As the official DJ for the Cleveland Browns, chop star and Z107.9 on-air mixer, DJ Ryan Wolf is taking the city by storm. Falling in love with music at a young age, Wolf claims he had an ear for music early on but decided that his instrument of choice would be the turntables.
How did you come up with your DJ name?
When I first started deejaying, I didn’t know it would take off, but God had a bigger plan than I did. When I first started deejaying I just had a Twitter name and this is even before Instagram started. My Twitter name was @RyanP.com. When I would be deejaying at the spots, it would say music by RyanP.com. I had a friend who was a very connected person in … in Cleveland, and she was one of my go-to people. She was like, “Look, you gotta come up with another name. You need a DJ name.” It was time to pivot, and I was doing a bit more gigs. I was moving around a lot more, so I did need a real DJ name. She was shooting out names and she said DJ Ryan Wolf. I always had a beard and my favorite clothing company was Bape, and their logo looks like a brown gorilla. When she said DJ Ryan Wolf, I was automatically seeing my logo as a wolf but like the Bape logo. I said. “let’s do it.” I already knew that was the one because I knew what I wanted the logo to look like and how I wanted to brand it.
What advice would you give to aspiring DJs?
You have to get the shots up. Deejaying was the instrument of my choice. It’s some things that I caught on to more quickly than others. I think either music was in my family or something, but I paid attention to a lot of other DJs that I started with. And when I listen to them now, I see they’re still struggling with things that I caught on to fast. I can watch somebody scratch and catch the scratch a lot faster than a lot of people, so music has something to do with either my DNA or my gifts. So, I would say outside of you finding your gift and what you are good at, I’m just blessed that that’s what it was for me. If you were blindfolded and you never shot a basketball in your life, if you keep throwing the ball at the hoop, I guarantee it’s going to in once. For me putting out the mixtapes, I’m just putting out content. I didn’t know what would happen, but I’m just showing people my growth of just trying to be who I am, and that’s just like you getting more shots.
Take a listen below to DJ Ryan Wolf’s recent mixes:
