When I'm writing good music and I'm caffeinated, I attribute all my success to the coffee, get really sentimental about the EDM scene and tweet a lot.
I think people were looking for something new in the EDM scene and found it in my music.
The first thing I remember hearing was just the dance music that was in the charts when I was growing up. I don't remember many of the names of specific tracks - they were just kind of early acid house things.
I was DJ'ing house music way back when - I'm not like a new house guy.
As a producer and DJ, I just like makin' great music and hot records for the club.
Even in America, we're not a huge act by any means, Major Lazer.
Oh yeah, I've got a good relationship with Marshmello.
I think EDM and metal and rock have been together already for a long time. Bands like Nine Inch Nails, Linkin Park, the Prodigy - they all have influences from both.
Simian Mobile Disco changed my life. They put me onto the EDM world. Although they would hate that term, they're more techno.
And EDM music grabbed my ear and got my attention and I started realizing that the computer was, in the same way that the saxophone was invented in the late 1800s and guitar in the 1930s, an instrument.
I love working with producers, like doing the record with Laidback Luke on 'Turbulence' and working with Afrojack on 'No Beef.'
I toured with Skrillex, did an HBO commercial with Diplo. In the hip hop movement, I was the first artist Travis Scott ever featured with before he blew up. I had the songs with Chris Brown and Tyga. I've worked with some of the biggest artists in the world.
I DJ'd and sang at Miami Basel 2013.
The way I see EDM right now, it's a healthy industry for sure - minimal work for maximum profit.
I've always been interested in electronica, techno, trip-hop, that kind of music. The thing that bothered me about a lot of that music, though, was it seemed devoid of emotion. There wasn't a lot that felt personal.
There's a big gaping hole in the EDM space for songwriting. It's one thing to learn how to be a great sound designer and become big just on sound design. Especially if you're in the dubstep category, it's like, how much fatter and more interesting can you make those drops.
Where once they used to say, 'Cocaine is God's way of saying you have too much money' - now, maybe EDM is. Come ye lords and princelings of douchedom.
I was always very into heavy metal, and heavy metal is full of emotion and extremes, and I think that's the same in dance music.
I was playing hip-hop when everybody else was playing the giant rave music.
I'm really into, like, electric pop music and dubstep, things like that.
Steve Aoki is somebody I really love, and he did a remix of 'Mi Gente,' too.
I watched my idol and fellow Dutchman Tiesto. He was the first DJ to play live on stage at an Olympic event - the Opening Ceremony of the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens. At eight years old, all I can remember thinking was, 'I want to be a DJ.'
I've been going to Europe for some time on the festival circuit, and once you get in that element and see others reacting to it, it's easier to understand. You get trapped in the wave. The beats are driving and super-aggressive - like, so hard. I was curious.
I used to do this one club called New York Sound Factory where I played house, hip-hop, and dancehall. I was one of the first DJs in the South to play everything.
No matter what happens with EDM, I would like to go to New Orleans and just play with one of those small funk bands in an intimate venue. How cool would it be to work with a band with those huge horn lines and produce all of that great funk that makes you just want to party?
