Muhammad Austin, music industry freshman and Rod Johnson, general studies freshman, formed the band Rodo and Mo in 2009

Get to Know: Muhammad Austin of Rodo and Mo

Music industry freshman funded first year of college through musical entrepreneurship

By: Theresa Bullington

Posted: 2/5/10

How many students can say they make enough money to refuse their parents’ tuition checks? Only some students are the biggest financial contributors towards their college education. Muhammad Austin, music industry freshman, is one of them.
Austin has been producing music in St. Louis since he was 13 years old. Austin’s initial interest began as a curiosity about what his father, a music producer, was up to.
“My dad would be downstairs working on music and I always wondered what he was working on, so eventually he started to teach me what he was doing, and then I just started doing it on my own,” he says. “Eventually, it became more than a hobby.”
Austin’s hobby led him to create Musical Mastermind Entertainment (MME), which allowed him to combine his passions for producing, rapping and performing. According to Austin, when Loyola accepted him, he was ecstatic, but also worried that his family would be unable to afford the tuition for both the Summer Bridge Program and the regular semesters.
The young entrepreneur then took it upon himself to come up with the money to ensure his entrance.
“I gathered up a lot of the songs that I had produced and put them on a compilation,” he says. “I was on the street selling CDs and my Pops was on the street selling CDs. I was really determined.”
Austin only had a week to make the $1,800 needed to attend the summer program. And, although he came up a few hundred dollars short, he and his family drove down to New Orleans and spoke with the admissions department, and he was enrolled in the summer program and in the regular fall and spring semesters at Loyola.
“I really love the opportunities that Loyola has. The programs that Loyola offers sit you next to people who own distribution companies,” he says. “They have business mentors for you. I haven’t been down here for that long and I’ve already started to make a name for myself.”
Almost upon arrival, Austin formed a band, Rodo and Mo, with fellow student Rod Johnson, general studies freshman, and began performing, with a little help from a friend.
“John McCann, a clothing designer for E.R.O.S, helped us get our shows started. We had a show at Tulane’s ‘Go Green’ rally. We also did the show ‘My Life is a Party’ with G-Eazy at Café Prytania,” Austin says.
Austin views these performances as both the best way to get his music out to the general public and as his favorite part about the music business. “I just love performing,” he says. “It’s just this feeling that you get, and you don’t get this feeling from anything else. I do like recording, I do like producing other people and watching them grow and develop. But performing is still the best.”
Although Austin cites a litany of musicians whose music he admires, he is at a loss for describing who his band Rodo and Mo sound most like.
“But it’s funny cause I don’t really sound like anyone I listen to. I’ve asked a lot of people who I sound like and they just can’t figure it out.”
Austin is working on a new college tuition CD entitled Failure.
“A lot of people have failed at things they have tried to do.” he says. “This is about failure and how it happens to everyone, but that you can overcome it, if you try hard enough, if you want it bad enough.”