Dance

This week in dance music: Lady Gaga performed her electro romp “Abracadabra” and new Gesaffelestein collab “Killah” on Saturday Night Live, John Summit announced that he recently completed his “first fully sober tour,” Barry Can’t Swim released his first new single of the year with “The Person You’d Like to Be,” we caught up with the gentlemen of Justice to discuss the hyper success of their Hyperdrama album, Chicago’s ARC Music festival announced a hefty 2025 lineup, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and electronic musician Mark Pritchard announced a forthcoming collaborative album, we got the first look of the newly designed Brooklyn Mirage and Everything But the Girl revealed that they’ll perform their first live shows in 25 years next month in London.

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And on top of all that, we offer these, the best new dance tracks of the week.

Trending on Billboard

Calvin Harris, “Smoke the Pain Away”

Calvin Harris walks down the dirt road into country music with “Smoke the Pain Away,” an acoustic guitar and harmonica-heavy ode to trying to numb heartbreak with a hodgepodge of controlled substances. When the Scottish hitmaker teased the track earlier this month, it was unclear if or how any electronic elements would be incorporated, but while the song is still a departure for Harris, it does contain dance DNA with a flickery, high BPM beat that adds extra verve and bounce and helps the song ride the line between the two genres.

Featuring Harris’ own plaintive vocals, the song is another pretty undeniable earworm from one of dance’s foremost hitmakers. It also comes days after the announcement that Harris will play the first ever double residency at Ushuaïa in Ibiza, where he’ll perform on both Tuesdays and Fridays this summer. In keeping with the country theme. this mega-club is not too far from the sprawling farm Harris has on the island. “

Sub Focus & bbyclose, “On & On”

It’s a big week for Sub Focus fans, the with U.K. heavyweight releasing his first new single of the year with “On & On,” which extends his reputation as an essential master of drum and bass. The hypnotic song features a long mid-track bridge built largely around vocals from bbyclose, with the song altogether adding fuel to a run that’s included Sub Focus’ 2024 John Summit collab “Go Back.” Following his sold out show at London’s Alexandra Palace last week, he announced this week that he’s bringing this same Circular Sound setup  — which features him playing from the center of a halo of lights  — to New York and Los Angeles this fall.

Cassian, Script & Belladonna, “Where I’m From”

It’s not a surprising that Cassian got not one but two slots opening for Anyma’s Sphere residency, given that Australian producer and mixing engineer’s sound sound falls squarely into the grandly-sized melodic techno style preferred by Anyma and many of the artists surrounding him. “Where I’m From” is a prime specimen of the genre, with Cassian and his co-producers Script and Belladonna weaving together an urgent production, with stuttering vocals and ominous choral singing, into a straight-up banger that’s right out of an action movie.

Myd, “The Wizard”

French producer Myd returns with a pair of new tracks, “Song for You” and “The Wizard,” with the latter being a warm, propulsive and very soulful fusion of disco and tribal house that just feels good on the ears. Out via Ed Banger Records and Because Music, the singles follow Myd’s slot DJ-ing the Opening Ceremony of the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris and also comes after a marathon week-long Twitch stream from the producer’s house in that same city, a segment of which you can see here.

DJ E-Clyps, “Gitit”

The always reliable DJ E-Clyps returns with his fifth single of the year, “Gitit.” The track balances a cool, bouncy, nearly future house production with E-Clyps’ own vocals, a ode to being in the club and appreciating the kind of woman with “pretty super eyes and those super juicy thighs” — lyrics he delivers in a laid-back staccato. “Gitit” is out on Blacklight Factory, the label E-Clyps founded in partnership with Empire Dance and launched last month.

Catz ‘n Dogz & Nala, “Dance”

The Polish duo return with the noisy, kind of giddily abrasive electro-punk track “Dance” a call to arms for dancefloor self expression. “We wanted to create a track that could be played when you’re angry, or just if you need to release that pressure valve. Something with pure energy” says the duo’s Greg Demiañczuk. This one is just that, with its strident vocals courtesy of Miami-based artist Nala, a regular Catz & Dogs collaborator who’s also opening for John Summit tomorrow (March 15) at Billboard Presents THE STAGE at SXSW in Austin, Texas.

