We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mohamed Abdo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Mohamed, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s jump back to the first dollar you earned as a creative? What can you share with us about how it happened?
I dropped my first ever mixtape in the eleventh grade on April 1st, 2018. I’ve always had a very profit oriented mindset when I came to my creations, so my immediate first thought was “I made a product. How can I sell it?” I started looking around my house for inspiration, and found a book of blank CDs. I burned my mixtape on all ten of them, and sold them in school for $5 a piece. I would stand on top of tables at lunch and yell “does anyone want to buy my mixtape?” and sold out in two days. After this support, I wanted to take it a step further. At the time, I was taking a class called Graphic Media and our final project of the school year was to design and screen print our own T-Shirts. We could make the design anything we wanted. Most of the students were illustrators, and made designs of their favorite things like their favorite animals or activities. However, I saw this project as an opportunity to make my own merchandise. I designed my ESMOD logo, and started printing. Most of the students in the class only wanted to make one or two shirts because they didn’t have many people to give their shirts to, which left me with tons of unused T’s to take advantage of. I asked my teacher for permission to take it all the way, and she gave me the green light. I spent the whole hour and a half of class time and even stayed after school until late to print as many EsMod T-Shirts as I could for a week with the help of a fellow artist, Riley Martin. I ended up with more shirts than I could count and sold them for $20 a piece. I was nervous about the high price, but to my surprise, people were happy to pay it to support the music.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
For those who don’t know me, my name is Mohamed Abdo, and my stage name is EsMod. I’m a rapper-violinist, graphic designer, and audio engineer. It was my always my childhood dream to be an illustrator, then as I went through grade school, I fell in love with technology. I found my happy medium between my love for visual arts and computers was graphic design. Today, I do most of my graphic work for music artists by making them album covers or event flyers, as well as my own. As a vocalist, I started off as a spoken word artist. I loved writing poetry and performing it, but never considered putting music behind it. In high school, I went to a scholastic tournament called MIST, and signed up to compete in graphic design. They told me there was a two competition minimum, so I entered the rap competition and fell in love with it. I started making releasing music in 2017, and I just released my debut album “Table For One” this past January. I make music about processing your emotions in different life struggles such as burnout from work, grieving the death of loved ones, and navigating the ever-so-complex maze of human connections. My relationships with people, both good and bad, have always been the main reccuring theme in my music. It’s a complex part of life that changes the way we think and breathe the deeper we go with certain people. I started incorporating my violin into my music and live shows in 2022, and has drastically changed the way I write music. I’m in school currently to be an audio engineer. I graduate from the University of Memphis on May 4th, and I’m excited to see where a degree with audio engineering will take me. I currently work at Uproar Recording in Bartlett where I record music for all different kinds of artists, as well as do live sound for venues like the FedEx Forum, Loflin Yard, and more.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I’d say the most reward part of being an artist is when people tell me how moved they were by a song I made. For example, my album “Table For One” is not the happiest piece of work, nor is it an easy listen. Since its release, many people have been reaching out to tell me about how the songs made them cry, or gave them hope about a situation they currently feel helpless in. I’ve often had my music described to me as “healing music,” and the fact that something I wrote about myself is able to help people in that way makes me want to do this so much more. This is how I measure success. Not by number of sales or streams or revenue, but by impact. If I release something and it touches one person’s heart, then it was a success for me. I don’t care if only that one person listened to it, and no one else ever found it for the rest of time. Did it move you? Yes? Then I did my job right.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Like many of the artists I know, I’m a hardcore perfectionist. I never like to release something unless it is perfect. I obsess over the smallest details, and will redo something over and over and over again until I’m happy with it. While this can be a good trait to have, one thing I had to learn was that not everything I make will be perfect, and the less work I release, the less opportunities I will get. There will always be something in everything I make that I will want to change at some point. I still listen to a lot of my old music and think “man. I wish I would have done that differently.” However, instead of trying to “fix” my old work, I shifted gears into thinking: whatever I wanted to do differently on this, I’ll apply that to whatever I make next. The songs I believed were “unfinished” or “not good enough to release” that I released anyway ended up being many people’s favorite song by me. You never know who’s going to adore the things you make, flawed or not. I urge artists to let go of the work you’re hoarding. Let people love what you make, and once you release that song, never think of it again if you don’t want to, and focus on making someone’s next favorite song. But don’t release nothing. Build a discography, have something to show for the hours you put into your craft, let people experience. and whatever you want to do better on the songs you want to perfect, do it on your next song. But don’t be a digital ghost. Release work, and then release better work. Have something to show behind your name. If you never release anything, no one will know you exist. Even if it’s just a one minute song, at least have an artist page. Upload something small onto Spotify so when you name comes up in a conversation, people can pull you up. Plant the seed. Be searchable. Be discoverable. Then give people something amazing to discover.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://esmodenterprises.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/sapphire.derma/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDO2qbfvjP04ZWf3-LO3qsg
- Other: https://instagram.com/esmodenterprises/
Image Credits
Deon Crum and Mohamed Abdo.