DJ AG knew he was on to something after Daddy Freddy’s performance.
The DJ, real name Ashley Gordon, has garnered more than 385,000 followers by doing something incredibly simple: playing music outside and allowing people to perform alongside him while he livestreams the results.
When Daddy Freddy approached him in Brixton, he did not know the man who picked up the mic was the holder of the Guinness Book of World Records title of world’s fastest rapper and a popular dancehall performer in the 1990s.
“That was the gamechanger,” says Gordon. “He came on and started doing his thing, and when I posted it things went mad. That was the spark.”
His setup is simple: decks, mixer and a rig that holds his gear. There are a couple of cameras, one fixed on him and his guest, the other facing the assembled crowd, who might only number a handful, but his online following is vast.
The Daddy Freddy clip has amassed more than 1m views.
Gordon decided to “go outside” in 2023. He has pitched up on a traffic island in the middle of Wood Green in north London, outside Brixton tube station and on a busy corner in King’s Cross. He has also gone abroad, performing in Miami, since quitting his job as a sales manager for a FTSE 250 company.
Elijah, a DJ, lecturer and author of a forthcoming book on the state of the music industry and creativity in the UK, has said DJ AG is “the most important DJ in the UK”.
“Important DJs have an interesting distribution mechanism, they have magnetism and they showcase things you wouldn’t see elsewhere,” says Elijah. “I can’t think of that many examples of people who are doing that right now.”
Gordon’s rise in popularity comes as spaces where the kind of performers he platforms might have appeared have slowly been squeezed out. A report earlier this year estimated that 480 nightclubs closed between June 2020 and June 2024, and more than 1,240 youth clubs also shut between 2010 and 2023. Rinse FM, one of the most important pirate radio stations, has had a licence for 14 years while its original peers have shut down.
Skepta, one of Britain’s most successful grime artists, asked last week: “Is the concept of an organic underground scene dead?” The response to his question was mostly people saying of course not, while mentioning the success of – among other things – the UK jazz scene.
But Elijah thinks the question points to a problem that many black artists have had in the UK: access. “The other platforms that developed out of the last technology wave like YouTube, Boiler Room and NTS they started to be about curation, you still have to know someone to get on,” he says.
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“This is just bars and talent … it’s very raw and generally working class.”
Gordon agrees that his platform is an increasingly rare space for performers. “The industry is not in a good place,” he says. “There are limited opportunities, it doesn’t encourage growth and a lot of the bars and pubs are getting shut down so the open mics are few and far between.”
Since Daddy Freddy, other established names have performed alongside Gordon. MC Fizzy from Genius Cru performed the UK garage classic Boom Selection, and the grime artist Lethal B played his 2004 hit Pow! (Forward) in King’s Cross.
What was it like to have Lethal B, someone who Gordon listened to on pirate radio, on his stream? “Mad,” he says. After we talk Gordon says that this week he has a very special guest.
On Tuesday night at about 6pm, Skepta and his brother JME appeared, performing together as a large crowd gathered. If Skepta was looking for the underground perhaps he found it with DJ AG.
Source: theguardian.com