It’s a warm Saturday night in Phoenix, Ariz. and the crowd is a mass of kinetic energy as Justice drops “Audio, Video, Disco,” a song that effectively sends the thousands of people assembled in front of the stage into collective overdrive. Fists thrust into the desert air as the song’s “audioooooo!” lyric swells in time with the kickdrum and lights — a primal response that’s essentially programmed into the show.
“It’s almost mathematics, almost pure physics, what makes people dance,” says the duo’s Xavier du Rosnay. “[Making] the live show was like white coat scientist work, because we were preparing the music and thinking ‘Okay, if we add 16 more bars of this, it will make the crowd response more efficient.’”

Justice has toured the U.S., Europe and Central American with this precise configuration of beats, lights, lasers, mirrors and music for the last 11 months, since releasing their fourth album, Hyperdrama, on April 26, 2024. The tour began with a headlining set at Coachella’s Outdoor Stage, where the French duo established another show routine now as predictable as the audience freakouts.

After the Phoenix set, du Rosney and Gaspard Augé jump offstage and spend a solid 10 minutes high fiving and shaking hands with audience members who’ve pressed themselves up against the barricades to make contact. Ever cool, the sunglasses the guys have worn for the duration of the show stay on, but after remaining physically stoic for the duration the 90-minute performance, they now smile as they say their hellos.

“The show is very cold in a way,” du Rosnay says a few days prior in Los Angeles, where Justice is spending a few days between performances. “We don’t interact with the crowd for three reasons: The first is that it’s not in our character. We’re not like, stage people, you know? Second, we are very focused on what we’re doing. And then, every time we get excited and try putting a bit of emphasis in the way we move onstage and then watch the video after…”

Augé moves his hand slightly and laughs, indicating that their onstage motions haven’t been quite grand enough to convey their enthusiasm.

“So at the end we go meet [the crowd] to say thank you,” du Rosnay continues, “because we don’t get the opportunity to say that during the show.”

For both fans and actual members of Justice, there is currently a lot to be thankful for. Last year at this time, Hyperdrama and its attendant live show were finished but unreleased, and du Rosnay and Augé were managing expectations, saying in a Billboard cover story last April that they “had no idea” who the average Justice fan was or how people would respond to the music from Hyperdrama, the followup to 2016’s Woman. It’s now all much clearer.

Hyperdrama has been exceptionally well-received by critics and longtime fans and has helped open the duo up to new audiences through the duo’s first ever chart hit, “Neverender.” Ubiquitous in 2024, the collab with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker marked Justice’s first ever radio No. 1, reaching the top of Alternative Airplay last month. It also won the Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Recording at the Awards last month. Meanwhile “Wake Me Up,” their collaboration with The Weeknd out on the latter artist’s January album Hurry Up Tomorrow, gave Justice the first Hot 100 hit of their nearly 20-year career.

Justice

Andre Alves

Meanwhile the Hyperdrama tour is a face-melting cathedral assembled of kaleidoscopic lights, a rig that takez a 30-person team to operate — and which is so intense that the show is preceded by a warning that it “may cause discomfort and/or seizures for those with photosensitive epilepsy.” The show has turned new fans into believers and pre-existing fans into zealots. (In Phoenix, nearly every person I talk to in the crowd has seen the show at least once before.)

“It’s going much better than we thought it would, and we’re very appreciative of that,” says du Rosnay. But while reaching radio and winning awards is all exciting, the guys seem primarily delighted by meeting their fans, with du Rosnay and Augé finding that they really like the people who really like them.

“On tour when we do pop-up stores or events, we don’t do it in the hope of selling 20 more t-shirts if we show up to the store,” says du Rosnay. “We do it first as sign of gratitude for the people who show up, and also because we’re curious to see who those people are.”

“And they are so lovely,” Augé continues. “They make homemade stickers, fanzines.”

“And the main thing we noticed that’s made us very happy,” continues du Rosnay, “is that the crowd is much more diverse than it used to be in age, in gender, in every way. We see a lot more people who are not just like us. That’s the thing that’s made us the happiest.”

Justice fans, a demographic that began assembling when the guys released its era-defining debut single “We Are Your Friends” in 2006, have had ample opportunity to see and meet Justice. The guys have played more than five dozen festival and standalone dates on the Hyperdrama tour. Augé says they’ll likely tour the show until this December. After that, du Rosnay says that — as they have for previous tours — they’ll “pick a date and then dismantle everything” related to the live production “so that there can’t even be the temptation of saying yes to anything else.”

