Tee Lopes

Lopes was born in Coimbra, Portugal,[1] on November 19, 1987,[2][3] and moved to the U.S. in 2002. He became exposed to the stage and entertainment world from a young age, and frequently watched the Sonic the Hedgehog Saturday morning cartoon series. Lopes taught himself the basics of music, creating his first song at the age of 8 using a small keyboard.[4] He formed his first band at the age of 9, and has been involved in several musical acts since.[5] At the age of 12, he started composing music with the PlayStation game, Music 2000.[4] During this period he took a lot of musical inspiration from soundtracks of games he was playing at the time.

In 2007, after having produced many instrumentals for rappers, Lopes got the opportunity to compose music for the video game Fling by Candy Cane.[5][6] This was the first time he ever composed video game music; it served as a positive experience for him, leading him to become a full-time video game music composer.[5] Lopes posted his first remix of a theme from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise on his YouTube channel in 2006, which gained him popularity among fans of the series. After that, he started a short "Re-imagined" series in which he remixed other Sonic music. The popularity he gained by making those remixes led to him being invited to work on the soundtrack for the Sonic fangame Sonic 2 HD.

After some years of switching between handling music for small indie projects, composing for other artists, and releasing video game remixes on YouTube, Lopes was invited to join the video game studio PagodaWest Games to work on their 2013 iPhone and iPad game Major Magnet. His work as a composer and sound effects designer for that game helped him establish himself as a video game composer and marked his definitive shift to the video game music industry.[5] In 2015, PagodaWest Games was contracted to work on Sega's Sonic Mania in 2017. As a member of PagodaWest Games, and due to the popularity of his remixes on YouTube, Lopes was asked to compose brand-new tracks for the game and remix old Sonic songs.[7] His work on Sonic Mania was well received, with critics praising it for mixing his own musical style with elements of music from early 90s Sonic games,[8] and was also the first time his original compositions received a large amount of exposure.

Following the release of Sonic Mania, he continues to work on many Sonic-related projects, such as the 2018 animated series Sonic Mania Adventures and the 2019 kart racing game Team Sonic Racing, in which he collaborated with Jun Senoue. He also composed all tracks for Streets of Rage 4's DLC, Mr. X Nightmare. Although other composers involved such as Olivier Deriviere had already modernized the sound of the franchise's music, he continued this route while adding additional influence from other genres not previously explored in the franchise.[4] He also composed the music to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge.

Lopes released his first solo album titled "Youniverse" in December 2018. That same year, he composed and wrote the English opening theme for Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom.[9][5] Outside of video games, Lopes has sung cover music at bars and restaurants and composed jingles for advertisements.[10]

• Artist profile at OverClocked ReMix
• Tee Lopes discography at VGMdb
• Tee Lopes discography at MusicBrainz