DJ AG knew he was right after Daddy Freddy’s performance.
The DJ, whose real name is Ashley Gordon, has amassed more than 385,000 followers by doing something incredibly simple: playing music outdoors and letting people perform alongside him while he livestreams the results.
When Daddy Freddy approached him in Brixton, he didn’t know that the man who grabbed the microphone was the holder of the Guinness Book of World Records title as the world’s fastest rapper and a popular dancehall artist in the 1990s.
“That was the game changer,” Gordon says. “He came and started doing his thing, and when I posted it, things went crazy. “That was the spark.”
Your setup is simple: decks, mixer, and a rig that holds your gear. There are a couple of cameras, one fixed on him and his guest, the other looking at the gathered crowd, which may only be a handful, but their online following is enormous.
The Daddy Freddy clip has accumulated more than 1 million views.
Gordon decided to “exit” in 2023. He set up shop on a traffic island in the middle of Wood Green in north London, outside Brixton tube station and on a busy corner of King’s Cross. He has also traveled abroad, performing in Miami, since leaving his job as a sales manager for a FTSE 250 company.
Elijah, DJ, speaker and author of a forthcoming book on the state of the music industry and creativity in the UK, said DJ AG is “UK’s biggest DJ”.
“Big DJs have an interesting delivery mechanism, they have magnetism and they show things you wouldn’t see anywhere else,” Elijah says. “I can’t think of that many examples of people doing that right now.”
Gordon’s rise in popularity comes as spaces where the type of artists he could have appeared in have been slowly eliminated. A report from earlier this year estimated that 480 nightclubs closed between June 2020 and June 2024, and more than 1,240 youth clubs also closed between 2010 and 2023. Rinse FM, one of the largest pirate radio stations, has had a license for 14 years, while its original peers closed.
Skepta, one of Britain’s most successful grime artists, asked last week: “Is the concept of an organic underground scene dead?” The answer to his question was mostly people saying of course not, while mentioning the success of, among other things, the UK jazz scene.
But Elijah believes the question points to a problem many black artists in the UK have had: access. “The other platforms that developed from the last wave of technology, like YouTube, Boiler Room and NTS, started to focus on healing, you still have to meet someone to move forward with,” 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 artists. “The industry is not in a good place,” he says. “There are limited opportunities, it doesn’t encourage growth and many bars and pubs are closing, so open mics are few and far between.”
Since Daddy Freddy, other established names have performed alongside Gordon. Genius Cru’s MC Fizzy performed the British garage classic Pen selectionand grime artist Lethal B performed his 2004 hit Pow! (Forward) at King’s Cross.
What was it like having Lethal B, someone Gordon listened to on pirate radio, on your broadcast? “Crazy,” he says. After talking, Gordon says he has a very special guest this week.
On Tuesday night, around 6pm, Skepta and his brother JME appeared, performing together to a large gathered crowd. If Skepta was looking for the underground, perhaps he found it in DJ AG.