In the meantime, however, they’ve got more than upcoming dates throughout South America, the U.S. and Europe, with the stretch including headlining slots at festivals including Bonnaroo and Electric Forest. The operation is now smoother than its Coachella debut, when the guys were “so anxious and stressed,” about unveiling the production, du Rosnay says that “we were basically paralyzed on stage. We were just so focused and stressed thinking ‘okay, don’t fuck this up’ that we could barely move.” (While du Rosnay says there were some slight technical hiccups during this first show, they were not apparent to the naked eye.)

The nerves have decreased as the tour has moved through festivals and standalone shows at venues including The Holllywood Bowl and the Accor Arena in Justice’s native Paris. Setlists collect classics like “DVNO,” “Genesis” and “D.A.N.C.E.” alongside new tracks like “Neverender,” Woman” and “Mannequin Love,” the latter of which builds to a place of disco ecstasy, bolstered by the swirling shimmer of lights happening in tandem. Generally too, the show has become heavier and more ferocious, with the similarly chaotic “Stress” and “Generator” — spiritually similar tracks released 17 years apart — both getting major play.

In fact Augé calls this latter track, from Hyperdrama, “the barometer for if the show is going to get crazy. If the crowd reacts as it should” when the song is introduced early in the set, he says, “You can really feel the room vibrating, and you know it’s going be a good show.”

Another element of the performance that’s changed is their outfits. The tour began with du Rosnay and Auge both wearing sharply cut white suits from, naturally, French fashion house Celine. Then last fall, “We had this talk with our friend Gesaffelstein,” du Rosay says, referring to the revered French producer who’s also been on tour this year, playing his show in a sparkly black suit and a black mask with eyes that glow red. “He has an amazing character on stage. He looks so good. We were talking about how far you can go in terms of dressing up on stage. We’re not shy, but we don’t feel that it’s necessary to be over the top.”

But with Gesaffelstein as inspiration, that thinking evolved. “After all,” du Rosnay says, “it’s meant to be fun and over the top.” He and Augé reconvened with the team at Celine and asked for something “more visible.” While Celine had previously suggested gold suits, “We were like, ‘No, we don’t do gold.’ Then we went back like, ‘Let’s do it.’”

Justice

Andre Alves

One song that’s yet to make it into the live show is “Wake Me Up,” a track Justice made with The Weeknd for the latter artist’s January album Hurry Up Tomorrow. (The release bore out the long-gestating rumors that the pair was working on something together.) The Weeknd first texted the duo “in 2021 or 2022,” recalls du Rosnay, asking them “to make something that sounded like an opening track, like classical music, and something very solemn.” They created this custom order and included a bonus 10 seconds of music that they thought could work for a drop.

“We told him ‘Okay, that’s the intro you asked for, but just for your information, it could go into something else,” recalls du Rosnay. “He was like, ‘Yeah, give me more of the thing that comes after.” They went back and forth on the song for a year, with the final product sampling English songwriter Rod Temperton and evoking the heavy mood of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

In terms of other forthcoming releases, the guys neither confirm or deny that they’re doing a live album for Hyperdrama, as they’ve done for all three of their previous LPs. Du Rosnay says they’re “thinking about it and just trying to find a way of putting it together.” He acknowledges that while “the metrics have shown us that nobody cares about our live albums,” that’s not exactly true, given that their 2018 live LP Woman Worldwide won the Grammy for best dance/electronic album. (Beyond that, du Rosnay says they have “no idea” when they’ll make another studio album, joking that given the five years between Audio, Video, Disco and Woman, and the eight years between Woman and Hyperdrama, it might be “10 or 12 years.”)

But despite the thrill of their live shows, as captured on previous albums and experienced by scores of people around the world, Justice does not, du Rosnay says, “have a passion for being on stage.” Rather, the effort is a function of “wanting to make something cool and to show it to people” and also because live shows are, He continues, “our breadwinning thing,” with theses financial considerations now especially important given the high cost of post-pandemic touring.

But while the songs are charting, the tickets are selling, the suits are shinier and there are more awards on the shelf, the current priorities are the same as they’ve always been.

“Same thing as before the album, or, like, 10 years ago,” du Rosnay says of what’s curently most important to Justice. “It’s to be happy, to be proud of what we do and comfortable with what we’re doing.

“There are so many things happening in these cycles that without noticing, you might start doing things that you aren’t comfortable with,” he continues. “It’s really easy, you know? You make one slight drift, and then you make another, and then three weeks later you’re doing something you thought you would never do in your life. So being at ease with what we’re doing, being proud and being happy, that’s the important thing.”

