The first thing Kordell Rashad noticed was that nobody was talking about attention honestly.
Not its mechanics, not its social reach, not the degree to which it shapes behavior in ways most people would rather not examine. For Rashad, the Mesquite, Texas creator and business owner behind Art World Productions, that gap became the premise of his debut book, Attention Everybody: The Experiment Edition, a work that frames the pursuit of being noticed not as a character flaw but as a legitimate cultural force worth understanding.
“Today we are in an ‘attention no matter what’ state of consciousness,” Rashad said in a March 2026 profile published by VoyagePhoenix. “Sometimes I feel like not even the money matters more than attention.” The book, subtitled How far will you go to be noticed, examines the social dynamics and tactics behind how people seek recognition and what that reveals about modern identity. Rashad describes it as “an experiment book” in his own terms: a structured look at the tools people use to gain attention, and the varying degrees to which that attention is sought, performed, or simply needed to feel a sense of fulfillment.
Rashad came to writing through art. Art World Productions, the creative business he founded, grew from early encouragement from his grandfather to draw. He has been at it since childhood, developing a portrait style he describes as cartoonish and detailed, building commissioned work and merchandise around it. In a 2023 profile published by CanvasRebel, he described what drives the practice: “My clients feel happy when I draw them feeling like someone admires them thus brings comfort and ease.” The portrait work forms one layer of what he describes as a broader creative life, one that also encompasses writing, music, and voiceover.
Building Toward the Next Chapter
Even as the first book continues reaching readers, Rashad is already well into a second, and by his own account the two projects share little common ground in terms of tone. Where Attention Everybody operates as cultural analysis, the new project turns inward. He describes it as drawing readers into his personal world, real relationships and real experiences, possibly rendered through a sci-fi lens to give the material a more cinematic quality. “Don’t be surprised if it sets a tone of a biopic theme of my life,” he told VoyagePhoenix.
That pivot tracks with how Rashad describes his own path. He speaks of having felt like an outsider through much of his life, of working through the hours when others were not paying attention, generating material without waiting for external validation to arrive first. “Being considered different in most parts of my life from others has driven me to have more of a black sheep type of journey,” he said in the same conversation. “When people are sleeping or not paying attention or care either or I’m writing, composing and pulling in lots of ideas.” If the first book examined that reality through a wide-angle cultural lens, the second sounds set to put it on the page more directly.
Earlier this year, Rashad described preparing for his first live tour, a run combining book appearances with music performances. “I will be in front of crowds, hopefully raising the vibrations of the environment and enjoying my first tour ever,” he told VoyagePhoenix. He framed the opportunity as rare and intended to make full use of it.
Art World Productions remains the name under which he brings all of it together. Where many creatives build a lane and stay in it, Rashad appears more interested in building something with enough range to hold a drawing, a book, and a live set in the same frame.
“I hope to join the pioneers of before and now as a true author and artist of my generation,” he said. “To be a beacon of light for those who have a dream.”