HELP THE MIGHTY RHINO MAKE MUSIC!
O BELOVED FRIENDS AND DEAR ONES AND ASSORTED GOODLY PERSONFOLK WHO MAY HAPPEN ACROSS THIS PAGE! It is I, The Mighty Rhino, a joyously exuberant rap artist from Toronto, Canada who makes genuinely great music but is also disabled and bipolar and unable to find or keep jobs (aside from semi-frequent volunteer work) or even stay awake during normal hours and is thereby forced to subsist on government disability support (roughly twelve hundred Canadian dollars per month, of which six hundred immediately goes to rent and one hundred fifty for the metropass that alone guarantees my being able to travel around the city at all), that is, very very very very very very comically ludicrously broke; thus unable to release his (that is, my) material without outside help from guess who that's right it's YOU! That is, it's whichever of you finds it in your good and kind and gentle and radiant hearts to give me the cold hard paper-shrapnel it'll take to get it out into the wide and beautiful world! Many dozens of you were noble and gracious enough to elect to help me bring my wondrous, atom-smashing second album, "We Will No Longer Retreat Into Darkness", to fruition in precisely this manner in 2016 and 2017; now, wide-eyed, ashen-faced, I humbly return to this same well in order to try to make the same happen for the four albums I'm working on now. These are:
-My fourth solo album, tentatively titled “To Relieve The Sorrow-Laden Heart”;
-An album by the duo of myself and the great and gifted Skizza of Saskatoon, tentatively titled “Northernflavalisticmetropassmuzik”;
-An album by a quartet tentatively called The Magnificent Family, consisting of myself, Skizza, the staggeringly gifted Toronto-area rap titan Ultra Magnus, and our FIrst Nations friend Scopis, tentatively entitled "True Greatness" (there are some secrets in store for this one that I dare not reveal at present);
-And the debut album by Champions of Everything, a group consisting of myself, the aforementioned Ultra Magnus, and our dear cherished homie Donny Yonder, entitled "Fucking Awesome Rap Music"!
I managed to fund my third solo album, "A Joy Which Nothing Can Erase", almost entirely indepdently (it saw release on Hand Solo Records on October 18, 2019), but I still have some costs associated with that recording to pay back. The chief beneficiary will be my friend Bradley "Notion" Thorn, who recorded, mixed, and mastered the project and who has been permitting me to pay him back in installments of $200 CAD per month, but my debt to whom I should like to be able to resolve as soon as I can! I also hope to be able to send some money to gifted singer friends of mine to sing on choruses, especially Jenna Nation and Ciele, as well as to the great Andrew "Fresh Kils" Kilgour, for top-secret rappity-rap reasons that shall be revealed in the fullness of time! OH SHIT!
I have a trust that was set aside for me by my late mother, Avivah, God rest her soul, and it's from that source that most of the funding for two of my three previous solo projects, 2011's “He Whom The Beat Sets Free Is Free Indeed” and 2018's “We Will No Longer Retreat Into Darkness” (two truly delightsome, superb recordings, available for you to hear at www.themightyrhino.bandcamp.com!) has come; but an arrangement has been made by my legal guardians whereby I am no longer permitted to draw upon it to make music ever again, lest I jeopardize its ability to subsidize a manageable existence for me when I reach middle age. I would work to earn my keep if I could, but am struggling to stay afloat as it is, with my seven different disabilities and medical conditions (bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Asperger's syndrome, cerebral palsy, asthma, a sleep disorder called day-night reversal, and, most notably, a non-verbal learning disability affecting executive functioning, plus challenges associated with the recovery from a collapsed lung back in August of 2016!) So, shamefaced and sheepish but bereft of other options, I'm turning to you, my glorious, beauteous group of friends, my support system, the supreme joy of my life, to help me sustain the other great joy of my life: the capacity to make great pop and R&B and hip-hop music.
Between the four remaining projects (“To Relieve The Sorrow-Laden Heart”, “Northernflavalisticmetropassmuzik”, "True Greatness", and "Fucking Awesome Rap Music"), I have about 60 songs in various stages of development, of which I hope to release anywhere between 10 and 16 on each album. The third solo album is now complete, as of October 2019, and my hope is to get the fourth solo album and all three of the group albums out sometime in the years 2020, 2021, or 2022! I reckon I've only got about a thousand fans in the whole wide world, but if each of you contributed $10 CAD, I'd get halfway to my goal, which would mean the world to me and cause me to rejoice and be glad! The number I’ve chosen is somewhat arbitrary – in all frankness, I plucked it out of a hat. The truth is that I’d like to be able to make music on an ongoing basis until my health dictates that I simply can't anymore!
But in order to make any or all of this happen, I'll need at least some help! The first thousand or so dollars I raise will go immediately towards the remaining costs associated with "A Joy Which Nothing Can Erase"; primarily this means paying Notion what he is owed for recording, mixing, and mastering services, but I also have to worry about music videos, marketing/promotion/publicity, CD duplication, release party expenses, and much else. It is also my fond hope to have the ability to pay at least one bona fide rap legend to make a guest appearance on a song in the near future; I've spent my own money to hire Fatlip of The Pharcyde, Prince Po of Organized Konfusion, A.G. of Diggin' In The Crates, Myka 9 of Freestyle Fellowship, Rittz of Slumerican/Strange Music, Young Bleed of the No Limit tank, Big Mike of The Geto Boys/Rap-A-Lot, Pacewon of The Outsidaz, and Big Rube and Witchdoctor of The Dungeon Family to appear on previous projects, and Scopis has paid for appearances on "True Greatness" by Young Buck of G-Unit, Rick Ross of Maybach Music Group, and the Texas rap legend Devin The Dude. I'd be delighted to add to that glorious legacy! It would also mean a great deal to me to be able to reprint "He Whom The Beat Sets Free Is Free Indeed", so I can finally send copies to the 20 or so people who have literally been waiting years for them.
I plan on immediately transferring all funds received from this project either to the people to whom they are directly owed (which mostly means Notion), or to Thomas Quinlan, proprietor of Hand Solo Records, the stalwart boutique indie rap label that released "We Will No Longer Retreat Into Darkness" and "A Joy Which Nothing Can Erase" . It looks likely, at this point, that "To Relieve The Sorrow-Laden Heart", "True Greatness", "Northernflavalisticmetropassmuzik", and "Fucking Awesome Rap Music" will all be released independently, but that remains to be seen!
The campaign expert lady is telling me to close by describing who will benefit. And in this world of entropy and madness, that's a hard question to answer. Mostly me, I guess? By being enabled to do the thing that brings me more joy than anything else except perhaps love? But also potentially you, dear reader, at least if you like my music enough to believe that it deserves to exist in the world! And after all, that *is* the principal thing I do with the music: spread love, joy, good vibes, good feelings, radiance, wonderment, happiness. I would like to think that this is my key contribution to the world of being, and a worthy one. If you agree with me, I hope you'll be generous enough to toss me a buck or two to get some more of this glorious music out into the world, and manifest yet more of that love which shines forth from my heart out into these simple little paltry songs, for the world and for God and for you, all of you. Please help me, if you can. Okay, that's it, I've said enough. Enough.