While he initially carved out a reputation as a hard partier, John Summit is changing his habits. On Monday (March 10), the producer announced via social media that his “first fully sober tour” is “in the books.” “Not here to brag,” his statement continues, “I’m just extremely proud of myself that I can perform at […]

Eternal Reverie, the seventh studio album by Tokimonsta, is out today (Mar. 7). Releasing it now wasn’t the original plan.
Last September, the Los Angeles based and globally known electronic producer announced that she was delaying the album’s release and cancelling its related tour due to “an extremely urgent personal matter.” Weeks later, she posted an update saying that she’d lost her best friend to an aggressive form of cancer.

“I’ve suffered from levels of burnout in the past, but I’ve never suffered from deep depression,” the producer born Jennifer Lee tells Billboard over Zoom. “I’ve never just cried non-stop all the time. Even during the hard times, I always maintained a positive outlook, but this year was really hard on me, and all I had was music.”

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She says making her own music and listening to the music of others has, in her grieving, been a salve. Later this month, she’ll offer her work to others when the rescheduled Eternal Reverie tour begins at Ultra Music Festival in Miami and then extends across the United States for a run of club shows and festival plays including Coachella and EDC Las Vegas. Her always inventive and experimental sets will surely be populated by music from the new album, a 14-track collection that holds the same nuance and sophisticated that’s always characterized her output, with sounds ranging to overtly danceable to headier, more meditative fare like “Reverie.”

Trending on Billboard

On the project, Toki welcomes back regular collaborators Anderson .Paak and Los Angeles singer/songwriter Gavin Turek, along with new counterparts like Cakes da Killa and Grouptherapy. Containing not just musical depth but a surrealistic and deeply considered visual aesthetic, Eternal Reverie is out via her own Young Art label.

Here, Tokimonsta reflects on the path that brought her to making music, how the artists and fans in electronic music are maturing, the loss she’s suffered and why she believes playing live will be good for her.

1. What is the first album or piece of music you bought for yourself, and what was the medium?

I bought a single for “Waterfalls” by TLC and “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio. I bought them as singles. I think it might have been on cassette tape — which is weird because there were CDs, but I think in my mind a cassette seemed cooler. Also, in hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have just gotten singles — because, like, what are you going to do, just listen to one song over and over again? But that is what I ended up doing.

2. What did your parents do for a living when you were a kid, and what do they think of what you do now?

My mom had a small chain of Japanese fast food places. They’re teriyaki chicken spots. We’re Korean, but that was her [delving] into entrepreneurship as an immigrant. Her view on my career has evolved over time. In the beginning, she was like, “There is no way.” She didn’t really understand the difference between being, like, Beyoncé, or being someone performing in the corner at a bar. She didn’t know that there was anything in between. So, clearly she thought I was gonna fail. But here I am, many, many years later, and now she’s bragging about me to all her old Korean lady friends.

3. What was the first non-gear thing you bought for yourself when you started making money as an artist?

Probably clothes, but let me think of something that was more meaningful. A Vitamix. I know that sounds dumb and random, but it is a privilege to own a fancy blender.

4. If you had to recommend one album for someone looking to get into dance music, what would you recommend?

I don’t know if I could recommend dance music specifically. My instinct is to actually [recommend] DJ Shadow, which is [an introduction] into non-dance electronic music, Endtroducing….., or Preemptive Strike. But it’s not dance music, it’s more heady electronic music. At this point I think people are aware of what dance music is very generally, so if I had an opportunity like this, I’d want to show people the different sides of what dance music could mean.

5. It seems that lot of people use “dance” and “electronic” interchangeably, but it sounds like you have a clear sense of the differences. Do you want to unpack that?

Let’s say this: Electronic music is music made with electronic instruments — synthesizer-heavy, computer-heavy, not as many acoustic instruments. Dance music is club music. Dance music makes you want to dance. So in my mind, and I’ve had this discussion with my peers, the broader umbrella is electronic music, and underneath electronic music you have ambient music, dance music and different versions of dance music, because then you have drum & bass, house, techno, beats, etc. All dance musicians are electronic musicians, but not all electronic musicians are dance musicians.

6. Eternal Reverie is your seventh studio album. In a genre that doesn’t necessarily require albums, why is it a format you keep returning to?

I think because my origins are not dance music. My origins are in hip-hop, instrumental music, bossa nova, things like that. In that capacity, it’s not dance-y, it’s electronic music… As a musician I’m also, to some degree, a storyteller, and with albums you create this anthology and each song is a short story that lends itself to a bigger narrative… If people want to dissect it and just put certain songs on their playlist that’s fine, but if you’re in the right mood and have the time you want to listen to something that is cohesive and was meant to be listened all together, you can listen to the album in full.

