TikTok’s DJ AG offers London’s most exciting — & democratic — new stage

Arriving back in London after a recent long trip to the coast, I was excited to embrace the chaos of a big city again. Exiting Kings Cross station, I turned left and my eye was immediately drawn to a DJ who was positioned just across the road from a notoriously chaotic branch of McDonalds. Surrounded by flashing lights and people, he was playing a mixture of grime, U.K. rap, and bashment. A small crowd had gathered around him as he selected his tunes and wheeled them up when they got a big enough reaction. “This,” I thought to myself, “is what London feels like.”

You don’t have to be out on the street to see what that DJ, who’s known online as DJ AG, is up to, though. He is a TikTok livestreamer who diligently sets up his decks across the city on a daily basis and broadcasts his sets to the world. There are no strict musical rules, but AG generally plays tunes from across the Black British diaspora, taking in everything from U.K. garage to drill and dancehall. These hours-long sessions are then clipped up and shared across TikTok and Instagram. Recent highlights include Croydon rapper Rome repping his ends and Jamaican vocalist Chi Ching getting the grannies dancing in the middle of the afternoon. Scrolling his page is like getting a mix of a London version of New York Nico mixed with a vintage Rinse FM set.

Inspired to quit his job as a sales manager at a blue chip company during lockdown, AG started out with a set of decks strapped to his shoulders as he looked to put the “mobile” into mobile DJ. His democratic approach to the artform was immediately apparent as he streamed himself DJing outside Buckingham Palace one day and a branch of the bargain clothes store Primark the next. The vibe was a little bit of “man on the street with prankster energy” as he interacted with the public while looking to avoid security guards.

He changed his set-up earlier this year, alternating between spots in the north of the city and Brixton, in the south, as he slowly switched from cute moments with the public to showcasing vocalists and MCs. Speaking to BBC News recently, he said his mission is simple: “To try and uplift everyone.”

AG’s influence is growing rapidly with Elijah, a DJ and writer specializing in Black British culture, recently declaring him “the most important DJ in the U.K. right now.” Big name grime MCs Skepta and JME were spotted on a stream earlier this week. At a time when the current health of the U.K. rap scene is being discussed pessimistically (a conversation led by Skepta himself), watching rising MC Pozer bar out while people go about their lives feels like the back-to-basics moment many fans are calling for.

Personally, though, I hope AG’s platform won’t be swallowed up by the industry machine too quickly. It’s exciting to see familiar faces on the mic, but the moments that stand out the most to me feature the artists who would likely never be invited to record something like a COLORs session. The platform offers a rare digital home to someone like ragga vocalist Daddy Freddy, filmed bringing the energy outside a branch of the frozen food store Iceland earlier this month. It’s also perhaps the only place I can imagine seeing a middle-aged lady rap over Luniz’s “5 On It” while wearing a construction helmet.

Returning to Elijah’s words, music “is not an ecosystem if everyone is doing the same thing.” The joy and positivity AG is spreading through his channel comes directly from that ability to mix things up a little and showcase the noise and rhythm that makes London worth filming. Long may it continue.