If you’ve been on TikTok at all over the past few months, chances are you’ll have seen clips of a DJ outside King’s Cross station, surrounded by a crowd of commuters and kids jumping around as Skepta and JME take turns to spit on the mic. Behind the decks is a comparatively unflustered character, clad in an AG-branded hoodie, mouthing along with the lyrics and occasionally busting out a small dance move. He – it just so happens – is Time Out’s Londoner of the Year for 2024.
DJ AG, whose real name is Ashley Gordon, is a 39-year-old Tottenham native who performs out on the streets of London. Recently, he’s garnered public attention for his star-studded, seemingly impromptu, sets.
They usually start with AG setting up his decks at peak rush hour on the corner of York Way, next to King’s Cross McDonald’s, or Brixton market, just across the road from Morley’s. As commuters pass by, the night’s performers are allocated a place in line to play a five-minute slot by a member of his team. When it’s their turn, they pass AG their USB with their chosen beats and look into the camera in front of the decks, where they’re livestreamed to hundreds of viewers who can comment directly to them. In real life, there’s a building crowd of regular attendees and passers-by as rappers and singers enjoy their moment in the spotlight.
On occasion, these ‘open format’ nights will feature surprise appearances by some of the UK’s biggest musicians: his follower count soared when legendary ragga vocalist Daddy Freddy randomly dropped by in Brixton. Skepta and JME came next, after asking if they could appear on their old schoolmate’s channel when they noticed it was gaining traction. Then followed a slew of special appearances (some planned, some not) from respected rappers such as Chip, Ms Banks and Scorcher, as well as singers such as Jorja Smith who appeared alongside AG when he made his Birmingham debut last week.
In the past month, AG has amassed nearly 50 million views on Instagram and TikTok combined – but he assures me ‘it’s not about the numbers’ at least three times throughout our chat. Beyond the street shows and livestreams, he also performs in care homes and hopes to reach out to schools and rehabilitation centres, all so he can spread joy through music.
AG seems naturally comfortable with being the centre of attention for his Time Out London cover shoot. He crouches down, grins and points at the camera while posing in a bold orange puffer and signature beanie – a little different from his usual uniform of dark winter coats and personalised tracksuits. And it’s surprisingly uplifting to watch someone who’s usually taking a backseat receive superstar treatment. As we take pictures in front of the Ritzy cinema, his name plastered across the marquee like he’s won the World Cup, it’s not long before fans notice him in the street (this is, after all, where he does his routine streams most Saturdays). One guy jumps into the shot and starts dancing to AG’s dub of Donae’o’s ‘Party Hard’ which is blasting from our makeshift PA, then is swiftly joined by a group who big him up and start to take photos. Later, on our way to the rest of the shoot at Fish Wings & Tings, the Caribbean food spot in Brixton Village, someone even stops and pretends to shine his shoes.
‘It’s just another day,’ says AG as we sit in the empty Ritzy bar after the shoot. ‘You need to remember I worked in sales: most of us have the gift of the gab and know how to carry ourselves. For me, everything is done with humility and being grateful. So I’m grateful for this and everyone taking the time to bring it to life. And it’s just nice that people believe in what I’m trying to do.’
What AG is aiming to do goes far beyond the surprise guests on his music streams. It’s about building community through a platform. Meet Time Out’s Londoner of the Year, DJ AG.
Live from London
AG is a Tottenham native. It’s an area he still lives in and has a soft spot for. ‘Growing up, I remember playing football and getting involved in activities at the Selby Center, doing my taekwondo and just building up friendships,’ he says, reflecting on his childhood. ‘It’s where I think about when I think about community.’
He went on to MC and DJ for pirate radio station Axe FM, which was the first in London to livestream to the internet from around 2003 until the early 2010s. ‘Pabz [the founder] took me under his wing at a time when you couldn’t get on the prominent stations,’ he remembers. ‘Places like Rinse were FM, so it was harder to get on. You could get on Axe and hone your craft from a livestream on their website. It was good preparation for what I’m doing now.’
Alongside this, AG credits his previous life as a sales manager for an unspecified FTSE 250 company as the reason why he’s comfortable being on camera almost seven days a week. He dropped the MC’ing when a friend told him he simply wasn’t good enough and instead focused on hosting DJ lessons and battles on YouTube. Then, under instruction from his two children, he took up livestreaming from his home on TikTok in 2022. When he found himself disenchanted at work, he quit his job to focus on streaming – and that’s when he decided to take things outside. Inspired by roaming YouTube DJ SUAT, he started broadcasting from Wood Green because it was close by, convenient for setting up and, most importantly, busy.