7. The visual aesthetic of this cycle, from the album cover, to your press photos and the fashion to the tour poster, has all be really cohesive and striking. What are you saying with the visual identity of this one?

I’ve always been into aspects of psychedelia or surrealism — but I think with this album, visually, I’m getting a little deeper into classic surrealism, like Salvador Dalí. I didn’t go into it with that intention, but it’s how it came out. But Instead of being whacky, like mushroom journey, I wanted it to be subtle things that are kind of weird. Subtle things that are artistic, but not normal. On my album cover I’m holding this giant rose. I could be holding a small rose, but it’s lending itself to this idea that when we dream, there’s subtleties in it. Sometimes dreams seems really realistic, but all these strange things happen when you’re in this other space. With this album that’s what I was going for in terms of the ethos of the music itself. It only made sense for the aesthetic and the visual storytelling to be on the same level.

Tokimonsta

Demarquis McDaniels

8. There’s evolution in there too, with a progression of like, whacky psychedelia as a lot of people might recognize it and getting deeper into the surreal and levels of consciousness and having it all match who you are in 2025. Does that feel right?

I still obviously have this playfulness in me, and I really wanted to tap into that. But there’s been so much growth and maturity, and you can have both. You can be mature without being bogged down with stress. Sometimes with maturity, there can be a cynicism, or a disdain, or the subtle moroseness that sometimes comes with age. A lot of that comes from knowing and experience, but that doesn’t mean there’s reason to let go of the whimsy.

9. I appreciate that, because the people who love electronic music and dance music, we don’t necessarily want to exit, but we are maturing, so we don’t want to do it all in the same way we did five years or 10 years ago. I think you’re setting an example of how it can sound and look, and it’s still playful and interesting, but it’s not stagnant. Right?

I hope people understand that artists want to evolve as well, and they don’t want to stay stagnant. Are you listening to the same crazy EDM songs you were listening to in 2010? I just went to Vegas recently for a birthday, and when I walked into the Wynn, so deeply ingrained into me is this experience of them playing just raging, hard, gnarly EDM with big drops and CO2 cannons — and now they’re just playing Keinemusik. They’re playing Bob Moses. The vibe has changed.

10. Why do you think that is?

People have discovered that there’s subtleties to dance music where it can be a different vibe. There’s also a place for really gritty electronic music as well, but you can see dance enthusiasts also evolving. Maybe they discovered electronic music with Avicii or something really mainstream-y, and now they’re curating their own experience. We’re seeing that evolution coincide with the artists themselves.

11. Last September you announced you were postponing the release of Eternal Reverie and cancelling the 2024 behind it. You later announced on social media that you’d done it because your best friend was in her last days and you need to be there for her. Is that something you want to talk about?

I mean, in a way, it’s an important part of the story of this album. It’s difficult to talk about in very obvious ways, because I’m still actively grieving. My friend just passed away, and in a very traumatic way for me and the loved ones that were around this particular friend. Her name is Regina, and she was my best friend. She also was a web designer. She made my website. She was also my tour manager on occasion, just for fun, because her work was flexible. She’s a really big part of my artistic journey, because she also has excellent taste in music and has put me on to new artists.

12. I’m so sorry. How are you doing?

I don’t really journal; my albums are a journal. This album has this emotional journey of extreme loss attached to it. It didn’t start off that way. I made the album because it was starting to make an album. But the evolution of it is, in order to get this album out, I had to go through a lot of really hard things that had nothing to do with music, but had a big effect on my music career.

I think it’s known that my friend passed away. My cat of 11 years died suddenly three months before, and then I did two IVF cycles that also failed. So there was an immense amount of loss, a lot of hormones being put in my body. It was a pretty horrible time. I’m still processing and grieving. It’s very hard, but I think it’s important to talk about it, because difficult things happen to everyone. Loss happens to everyone.

13. What was it like for you, postponing the album and telling everyone the tour was cancelled?

I’m grateful that I had the ability to postpone this album and this tour, which affects many people. There’s full economies of people living off of the world that I created, and everyone was so kind, and so loving and so understanding. They went out and canceled this 30-date tour. I had to also break it to my audience. Everyone showed so much compassion, and it just showed me I made the right decision.

