Argentina where the crowd is “quite wild.” She recalls spending the entirety of a commercial flight to Ibiza facing the window after half the plane recognized her while boarding. “I was like, ‘My neck,’ ” she says with a laugh, feigning pain. “It’s nice, but sometimes it gets a lot for me.”

“She can see 100 meters ahead in the airport. She notices the colors of things, remembers what people are wearing and is just super, super sensitive,” touring manager Filippou says, “especially when there’s a lot of people around.”

But her skin has gotten thicker as her career has grown. “In the beginning, I remember [people saying], ‘You will never be bigger than this person. No one’s going to buy your record. No one knows your name.’ I heard these things so many times.”

The criticisms “used to really affect me,” Gou continues. “I used to want to scream, like, ‘That’s not f–king true.’ ” But as time went on, she realized she was the reason her feelings were getting so hurt. “I was not happy,” she says of her pre-pandemic life. “I was so focused and tunnel-visioned. My relationship with boyfriend wasn’t doing well. Friends, workwise — nothing was happy. I learned a lot about myself during the pandemic.” Learning to listen first and react later has been huge for her. It’s why she’s wearing a mirrored headpiece that reflects her ears on her album cover and why she named the project I Hear You.

Sentimiento tracksuit, Tercer Mundo vest, AYANEGUI earrings and necklace.

Aaron Sinclair

One of the biggest early critiques Gou experienced side-eyed her interest in fashion, which made her fear “that people would never take me seriously.” So during her early years in Berlin, she sported the de facto DJ uniform of black (and sometimes, maybe, white) T-shirts — a fit that never felt authentic. Around this time, a mentor told her to turn her perceived weaknesses into strengths, so she ditched the tees for couture.

Dressing in brightly colored, flowing sets and racing gear helped her catch the attention of top fashion houses like Louis Vuitton, with which she has had two partnerships. She was good friends with late DJ-designer Virgil Abloh; after his 2021 death, she posted on Instagram that “I will forever be grateful that in the infancy of my career, Virgil showed support at a time when not many others would.” Her own Peggy Goods line creates custom merch for each of her shows; at the “1+1=11” music video screening party, more than one person wears a bomber jacket with the song’s title embroidered on the back.

Gou documents the fabulousness of it all on her Instagram, which has 4.1 million followers and which — yes — she runs herself. To her, the account is a natural evolution of her old Tumblr, where she would post photos of her outfits, meals and outings. She uses the same approach now on Instagram — except the outfits are by Ferragamo, the meals are on a beach in Ibiza and the outings are playing for tens of thousands of people screaming her name. Her glamorous aesthetic, and the size of her audience, has yielded deals with brands including Don Julio, Coca-Cola and Maybelline.

Now other DJs ask her how they can expand their own brands into the fashion world. It’s speculative, but the most obvious answer seems to be to work as hard as she has. “People see that I’m riding in a Rolls-Royce now, but I used to take a f–king bus,” she says. “I did an interview in Korea recently, and the first [comment] was, ‘I smell old money.’ No. My dad was poor. My mom was average. I’m not from a rich family. I worked hard to have a glamorous life.”

Like most anyone who has achieved major success and its attendant visibility, people still give Gou sh-t. But in a true boss move, she has come to enjoy it.

“Now when I hear criticism, it means I’m doing super well,” she says. “So go ahead: Say my name.”

This story will appear in the April 27, 2024, issue of Billboard.