‘One day I received a letter from Haringey council,’ he says. ‘On the basis that it was unsafe, for women in particular, which I found disgusting. I also had complaints about the noise and something about illegal trading. Oh, and I got an ASBO in Shoreditch, which they brought up.’ Yes, you read that right: AG was arrested and served an ASBO in January 2023 when he ended up with a significantly larger crowd than expected for an on-street livestream.
He’s bringing people together and turning every session into a celebration of community and sound
These days, he focuses his attention on pop-ups in Kings Cross and Brixton, as he felt they were areas that would be more inclined to welcome him. He doesn’t have any explicit agreements in place with either of these places: he’s just required to not disrupt the public walkways. You’ll often see police wandering over, but they’re usually just trying to catch a glimpse of the action. ‘If someone asks me to move away, I will,’ says AG. ‘How I see it is: I don’t get funded. I don’t get grants. So why would I bother if you don’t want me to be there? I can be anywhere else.’
Crossing over
In the past year, AG has found fans from various corners of the music world. Last week, Jorja Smith appeared in an impromptu set in Birmingham, close to her home in Walsall. She tells me she’s a fan of his live sessions because of how organic they feel.
‘I love doing things like showing up somewhere random to perform live,’ she says. ‘What AG is doing is super important. He’s bringing people together and turning every session into a celebration of community and sound. He’s inspiring others to step out and share their voices, and I felt blessed to contribute, even in a small way.’
Elijah, the co-founder of influential grime label Butterz, has publicly declared AG ‘the most important DJ in the UK’. ‘AG breaks all the rules of what people think the core of DJing is,’ he says. ‘He’s changed the presentation by being in the street and the distribution by going live on TikTok three or four times a week. Then the output, by having all the clips posted constantly, lets artists have bite-sized free content to share with their audiences. There are clear personal sacrifices he’s making, too, to dedicate this much time and energy to it.’
With all of the buzz surrounding him, it’s somewhat unsurprising that AG has started to catch the attention of big brands. Since our chat, he’s partnered with Wingstop for a pop-up in their Wood Green shop, and is collabing with Defected Records and TikTok LIVE for a streaming special on December 11. That said, AG assures me he’s still firmly focused on smaller, community acts, more so than the prominent, pie-in-the-sky guests (though he does have ambitions to get Idris Elba on it, one day).
‘I get more satisfaction when I come across someone that just isn’t known or they’ve got a small following,’ he says. He nods to Inspeckta Veg, who quadrupled their account size off the back of coming on the platform and getting almost 90,000 views. ‘It’s an amazing story. Or Raga Ruggie, the Brixton legend, who’s been doing this for 20-plus years and has been booked for Sting [the reggae and dancehall show in Jamaica], which is the ultimate compliment for a dancehall artist.’
AG breaks all the rules of what people think DJing is
There is talent all across the country, as his streams from Birmingham and Bristol have shown, and AG seems to have an audience that’ll follow him wherever he goes. The engagement is heartwarming. The top comment on Jorja’s video says: ‘Look at how organic AGs platform is. Everyone is coming back down to earth. Even superstars roll through humble!’ On Scorcher’s, a fan writes: ‘For someone who grew up on grime, can I just say how grateful I am to you AG for giving my old school heroes a platform… bro deserves every success you’re gonna get.’ But it’s not just the large acts getting love. ‘Why haven’t Lambeth council given them a stage, this is a full production,’ someone comments under a Raga Ruggie video.
When I ask if AG has plans to take his streaming to more places, he pulls back and smiles knowingly. ‘We need to take what we’re doing and move it to as many spaces as possible,’ he says. ‘Certainly Birmingham and Bristol again, but you’ve got Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Liverpool, then we can move over to Dublin – we should be taking this everywhere.’ And when AG talks about ‘taking it everywhere’, he means far further than just the UK.
‘You have to look at international acts because we want to go global, so you’ve got the Drakes and the Kendricks,’ he says. ‘We also want to take it to Jamaica, so that means Beenie Man and Vybz Kartel, then in Africa you’ve got Burna Boy and Wizkid. I’d also like to go to South America to get into the reggaeton space. There’s loads to be done.’
Community spirit
That evening, I headed down to AG’s stream in Kings Cross. His crowd is relatively small when I get there: about 20 people, some who know what he’s doing, others who stop in disbelief as a teen by the name of Shakes takes to the mic. ‘He’s 17 years old and penning lyrics like that,’ AG marvels once his five minutes are up. Shakes dashes off before I get the chance to ask him how he felt it went, but the live stream of 800-something people is filled with positive comments.
