Mateo “HiTel” Ellens didn’t believe it when he and his cohort of youth music producers got tapped by the Minnesota Timberwolves to produce a song. The request: create music to launch the team’s 2021-22 City Edition jerseys, designed to rep the T-Wolves’ “past, present, and future.”

“I was shocked — I couldn’t believe it at first,” he says, noting that the song, “Remix the Game,” will play at Target Center every time the Wolves wear the jerseys.

Ellens is a 15-year-old lifelong music lover who lives in south Minneapolis. He’s a big fan of Prince, and other artists who “motivate.” He enrolled in the Creative Arts Studio @ Powderhorn program through the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board last winter after his mom spotted it. Hosted at Powderhorn Recreation Center in south Minneapolis, the program is part of the center’s Creation Space initiative. (Three more Creation Spaces are reportedly in the works at different locations.)

Ellens says he was instantly hooked.

“Throughout quarantine I had a lot to think about. I just listened to music. It helped me a lot,” he remembers. And now, he says that the program, which aims to teach kids not just ways to make their own beats and vocals, but also the business side of the industry, gives him an a chance to make music that might in turn help other people, too.

“You only get to live once, and I want to do something meaningful.”

“What’s so special about City Edition is it gives us the opportunity to create a platform beyond the uniform that celebrates great people in our city doing incredible things,” says Timberwolves and Lynx Chief Marketing Officer Mike Grahl. “Tim Wilson and the amazing people at Creative Arts Studio @ Powderhorn are exactly that and we were excited to partner with their gifted students to help engineer and produce our 'Remix the Game' track as part of this year's unveil video."

Wilson, longtime proprietor of St. Paul’s Urban Lights Music, along with business partner Roberta Ryan, run a “low-key” music management company called Urban World, where they have helped a multitude of artists, producers, and DJs get signed to both indie and major labels including Auburn Williams to both Epic and Warner Bros., and DJ Youngstar as Justin Bieber’s first DJ—among many other deals and projects.

“We quietly do the work — it’s not even about us — it’s about the artist we represent,” says Wilson. “We stay in the background because the shine is all theirs. We’re in the trenches keeping it moving for everybody.”

After 30 years owning and operating Minnesota’s only Black-owned record store (and one of only 32 in the country) Wilson knows a thing or two about being quietly in the trenches. The Frogtown neighborhood institution has outlasted Tidal Wave, Best Buy, and now Target’s re-boot of selling not CDs, but vinyl. Wilson is also a sales exec by day, running the store as a labor of love.

That love has now translated to a deep need to share decades of knowledge and connections with youth. So Urban World partnered with the Park Board, which already had the equipment and the space for music production, and the whole package now offers kids grades 5 through 12 music production, sound engineering, videography, as well as the business side of the industry.

Projects and opportunities continue to flow in, including an hour-long song the cohort produced for local artist Sean Garrison, who wanted music to accompany “Heaven or Hell” at the Cowles Center, a live painting performance in honor of George Floyd and the worldwide uprising in protest of his murder at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Program instructor Dom Milli led the kids in the production of the song, which as an accompaniment to a visual art piece needed to evoke emotion — sadness, confusion, anger, hope, and resolution.

“The song had chapters,” says Milli, recalling the project’s challenges.

“I had never created a movie score. What does happiness or confusion or sadness sound like?”

Ellens says the pride he feels when he gets to hear the creations in real time are unreal. 

“It’s like, ‘Wow, I made that!’ I didn’t think I’d be any good at this and I got really good. It gave me inspiration.”


Wilson says that the program is “a real-life School of Rock,” and emphasizes the business side of the instruction that they are teaching. “Some of the kids just want to be engineers, and that’s great. I’ll bet the sound engineer at the Timberwolves games makes a very good living.”

The group is now working on a jingle for General Electric.

“We don’t just teach them how to make a beat, but how to make money with it,” says Wilson, and they’ll soon be working on a class album project where each student will produce their own song.

“Music is such good therapy,” Milli reminds us. “It’s a good way to refresh yourself.”

Register for the 2022 courses and find more information at the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board website. The program is currently free, with limited space.