♪♪ ♪♪ Common: I do work as an artist to achieve at high levels, but the work that I do for people is like a life purpose also, and it's like anytime I'm getting recognition, I feel like, oh, man, I got to bring it back home, bring it back to the communities that I come from, to the people that I don't even come from but are still being oppressed.

And I feel like I got to step up for them.

So that's what this award is representing and that's what it's going to charge me to do.

♪♪ When you're a kid reading about Harry Belafonte, you never imagined you would receive an award in honor, you know, that's in his name.

You just don't even know that that could be.

But I believe it's just God blessing and saying, "Do more work.

Well done, but you got more work to do."

So that's how I feel.

I couldn't be more honored to receive the Harry Belafonte Award because he is truly one of my greatest inspirations and one of the greatest guiding lights and the blueprint for what I've been wanting to do in my life.

♪♪ Got back from Barcelona, played a massive show at the festival there, played three festivals in Germany.

Asia's opening up.

It's not opened up yet, but that's next.

So I can't wait for that, to be able to go back out there again, too.

♪♪ American heroes -- my father's name is Hiroaki, so it's kind of a pun on words.

His career's journey really started in America, so he really is an American hero.

His story is an American story.

I think exactly the point is that a lot of younger people don't know, and what he's laid is the first bricks for Asian-Americans, or Asians at all, to really build an enterprise, a business, a culture out here in America at a time when it was very difficult in the '60s.

I think a lot of it's subconscious, you know.

Like, he's not the kind of father's that's, like, sitting me down like, "All right, this is how life works."

Just, like, he was just doing it.

So I was lucky to be able to experience it firsthand.

Morel: His dad was the founder of Benihana, but he was also, like, an extreme sports person, right?

And he dabbled in so many different things.

And it feels like Steve has to do that, in a way.

Like, he went from making music in high school to starting his own record label, right, to putting on a number of successful bands, and then transitioning into being a DJ and then just being a DJ and then making music.

And then, now he's, like, creating NFTs and creating entire universes.

So it's just, like, amazing to see, like, how he's been able to kind of stay focused, but also keeping us, like, wondering, like, what is he going to do next?

There's a lot of his story that sounds pretty wild and crazy that I can't wait to share.

I wanted to show him that I could do it on my own, so I didn't fallow on the restaurant path because I'm no good in the kitchen, I'll be honest.

But, you know, when it comes to music, that's, like, that's my kitchen.

♪♪ ♪♪