Where is dj private ryan from

In 2006, a young student named Ryan Alexander uploaded a mix of soca tunes to Facebook from his dorm room in Miami, Florida. Today, the 33-year-old is known as Private Ryan to the global soca community and 80,000-plus followers who faithfully stalk his SoundCloud page.

“I started the mixes as a sort of forum for Caribbean people who felt disconnected from back home,” he told me in one of numerous phone calls and WhatsApp voice notes that made up our interview. Private Ryan, it turns out, is surprisingly talkative.

Where is dj private ryan from

IRL at his perennially sold-out events, which have taken place in Trinidad, Miami, Barbados, and New York, he rarely touches the microphone. Instead he brings on a rotating cast of MCs, like Major Lazer’s Walshy Fire and legendary N.Y.C.

soca DJ Back2Basics, to anchor his headlining sets. But on the phone, it’s immediately clear that Ryan has been wholly intentional in how he’s honed his DJ craft and turned a dorm-room mix into the world’s biggest soca festival.

In the