It reminded me of what AG said earlier about youngsters like him. ‘You want them to get instant feedback, for better or worse,’ he says. ‘You’re either good or not. It is what it is. You’re either where you need to be or you need to improve. That instant feedback is so important, and my platform provides that audience who says what they feel.’
‘There’s a lot of microwave-ready music out there,’ he adds, explaining that he believes music has become overly formulaic: people follow trends and release tracks so quickly that it’s tough for new artists to hone their skills and get booked alongside more prominent acts. In the past, you’d book gigs, radio appearances and small festival slots, gradually building things up. But this is an expensive process and the system is broken, he explains. That’s why kids turn to TikTok and just pray that something goes viral – even if it’s just one song.
‘For me, it’s about trying to change that part and encouraging the audience to take a chance on some of these people. It’s great when someone comes on and everyone’s like, ‘‘Oh my days, I’ve added you on Spotify because you’re amazing and I wanna follow your journey’’. The essence is grafting. You have to graft and you have to get outside your house.’
You have to graft and you have to get outside your house
He’s right. London’s music scene – from the underground to commercial – has changed seismically, even just in the last 10 years. SBTV has moved away from DIY videos to sleeker operations. Mainstream radio seems set on recycling American noughties hip-hop (as Elijah pointed out in The Guardian). And actual pirate radio no longer exists. ‘At the start of my career, we were doing the same thing [as AG is now] on Axe FM,’ says legendary grime MC Scorcher, who hopped on the mic earlier this year in what is one of AG’s most successful videos. ‘I didn’t have any plans or selected beats, I just told AG to play the bangers and he knew which ones would pull certain lyrics out of me. You can’t buy, teach or learn that. It felt like that thing in your life that’s been missing and you never knew ’til you found it again.’
Giving back to the capital
If you have little access to gig opportunities, can’t afford studio time and are battling with the algorithm for social reach, how are you going to become a successful musician? It’s a question AG has asked himself and is an issue he’s trying to solve through his platform. But as he says, it’s about more than just giving artists a viral moment on his channel. He wants to put his money where his mouth is.
Last month, he launched an online fundraiser to support independent artists and ‘contribute towards the costs of studio time and distribution of their music’. Looking ahead to 2025, he tells me he’s set on gaining some kind of sponsorship for a vehicle (ideally a Sprinter – Mercedes, take note) so he can convert it into a makeshift studio, pay for an engineer and allow people to record their music. He emphasises he’d particularly like to focus on young people due to the increasing lack of youth centres, and expresses a dream to one day build something like Stormzy’s Merky FC HQ – the football pitch and community centre in Croydon – for his community.
That’s not all though, as he recently shared aspirations to perform more in care homes, schools and prisons, to spread joy through his sets. ‘It’s about giving a voice to the voiceless,’ he says. ‘My gran had dementia. She wasn’t put into care, but I saw that struggle. There are so many influencers that are streaming, but not outside in the real world, so they don’t feel the real pain of what’s going on.’
He finds that children are increasingly uninspired by how music is taught in schools, and hopes that bringing the decks in will help them to become interested via other avenues. Prisons, he believes, will have untapped talent and potential roads to rehabilitation. As for care homes, he channels his personal experience with his grandmother into helping those who may feel lonely or somehow forgotten by society.
The videos of AG’s trip to Formont, an adult care centre in Enfield, are particularly poignant. It’s a home for adults with profound and multiple learning disabilities which AG visited with his decks at the end of November to take requests from the residents. His video features heartwarming moments where they listen to disco and pop hits, occasionally taking to the mic to gleefully sing along. He even plays Stevie Wonder for one of their birthdays. ‘We had one person who wanted Michael Jackson, and he was really getting into it,’ AG says. ‘It’s not about me being the richest person, it’s about who I can inspire.’
That’s really what it comes down to with AG. He talks about taking the decks across to world-famous rappers, but ultimately, it’s the grassroots that matters the most to him. And that makes him a hero in our eyes. Because really, AG is out there, on the streets, making people’s dreams come true. Or at the very least making normal Londoners’ commutes more interesting. And that’s something we could all do with.
Photographer: Jess Hand @jesshandphotography
Design Director: Bryan Mayes @bryanmayesdotcom
Senior Designer: Jamie Inglis @818fpv
Photo Editor: Laura Gallant @lauramgallant
Stylist: Keira Liberati @kieraliberati
Stylist Assistant: Pricilla Owusuanah @cillaowu
Grooming: Courtney-Reec Scott @courtney_reece_scott
Set Designer: Simon Godfrey @wedosets
Thank you to Ritzy @ritzy_cinema, Fish, Wings & Tings @fishwingstings and Refill @refillcaaribbean
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