The biggest DJ in the world is coming to San Jose. At the forefront of a recent American musical revolution, Dutch phenom Tiesto performs at the San Jose State Event Center on March 5, his only Bay Area stop, as part of his sold-out College Invasion tour.

With Electronic Dance Music (EDM) tied to the live, dance floor experience, a DJ’s notoriety stems more from the high-profile parties they’ve rocked than the singles they’ve released. Still, Tiësto’s cover of “Adagio for Strings” is likely the song that launched him into the dance stratosphere. It’s the track that caught the ear of the Olympic Committee, leading to a literal appearance on the world’s stage when he played the opening ceremony of the 2004 Olympic Games.

He’s a three-time winner of DJ Mag’s “Top 100” DJ poll (2002-2004); last year, he finished second behind fellow Dutchman Armin Van Buuren. While David Guetta and Calvin Harris have been making significant strides stateside, crafting dance pop collaborations with artists like Usher, Rihanna and Nicki Minaj, Tiësto maintains a line that straddles mainstream visibility and underground respect.

For those unaware of the clout he commands, a few facts: his weekly radio show, Tiësto’s Club Life, is the most popular music podcast on iTunes. He has garnered more than 300 million views on YouTube, 11 million likes on Facebook and one and a half million followers on Twitter.

In 2011, he performed before a crowd of over 26,000 inside LA’s Home Depot Center, the largest U.S. audience for a headline EDM gig. A few days before his San Jose gig, he’s back in LA to headline the 18,000-capacity Staples Center.

As for why Tiësto, a man who can play anywhere he pleases—he once turned down a gig at Madison Square Garden because it wouldn’t accommodate enough dancers on the floor—has chosen to tour American colleges, he explains they’re the key to EDM’s continued success.

“I think the college crowd is very important,” he says in a phone interview. “They are very energetic and into the music. That’s inspiring to play for. No matter how old you are, you always will remember your time in college. To be a part of that culture is amazing to me.”

Stateside, his crowd skews young—he says the demographic is “90 percent under 21”—but their youth offers him the opportunity to act as a gateway for newcomers. He calls the domestic EDM-obsessed crowd “very open-minded,” citing continually enthusiastic crowds despite diverse bills.

“They’re not pigeonholed into one style,” he says. “It’s very refreshing to play for [American] crowds because they are so into the music. In Europe, EDM has been there for many years so people are more used to it. It’s more new and exciting to play here.”

Though dance music was created in America, with offshoots of house and techno rising out of Chicago and Detroit, respectively, the music never grew outside of a passionate niche audience. “Electronica” had a wave of success stateside in the late 90s when the Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers and Moby enjoyed radio play, but the rave explosion felt in Europe never fully crossed back over the pond.

In 2011, Spin proclaimed America had finally been conquered by EDM. Dubstep, thanks to acts like San Jose native Bassnectar and Skrillex, has become huge and crossed over into the mainstream with fan base of mostly young music listeners.

Electric Daisy Carnival, the largest dance festival in North America, drew over 300,000 people to the outskirts of Las Vegas last year. Miami’s Ultra Music Festival (165,000) and New York’s Electric Zoo (110,000) experienced similar success. With ever-growing attendance numbers, downloads and chart successes, it seems EDM has finally returned home.

Recent term “EDM,” coined as a catch-all for dance music’s countless subgenres, has helped. In the past, new listeners would grow increasingly confused wading through terms like liquid drum and bass, deep house, progressive trance and electro. Though the new tag can be similarly confusing as a qualifier for a spectrum of sound and rhythm, Tiësto thinks the simplified terminology has aided its rise, equalizing the term with similarly vague titles jazz and rock.

Yet, dance music has always come with negative baggage, specifically the scene’s ties to recreational drug use. The rave boom almost goes hand-in-hand with the prevalent recreational use of ecstasy, which continues today with pure MDMA variant “molly”—a drug also referenced in most rap radio hits these days. Tiësto has long taken issue with the connection, symbolizing his stance by banning glow sticks, a rave staple, at his shows.