I’ll never get my friend back, but my career is something that could come back to, so I just prioritized taking care of her and being with her as she was guided onto the next part of this journey. Putting out this album is difficult, but it’s forcing me to sit in a level of discomfort and also show me that everything moves on. She would want me to put this out.

14. In what way, if any, did this take you back to when you yourself were seriously ill and had to undergo brain surgery in 2016?

Obviously, I also could have died. This is so different, and so much harder. Because when I was the one about to die, I was in control. I was like, “I’m going to make all the right decisions. I have the power of resilience I’m tapping into while I’m recovering.” But I couldn’t do that for my friend, and no matter how much I tried to help make these decisions on her behalf, I couldn’t change the outcome. So that, for me, has been really hard to process, much more so than being on the cusp of death myself.

It’s been interesting, but I know that through the musical journey of this album, I’m energizing and manifesting, or whatever woo-woo term you want to use, that at the end of this I’ll have perspective on it all. That’s all I can hope for, perspective and gratitude and growth to be in a place that honors her spirit through this album. Life has been really tough for everyone, I know.

But yeah, it’s sucked. And then election and the L.A. fires. It has not been Tokimonsta’s year in terms of life. I’m so grateful I can make music, because that’s the thing that pulls me out of this deep, dark hole I could end up in.

15. I guess that was where my mind was going, if or how your music or the music of others has helped you in all this?

Music was my lifesaver. I’ve suffered from levels of burnout in the past, but I’ve never suffered from deep depression. I’ve never just cried non-stop all the time. Even during the hard times, I always maintained a positive outlook, but this year was really hard on me, and all I had was music. Even when my friend passed, I thought I wouldn’t want to make music, but I felt called to. When she had passed, it I felt like therapy with no words.

16. Tell me more about that?

As an artist, I make this music because it’s therapy and healing for me, and in turn, the music that I share with others can also be healing for them. Or not! You also might just want to listen to it in the club and start dancing, but it makes people feel and is transportive. It will take you from your stress, life, depression, whatever, and pull you into the present while you’re just being like, “Wow, this is a really amazing song. It makes me want to move my body, or it makes me want to cry, but for that instant, you’re just in line with this experience.”

That is the beauty of music. Other musicians music was very healing for me. Making music was healing for me. Going out to these underground clubs and parties in L.A. was very therapeutic for me.

17. When the tour starts, do you think it will be a different type of musical therapy for you, just to give the music away, in a way?

Exactly. Performing is a lot of giving and receiving, and musicians can get burned out, because it’s a lot of giving. But right now with all this pent up energy that I have, I want to be able to go out there and share with people. I want to be with others and feel the warmth of an audience’s energy. I want to feel chaos. I just want to feel alive again. That’s the thing about being sad or depressed, it’s more than just a deep hole. It’s this lingering sense of, “I just don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to be.” So I’m really looking forward to it.

18. What’s the best business decision you’ve made so far in your career?

To create my own label. Initially, when I made Young Art, it was for me to put out music. I’m an independent artist, because I own the label I’m on. But that decision was a big one, you don’t have the support of a bigger label. But I was like, “If we just get a really good distributor, I think we can put this music out without a bigger label support.” We got really lucky, and my music did well. My music doing well makes the label more robust, and the label more robust means it’s able to serve the artists better. So I bolster of the power of the label, and that power gets distributed to all the musicians that are that are signed.

19. Who’s been your greatest mentor and what’s the best advice they’ve given you?

I never really had any mentors. That’s the thing I believe is quite sad about the way I started off in the industry. I had friend and peers, but I didn’t have anyone be like, “Hey, Toki, I’m going to look after you.” No. And I scraped my knees, picked myself off the ground, dealt with a lot of things all on my own. I have influences, but no direct mentors. Because of how it was for me, I look after other artists, not even just the ones on my label, so that they don’t have to go through what I went through. It’s important for me to mentor other artists, even if it’s not like an official mentorship, to smooth things out for other artists.

20. What’s one piece of advice you’d give to your younger self?

When I was younger, my music was so weird to people. Now, my music that was weird then is completely conventional. I stuck to that. I believed in my music and continued making the version of electronic dance music that I do, but it was hard for me, and I really struggled. It was like, “Man, it would be a lot easier to make dubstep or trap or whatever.” It’s not that hard to make that stuff, but in the end, I prevailed by sticking to what felt right to me and following instinct. So if I were to give that same advice to everyone else, it’s to truly believe in your vision as an artist, even if you’re getting pulled in all these other directions. Your unique voice in music is what’s going to set you apart. It’s good to be the weird one sometimes.