APPLE VALLEY, Minn. — In just two days, the Minnesota Vikings will play their first preseason game. Off the field, one player has been tapping into his creative side with Treyson Green, a young music artist.
Green attended Eastview High School. Growing up and having come from a football family, he was naturally athletic. Playing the actual sport, he says, was no sweat.
"Shoutout my pops for that one," Green said.
But before his senior year, his playing career was cut short.
"Just not really focusing on what mattered in school, from grades to not showing up," the 22-year-old Eagan resident explained.
You might call it a blessing in disguise. A chance to fully focus on another talent.
"Not being able to play football … and doing everything that I was supposed to, made me who I am now with music," Green said.
Today, Green is signed to Water Wave TV. He has headlined his own show at the Skyway Theatre and dropped two albums with features including Pardyalone and Bobby Raps.
But his newest song, "Gone," is perhaps his biggest collaboration yet, as it features Vikings starting running back Alexander Mattison.
With Thursday's game against the Seattle Seahawks, Mattison is busy with training camp.
"I don't even know what day it is," the pro athlete told KARE 11 Tuesday at the Omni Viking Lake Hotel. "That's the camp grind."
He's been with the Vikings since 2019. Still, with a cousin in the music industry, Mattison has found time to hop on a few tracks. In the early pandemic, he got even more into it.
"I was like, 'OK, this is kind of fun and it's not something I'm terrible at,'" he said. "I kind of find it as a way of therapy, too."
Eventually, Mattison and Green connected on social media.
"He saw that I make music too and he asked me to hop on a song and it was like, 'Oh man,'" Mattison said. "That was when the pressure was on, when it's like an artist that you have some respect for and know that they do a great job. You know, he has a good following in the city, in the Twin Cities. His name, it has some weight in music. So when he asked me for a feature I was like, 'Oh I can't blow this.'"
In addition to recording a verse, Mattison appears in the corresponding music video, which they shot on the same high school football field where Green used to play.
"Being able to come back here to where I grew up, where I'm from, was just a full-circle moment for me to shoot it here with him," Green said.
The moral? Don't give up on yourself.
"If you come across slumps and bumps, you know, at a young age, just, I feel like just stay focused," Green said. "Put in the work and I feel like everything else will put out in its favor."
"He's taken what he's learned through football and applying that to music," Mattison added. "It was just awesome to hear his story and really inspirational."
"Gone" drops Sunday, Aug. 20 on all major streaming platforms.
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