“I just wanted to show my crowd that I’m not part of that,” he says. “Obviously, some people will always do it, but the image of the glow sticks at the parties was really bad, especially in Europe. In comedy movies, you would see a traditional raver, and they would always show that he’s on drugs with glow sticks in his hands and in his mouth. I think we deserve a better image than that.”

For this tour, Tiësto has hand-selected a supporting bill that includes Australian electro DJ Tommy Trash and Dutch newcomers Alvaro and Quintino. Past tours included Avicii, Dada Life and Hardwell, whose stars all rose after gaining the Tiësto co-sign. “I think it’s something to be proud of,” he says. “It’s nice to see that I can help develop the scene.”

Asked why he’s endured over the years, Tiësto credits his steadfast belief in the scene he’s had a large hand in shaping into a global force. “I never really sold out,” he says, drawing a link to contemporaries with pop aspirations. “I’ve always stayed true to myself. People see it’s pure and it’s real.”

As for his recently-announced follow-up to 2009’s Kaleidoscope, he said he’s “probably eight tracks” into the release thanks to added studio time in the wake of a recent back injury.

“Try to make the best dance album ever—that’s my goal,” he offers before letting out a small laugh, aware of the loftiness of such a mark yet delivered with enough determination to suggest he’s not joking.

UPDATE:

The set times are out for Tiësto’s show in San Jose:

Tiësto • 9:30 – 11:30
Tommy Trash • 8:30 – 9:30
Quintino • 7:30 – 8:30
Alvaro • 6:45 – 7:30
John Beaver • 6:00 – 6:45

A list of prohibited items at the show (Is this a going a little overboard or fair for this type of event? ~ ed.):

“I’m about being carefree and having fun. I just hope that comes out through the music,” says 25-year-old rapper Wiz Khalifa, who headlines San Jose Event Center at San Jose State on November 10 for his 2050 Tour.

Khalifa or “Young Wiz” as his classmates called him is at a point where many rappers dream to reach. The tall, skinny tattooed Pittsburgh native has already ran through major music labels (his first signing was to Warner Bros. at age 19) and he’s now peaking on rap, dance and international crossover charts.

He hangs out with Snoop Dogg whom he laughingly refers to as a “smoking buddy” and Three 6 Mafia’s Juicy J, who performs with Khalifa in San Jose. He is also engaged to former video vixen Amber Rose, a model and actress famously linked to Kanye West. The two announced recently at MTV’s VMAs that a baby is on the way.

Professionally, Khalifa’s unofficial mixtapes are as sought after as his official albums. His latest, Cabin Fever 2, is a follow-up to its massively successful predecessor.

But what’s striking about Khalifa’s odd rise to fame is the absence of struggle. Essentially, he got signed right away. Not too many new musicians leave labels like Warner Bros. or Atlantic—they pay dues for years to get on these labels and often never make it. In fact, his debut for Atlantic, “Black & Yellow,” almost immediately earned him the top spot on the Billboard Charts.

Khalifa’s approach to rapping is counter-intuitive, too, as he doesn’t rely on sharp rhymes or mic skills. He comes from a new breed of rappers that don’t concern themselves with delivery or lyricism. The point isn’t to be detailed but rather fun—and by all means. They sell lifestyle and attitude, crafting entire albums around persona and party anthems. It’s worked great for Snoop as well as the Rick Ross wannabes of the world. Both lowered the bar in terms of technical skill but raised it in terms of charisma and attitude.

Snoop is, of course, pop culture gold but as a rapper he’s not of the same breed as quick-lipped maestros Kendrick Lamar or Pharoahe Monch, for example.

On November 10, 1891, Arthur Rimbaud died. On November 10, 2011, on the 130th anniversary of the hapless French poet’s death, Drake’s album “Take Care” was leaked. And for the last four months, he’s unknowingly embarked on a tour to resurrect Rimbaud’s central thesis of maddening love – in packed arenas across the country. And Friday at the San Jose State Event Center, the audience will respond.

