Today we’d like to introduce you to Teddy Mo
Hi Teddy, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I have always been an entertainer since my childhood. I still remember my very first solo at 4 years old in my school’s Christmas play and just thinking, “I must do this again”, and I did whenever I got the opportunity. From there on I participated in a multitude of productions ranging from musical theater, band performances, and solo vocal performances, while truly falling in love with the art of performance. However, this was not my only passion. As a child I had the love for creation and using my creativity in unconventional ways creating my own lane, unable to fit into any 1 box. While I was perfecting my craft on stage, I also found a love for creativity in the world of science, and the digital arts. Unsure on how to coexist between my two worlds like Hannah Montana, my mother convinced me to create my own consulting firm at the age of 13 where I could be creative in many different aspects and grow my business as I grew in skill. My company is called H.E.R.O Consulting Group, LLC. and it started with a focus on tutoring and digital marketing for local small businesses. Previous to officially starting my business, I had already been heavily involved with tutoring my family and peers around me in almost every subject matter and my services grew in validity by receiving awards for my accomplishments in STEM and foreign language being ranked nationally in both fields. In digital marketing, I taught myself web design and programs like adobe creative cloud to produce marketing material for my clientele. As time progressed I worked behind the scenes to debut my own talents in music creation and expanding my business into the music industry. During this time I was in High School, a 4.0 student who also was a 4 time varsity athlete in football, swim, track & field and cheer as a tumbling mascot, and when I wasn’t being a scholar athlete or consultant I was in my room teaching myself music production for hours at a time and the art behind songwriting. During this time I studied my favorites like Beyoncé, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, Michael Jackson, Pharrell, Kendrick Lamar, and so many artists from so many genres because I knew that as a musical artist I wanted to be known for not only a good beat, but also have a message/story within the music. I knew my lane was not to create club music, but music you can listen to again and again in any time period and it still be relevant to the listener. This is where Hon3s*T was born (pronounced honesty) and I chose that name because everything I released was from me and was authentic. Every beat, I produced. Every lyric, I wrote. Every track, I mastered. Even down to the cover art and music videos, I create all of those with my own two hands. With the introduction of Hon3s*T and continuing my consultant agency, I majored in Biology at The Texas A&M University in College Station, TX and minored in both performance studies and Spanish. As I studied and made scientific contributions to the field of spinal cord injury with my research thesis, I also became a local performer and shared my life through music with my community. During my undergraduate time is also when I decided to change my name to Teddy Mo. This decision mostly came from wanting a name that was not only more marketable, but also more related to me and being even more authentic. Teddy Mo comes from my legal name “Joshua Theodore Moses” and I wanted my stage name to be a derivative of who I truly am. I graduated from Texas A&M with honors in May of 2023 and am now currently in a doctoral program in Physiology at The University of Kentucky. After completion of my degree, I would like to go into science communications in mass media to create interactive and educational media to deliver to the public to bring them into the world of science and making it easy for everyone to understand. I have a goal of not only being an international superstar with my music, but also a world renowned science communicator with my own talk show that is a little unconventional with its delivery of information. I have already started to make the dream a reality by creating my own podcast “PhD Himbo In Training”. I like to tell my peers I am like the male Elle Woods, as I am not your stereotypical scientist or even your stereotypical artist, I am my own persona and I want to encourage the world to bend the rules of society like I have to create my own lane. Currently I am in the works of creating scientific music videos to educate the general public and have already been awarded by BrainFacts.org and the Society for Neuroscience for my music video educating my viewers on the Blood Brain Barrier and its importance to the central nervous system.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has not been a smooth road at all! One of my biggest hurdles was losing my uncle Quentin Moses in 2017. To me he was more than an NFL player, coach, or uncle. He was my best friend and my biggest inspiration. I wanted to be just like him in a sense of his character. In our family, he was known for taking care of any and everybody and to me he was the physical embodiment of “love thy neighbor”. He also supported everything I did and never questioned it, and I remember before he died I told him I wanted to be a musical artist and I just remember him telling me that I could do it and that he believed in me, just as he did when I told himI wanted to do anything and I knew he meant it every single time. Therefore, when I lost him it felt like I lost everything and the person I looked up to the most was gone and I felt I was alone in a dark room. It wasn’t only difficult for me, but my entire family felt it and I truly did not know how to cope with such a drastic change. I struggled with mental health tremendously and some nights were so dark I thought the light would never come. This lead to me wanting to give up on everything and go live a “normal” life, and by this i mean I really considered just stopping arts in total and just getting my degree in biology and then come home and become a teacher and do nothing else. I tried it, but that only added to the pain and my friends and family were like, “where’s the music?” “when’s your next play” and many more questions and I couldn’t even fix my mouth to say that I had given up on my dream, so that is when I really dug deep and created some of the most beautiful art I had created yet. This time of despair turned into a rebirth and that is when I made the change to Teddy Mo and vowed to never ever even think about quitting. I like to think it was a tag team between God and my uncle to why I couldn’t even fathom actually quitting. Even now, I get nauseous at the thought of giving up on myself and I have a hunger that can only be fed by continuing to fight forward.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am an entertainer. I don’t like to say rapper, singer, actor, writer, etc because I am all of those in one. I write, produce and perform all of my own music. I act in local productions and I am constantly studying the industry to make myself even better. I believe I am mostly known for my blending of genres when it comes to my music and also the use of literary devices in my work. I have music where I blend house and hip hop while performing in English, Spanish and French because that is my style. I am one big melting pot of my experiences and I use them as mediums for visual art to create a masterpiece. I would say I am most proud of not letting the trends of today discourage me from making the art that matters to me. My goal is to bring storytelling back into the music and it not just be about s*x, money and drugs, but real life things like depression and how as a Black man in America I do not have the privilege to wear my colors on my sleeve and must hide under a mask.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I think risk taking is very important in anything you do. In my eyes if you don’t take risks, how will you know if something will work or not? I take risks everyday by experimenting with my writing and music production to try and create new sounds or upcycling vintage styles of music and modernizing it to fit my story, and with that I know that it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I have faith that the right people will find me. I believe that is what encourages me to continue to tale risks.
Pricing:
- Free Initial Consultations For Digital Marketing & Music Production
Contact Info:
- Website: https://poplme.co/hash/0mxP2iZF/1/nd
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teddymomedia/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@teddymomedia
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@teddymomedia
