DJ Shannyn Hill hypes up fans during a preview event at Coca-Cola Coliseum in April ahead of the Toronto Tempo's inaugural season.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
From her vantage point in a brightly lit booth atop a sold-out Toronto Tempo game, life looks sweet for DJ Shannyn Hill.
Mixing the music as official DJ for Canada’s long-awaited first WNBA franchise is a dream job for the 29-year-old. It was hard-earned. She’s living proof of what can happen when you shoot your shot.
There were challenges along the journey. The queer DJ grew up in a traditional Jamaican family where homophobic culture was fairly commonplace, yet later built herself into a key figure in Toronto’s LGBTQ nightlife scene. She lived off factory jobs, surfed on friends’ couches, got mentorship from prominent Toronto DJs and a life-changing spot in a music program for youth facing barriers. Years of ensuing gigs readied Hill for the WNBA.
“This is meant to be. This is exactly what I want to do,” said Hill. “I never dreamed a position like this would be possible, and I never saw anyone who looked like me doing a job anything like this.”
Hill grew up in Mississauga, her passion for music sparked by her dad playing reggae, soul and disco songs around the house.
She began quietly dabbling with DJing on her laptop in high school, as a creative outlet when she was struggling through a dark time mentally. The teenager experimented – Googling the beats per minute of tracks to see which might mix well, opening a few YouTube tabs with different songs, toying with volumes and mixing away.
She’d make mixes for friends to play at their house parties, for her dad or her uncle as soundtracks for family barbecues.
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Hill also played the alto saxophone in school and played around with composing, fantasizing about someday scoring songs for movies.
“I wanted a career in music but had no roadmap,” said Hill.
Instead, Hill went to the University of Windsor to study child psychology at first, then transferred to business. She left school and read every business book she could find. Hill tinkered with e-commerce and dropshipping, built Shopify stores and learned to run Facebook ads. She made ends meet working at Tim Hortons, at a gym or in warehouses.
When the pandemic hit, she revisited the idea of DJing. Binging Netflix during lockdowns, she got hooked on The Get Down, a fictionalized version of the story about Grandmaster Flash and his innovative use of turntables. It inspired Hill to buy her first controller and take DJing seriously. She was a quick study.
In 2021, Hill quit her warehouse job to pursue DJing as a career.
“I was like, ‘My feet hurt, I’m standing for too long, this is boring,’ so I made the decision to go all in on myself,” said Hill.
She got accepted to the Remix Project, an artist development program in Toronto for talented youth facing barriers pursuing careers in arts and entertainment. There was tension with her parents, so she left home despite being jobless, staying with friends and family while toting around a suitcase with only her clothes and DJ equipment.
For nine months at that vocational school in 2022, she learned DJ skills with real turntables and the business of music. She loved surrounding herself with other artists her age, in similar life situations.
“My parents thought I was crazy, but I was like, ‘No, I have a plan,’” said Hill. “Forcing myself to be in that discomfort is what propelled me to the next level of my career.”
Hill is the DJ for the expansion Toronto Tempo, who secured the first win in franchise history by beating the Seattle Storm on Wednesday.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
Sometimes, she would stay at the Remix Project all day, then spend the overnight hours in a 24-hour Tim Hortons reading until the sun came up.
After finishing at the program, she was more established in Toronto’s music industry, DJing nightlife events, knocking at bars to introduce herself and collaborating with venues on her own parties. By 2023, she was finally able to afford rent.
DJ Andre 905, who spins music at the Raptors’ G-League games, asked if she would DJ at their women’s day game. She shadowed him for a while first, trying on his headset, overwhelmed by all the stage managers and broadcast staff talking in the headset, giving commands so the in-game show would run as planned. She was used to hearing only music in her headphones while working. Live sports DJing was totally different.
“I thought, ‘Whoa, this is going to be a massive learning curve,’” said Hill.
She also reached out to 4Korners, the Raptors’ long-time DJ, for his mentorship. He was among the first, especially in Canada, to land a job as a live sports DJ back in 2005. In Hill, he saw passion and determination. He invited her to shadow him at Scotiabank Arena games, where they put on a polished production with precise timing cues and he makes split-second decisions about songs. He’s tasked with getting the home arena rocking, so the Raptors feel energized and opposing players feel intimidated.
When Hill heard the WNBA would stage its first game in Canada in 2023, she chased down the opportunity to DJ that game at Scotiabank Arena. When the WNBA held another – in Edmonton in 2024 – she got that one too. By the time the league brought a game to Vancouver in 2025, they automatically called Hill.
By then, Toronto’s WNBA team had been announced, and its just-forming staff was in Vancouver for the game, so they heard Hill’s work. She travelled to the 2025 WNBA all-star game in Indianapolis too, so she could network more in the league and bolster her chances at landing the Tempo DJ job when it was posted. She got a stellar reference letter from 4Korners, and the influential DJ made clear he thought that Tempo job should go to a woman.
“Shannyn put herself in position to be the obvious choice,” said 4Korners. “I think that she’s going to be doing what she’s doing and much more for a very long time … I say that because she deeply cares.”
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Hill makes her living on DJing now. She fills in at Raptors games when 4Korners is away, and does some hockey games for the Toronto Marlies and Sceptres.
Hill made sure to hold spots for every Tempo home game in her calendar, so she’d be ready if she landed the job. She jumped at the opportunity when the new franchise called earlier this year.
The Tempo have had two home games so far. Her booth is at the back of the stands with fans seated an arm’s length away. They stop by to request songs and snap selfies with her.
She doesn’t have to chase so hard for gigs these days. People often reach out to book her now. She’s appearing in a big Toronto music festival this weekend, Electric Island. She’s also very comfortable with who she is.
“I’m also realizing there’s a lot of queer Jamaicans, and we’ve kind of found a community there too,” said Hill. “I’m navigating that and understanding that it’s okay, that there’s nothing wrong with me.”
She is now doing some workshops for high-school students, about DJing and about mental wellness and started an online community called The Full Time DJ for part-timers looking to make it their career.
“I want to be that,” she said. “For kids who didn’t see someone who looked like them before.”