A lofty premise, to be sure. We know the rapper is sensitive. The evening will see Drake speak, or rather sing, interspersed with moments of rapping. He’ll do it with some discomfort. Though a loner at heart, he so badly wants to be an accomplished showman, to command the world’s attention in a way that bigger icons like Jay-Z now seem born to do. The high paranoia and introspective dint of “Take Care” would seem to jibe better in an intimate setting—not a college stadium. And so, fortunate for him, the album’s true message is padded with hip-hop cliches like a spoonful of sugar, so you’ll better digest the emotional medicine.

In “Tale,” one of Rimbaud’s most famous poems from his collection Illuminations, he spoke of a monarch’s driving motivation – perfection in love:

“A Prince was annoyed at always being occupied with perfecting vulgar generosities. He foresaw amazing revolutions in love, and suspected that his wives could come up with something better than complacency adorned with sky and luxury. He wished to see the truth, the hour of essential desire and satiIsfaction. Whether or not this was an aberration of piety, he wanted it. He possessed at the very least a rather broad human power.

Drake thinks much about “vulgar generosities,” “revolutions in love,”, “something better than complacency adorned with sky and luxury” – and has tried to convince us to celebrate them.

None of his accomplices can know about this. The evening will begin with Harlem’s resident ‘it’ kid, A$AP Rocky, who, in the cyclical nature of popular culture is refreshing because he’s a nostalgic. As is Compton’s Kendrick Lamar, who once saw Tupac Shakur in a dream, and sometimes displays Pac’s ability to inhabit misguided spirits so he can better understand them (on the subject of dates, their birthdays are a day apart).

Drake will have to breathe life into some dispiriting material, and relive bravura highs and bravura lows in the span of a less than two hours set. If not heard in the appropriate order, “Take Care” is manic. The emoting can get intense, and the cagey, expected machismo he proffers in return might ring untrue to less sympathetic ears.

Just how he’ll distribute the story of his relationships will prove interesting—how will the narrative unfold? Will the saga of his recklessness, with confident and knowingly brash tracks, like 2010’s “Money to Blow,” or his verse on DJ Khaled’s posse cut “I’m On One” be paired next to the superficial idol worship of “Best I Ever Had” and “Make Me Proud”?

What he does best is pay homage—to women, to his family and sometimes unconvincingly, to himself. Strange as it is to ask a rapper to be further self-aggrandizing, it’s just as much in Drake’s interest, as it is in ours, that he celebrate himself.

Drake performs at San Jose State Events Center on March 10 with Kendrick Lamar and A$AP Rocky. Tickets are sold out.

How big is heavy metal in San Jose? Gigantor. Megadeath and Motorhead filled the San Jose Event Center with rabid metal fans last night. Our photographer caught the action from the pit.

Photos by Jennifer Anderson.

See the complete gallery.

Megadeth has had a lot of ups and downs over the years, which is probably fitting for a band that started basically as a grudge after Dave Mustaine got thrown out of Metallica. It’s been one crazy story after the other, but the craziest yet may be that Megadeth is back in top form, a decade after Mustaine broke up the band to undergo a year of shock therapy and re-training on his arm for severe nerve damage that could have meant he’d never play again.

Instead, their latest, Thirteen, has been nominated for two Grammys and is easily their best album since 1990’s Rust in Peace. To support it, Mustaine is restarting his heavy metal festival Gigantour, with Motorhead, Volbeat and Lacuna Coil joining Megadeth for a tour that comes to the San Jose Event Center on Thursday, Feb. 23.

The first song off the latest record. “Sudden Death,” was released in 2010’s “Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock” game, and was nominated for a Best Metal Performance Grammy. Now the single “Public Enemy No. 1” (which features a pretty hilarious video starring an outlaw monkey) has been nominated in the category as well.

Tickets for the San Jose Event Center date are on sale now. The band is coming off its historic “Big 4” shows that saw the once bitter enemies Megadeth and Metallica joining up with Slayer and Anthrax, uniting the four biggest bands in thrash metal. Megadeth also toured with Slayer on the recent “Carnage” tours.

Click here to view the embedded video.