There was a time when stepping into a club or tuning into a late-night radio mix meant uncovering. You didn’t just hear what was already hot, you heard what was about to be.
The DJ was the tastemaker, the bridge between underground and mainstream, the one who could take an unknown artist and make them a household name by dropping their record at just the right moment. But somewhere between the algorithm and the influencer era, the art of breaking records got lost.
These days, too many DJs are chasing what’s trending instead of creating the trend. You walk into a set, and it’s the same five songs you’ve already scrolled past on TikTok. The risk-taking is gone. The responsibility to introduce new sounds has been replaced with the fear of losing the crowd, or worse, the engagement.
Ebro was sounding off on DJ’s not doing their jobs pic.twitter.com/vYaFWtBSpu
— Josh (@TDKHIPHOP) October 16, 2025
Ebro Darden said it best during a recent discussion about Bia‘s newest album Bianca:
“Our job is to see beyond the marketing machine. Our job is to go, “Oh, ok, this is what everybody’s being marketed, and this is the convo they’re having,” Darden explained. “The regular average person is A, a follower. So they’re going to just follow what’s already popular. And B, they don’t have the time and the capacity to digest things and go do the work. That’s our job.”
He’s right. The DJ’s job used to be work. It was about digging through crates, literal or digital, and finding that hidden gem. It was about having an ear that could hear potential before the public caught up.
Now, too many DJs are reacting instead of curating. They’re waiting for a song to go viral before playing it, when their role should be the reason it goes viral in the first place.
This isn’t to discredit all DJs, there are still a few out there doing it right, championing new artists and building moments that remind you why the DJ booth used to be sacred ground.
But as a culture, we’ve let convenience and clout dilute the craft. The focus has shifted from discovery to validation.
Breaking records isn’t just about giving an artist a shot; it’s about keeping the ecosystem of music alive.
Without DJs taking those chances, the industry becomes an echo chamber, looping the same hits until they burn out. The next generation of talent, the Bia’s, the underground lyricists, the experimental producers, get lost in the shuffle because nobody’s willing to push play on something unfamiliar.
So maybe it’s time to bring the challenge back. Maybe DJs need to start spinning for the love of discovery again.
Play the record nobody knows. Give that local artist a shot in your set. Be the bridge again. Because the culture doesn’t move when you play what’s safe, it moves when you take a risk.
