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! I make genuinely great music, but I am also disabled, bipolar, diabetic, obese, and unable to find or keep jobs (aside from a very ramshackle one whereby my elder brother acts as my employer and pays me $90 CAD per week), and am thereby forced to subsist on government disability support (roughly twelve hundred Canadian dollars per month, of which $600 immediately goes to my father for rent and $400 to my brother for groceries), that is, very very very very very very comically ludicrously broke; thus unable to release 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", and its even more glorious successor, “A Joy Which Nothing Can Erase”, to fruition in precisely this manner in the years 2016 through 2019; now, wide-eyed, ashen-faced, I humbly return to this same well in order to try to make the same happen for the music I'm working on now. The projects I hope to make include:

-My fourth solo album, mostly or entirely produced by Bradley “Notion” Thorn and tentatively entitled “To Relieve The Sorrow-Laden Heart”;

-My fifth solo album, mostly or entirely produced by Myer Clarity and tentatively entitled “Our Love Will Be Victorious In The End”;

-An album by the duo of myself and the great and gifted Skizza of Saskatoon, tentatively titled “Northern Flavalistic Metropass Muzik”;

-And an album of indeterminate length by the duo of myself and the atom-smashing, incredible Ultra Magnus!

I managed to fund my third solo album, "A Joy Which Nothing Can Erase", almost entirely indepdently (it saw release on Hand Solo Records in 2019), and then I released The Royal Falcon EP in 2020, but even though I eventually paid Notion the full $6780 CAD that I had owed him, I’m still paying him $200 CAD a month for his ongoing services as a producer and mixing and mastering engineer. That explains why I have almost no money left over to fund other aspects of my music. My chief recording engineer these days is Andrew “Fresh Kils” Kilgour, whom I pay in installments of $80 or so (drawn from the money I make working for my brother) as often as possible, 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 a variety of other illustrious personages, 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 full-length 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, which along with the equally astounding “A Joy Which Nothing Can Erase” and “The Royal Falcon EP” are 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 eight different disabilities and medical conditions (bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Autism, cerebral palsy, asthma, diabetes, 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”, “Our Love Will Be Victorious In The End”, “Northern Flavalistic Metropass Muzik”, and the album with Magnus), I have about 45 songs in various stages of development, of which I hope to release anywhere between 10 and 16 on each album. My hope is to release the fourth full-length solo LP in 2022, the fifth full-length solo LP in 2023, and the collaboration albums whenever they get finished! 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 "To Relieve The Sorrow-Laden Heart"; primarily this means paying Notion and Fresh Kils what they are owed for recording, mixing, and mastering services, but I also have to worry about music videos, marketing/promotion/publicity, CD duplication, 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 and Strange Music, Young Bleed of the No Limit tank, Big Mike of The Geto Boys/Rap-A-Lot, Pacewon and Young Zee of The Outsidaz, and Big Rube and Witchdoctor of The Dungeon Family, plus the Oakland gunner Shady Blaze and the Philadelphia legend Slaughter Rico, to appear on previous projects, and 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 and/or. Fresh Kils), 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", "Our Love Will Be Victorious In The End", “Northern Flavalistic Metropass Muzik", and the duo album with Magnus 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 the opportunity to love and help other human beings? 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.