The club’s over: your next night out is on a street near you

Dear Londoners — the streets are icy, everybody’s ill. Yes, we’ve reached that part of January — you know, the depressing part. But here at The Londoner, there’s reason for optimism. In part, that’s down to today’s excellent story from Kemi Alemoru, which looks at the recent rise of London’s street raves. Dressed in what sounds like the most glamorous street-club outfit anybody's ever worn (“more like Jackie Onassis than a raver,” as she puts it), Kemi headed down to Brixton to meet the man responsible: DJ AG. Read the story below.

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TikToks, tunes and free patties — welcome to the street party

The crowd that’s gathered on Brixton’s Windrush Square for DJ AG’s latest set is certainly varied: a little black primary school-aged girl whose braids are haloed by a fur trim hood, a white Clapham-coded man in a North Face fleece, a Gen X Jamaican uncle in a Canada Goose puffer. Dressed all in black, DJ AG sets up his decks, spins tunes by the roadside, and hands the mic to whoever wants to perform over his beats, all while live-streaming everything for an audience at home. 

It makes for an unusual contrast with the formal wedding reception gathering on the concourse outside the Ritzy cinema nearby. Far from annoyed, though, the excited couple — the groom in a clean tux, the bride in a black velvet dress with her hair tied back by a large white bow — make their way over to the crowd and exclaim that they are “huge fans” of the DJ. 

That’s the magic of DJ AG’s simple premise. In his viral videos — which have been viewed upwards of 70 million times and have been praised everywhere from ITV to Idris Elba — DJ AG brings London’s streets to life with energetic sets and an open mic. For many people watching at home, the biggest surprises are the characters that come through: aspiring musicians hoping for their moment in the limelight, passersby, or cameos from legendary acts like JME, Skepta, and N Dubz’s Dappy. Right now, the crowd is swaying, singing along to an adorable rendition of Bob Marley’s ‘Three Little Birds’, which is sung by an old Jamaican grandmother in a flat cap.

Heading out to one of DJ AG’s sets requires a bit of foreplanning about what to wear, in much the same way that going to a live venue does. On a chilly night in November, you’ll be stood stationary for so long without shelter that you might go completely numb. I’ve arrived in an all-black outfit that makes me look more like Jackie Onassis than a raver (a coat with a fur lapel, a fur hat, and leather gloves clutching an expresso martini can). The important thing is that I look good; as anyone who has ever attended a Boiler Room knows, a live-streamed set means wrestling with the possibility you’ll be caught in the frame, inadvertently providing embarrassing screenshots for your group chats for years to come.

The crowd here is a mix of curious people who just passed by, friends of acts waiting in line to perform, and homeless people. A woman starts screaming and laughing, uttering indecipherable words. I notice a baby-faced British Jamaican student sidle up to my friend. He tells us he wants to work in finance. I quickly shatter any of his illusions of romance by informing him we are 30-year-olds, using the same intonation I would if I were informing someone I was suffering from a terminal illness. He changes course by saying he likes my coat. It makes me look “like a Victorian”. In return, he tells me about his love of Nigel Farage, Trump, and the death penalty. It’s hardly the sort of chat you hear in the smoking area of a typical £30-advance-from-Resident Advisor ticketed night. Perhaps that’s the appeal of DJ AG, though — the ability to transcend our demographic echo chambers (left, right, young and old) and join people together who inhabit the same space but are worlds apart. 

As I politely listen to the right-wing baby’s reasoning and provide my rebuttals, one thing we can agree on is that people in Britain feel like they are being beaten down by a system that doesn’t work for most people. “That’s why I like this,” he says. “It’s returning grime to its roots, bringing it back to the people. Artists who have been locked out can get views on their art and make a fanbase, financially gain from that and pay taxes into the system.”

Before he was DJ AG, Ashley Gordon was a sales manager in a corporate job. “I’m from Tottenham, so getting that sort of job for £60,000 a year was crazy,” he tells me. But he quit when he was passed up for the promotion he had been working towards. His son suggested starting a TikTok where he could livestream and exhibit his passion for music. Inspired by a house DJ called SUAT, who travels around with decks attached to his body, DJ AG headed outside to play UK garage, grime, and other black genres from American hip hop to Jamaican dancehall. 

When I ask the 39-year-old why he sets up in public rather than the traditional route of playing in nightlife spaces, his answer is pretty conclusive. “Who goes clubbing? No one don’t go clubbing no more,” he laughs. Every week, it seems, a new article eulogising UK clubbing gets published. Recent headlines predict that if we continue to see nightlife venues close at the same rate (37% have folded in the last four years) that by late 2029, there’d be no clubs to go to to ring in the new year. This is generally an indictment of the high costs of trying to create or enjoy culture in a country sparring with a cost of living crisis and losing.