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“The first question is: Can we do this?” Kaskade recalls thinking when they first got word of the Super Bowl gig. “Do we have enough time to pull this off? I was kind of just, like, backing it up. Because I had a busy week. I was in Montreal on Friday and Las Vegas on Saturday, so I’m here — if I wasn’t [already booked at Zouk nightclub inside Resorts World Las Vegas on Saturday night], this probably wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t have been the guy.”

Sure, it was last-minute, but Kaskade always knew he was capable. “I do want to say, because a lot of people online were like, ‘How can you do this?’ I mean, I’ve played over 5,000 shows in my career, right? And I’ve played probably 2,000 or 3,000 big shows, from Coachella to SoFi Stadium, so this isn’t completely new. This is what I do.”

He also had experience playing at sporting events, like an LA Rams game this past fall and post-game White Sox concerts in his hometown of Chicago. “Those moments already kind of prepared me for something like this. This is way bigger, but I’m like, ‘OK, this is in my wheelhouse. I can do this.’”

Kaskade had an idea of what a big deal the Super Bowl booking was when his phone started blowing up late last week. “This is people that I haven’t heard from in 10 years from high school texting, being like, ‘Dude, no way!’ And I’m like, ‘How do you have my number? I changed phone numbers like three times since then!’ I mean, just a lot of people. Everyone. Very nice, you know, congratulating me, but I think it’s one of those things that just reaches so wide.”

He also wasn’t used to hearing his name on the morning news shows. “The next day, I’m literally getting in the shower to go catch the plane to Montreal, and I jump out of the shower, TV’s on, and it’s like, ‘Oh, Kaskade’s filling in!’ And they cut to me with this footage in San Francisco. And I’m like, ‘This is very surreal.’ Like, I’m blow-drying my hair, and I turn around, like, wow. I mean, there’s nothing close to this impact. When I get Grammy nominations, I think a lot of people outside of my normal circles are like, ‘Oh, that’s awesome!’ And they recognize the Grammys is a thing. But the Super Bowl is, like, it’s like 100 times that.”

While seeing the players dancing to his set during warm-ups was cool, Kaskade was really pumped about another audience in the house. “It’s so awesome when they cut to some little kid and he’s just feeling it, like some 12-year-old or something. That’s what I’m talking about right there.”

We all know how huge the at-home audience is for the Super Bowl, but the 65,000-person crowd in Allegiant Stadium felt pretty massive too. When Billboard chatted with Kaskade right after his pre-game concert, he said it was “everything you would expect. It’s crazy. Everybody’s just pouring in right now, so every song, I look up and there’s more people, more people, more people.”

Continuing with the gig’s up-for-anything vibe, Kaskade found out from the NFL during the pre-game concert that his set could run a little longer than planned if he was up for it. “They’re like, ‘Hey, we could give you a little more time.’ I was like, ‘Uh, I’ll take it!’ I went maybe four or five minutes longer. So I’m like, ‘OK, what else do I have on here?’ That’s the great thing. I’m a one-man band. I’m fluid. I can add stuff or take stuff out.”

After Billboard mentioned how his sets seemed to noticeably increase the energy in the already-electric Allegiant Stadium, Kaskade admits: “We gave them a party.”

To get a taste of that party, check out videos from Billboard‘s day with Kaskade below.