YES! It’s that time again! I have a brand new track ready for you. This one is called “LIFE’S LABRYNTH”. This one is somewhat personal for me. I came up with the beat one Sunday when I was sitting in church. I literally heard this song in my head, and after church, went straight home and created most of the beat for this song. Usually, I don’t make music on Sunday, but I felt inspired with this one.

The lyrics are even more personal for me. As you may or may not know, I am going through a divorce now. It has been a truly tragic and heart-wrenching experience. But it has been such an experience for me for almost a decade now. The lyrics were actually written about 6 years ago. They describe the challenge we all face of sticking with something you feel like you’re supposed to do out of duty, or jumping ship while you still can. This was my ongoing struggle for years in a very difficult marriage. It is the struggle many face with today’s economy as well. Do I keep paying my house payment on a house that’s losing value? Or do I jump ship now while I still can? Do I leave my retirement money in the stock market that is unpredictable and losing money on a consistent basis, or do I jump ship while I can? It is a question we all face at some point in our lives regarding very important issues. Marriage. Family. Money. Employment. Love. Friends. Business. Life. It’s a labrynth that we’re all trying to find our way through. Hope you enjoy Life’s Labrynth.

As always, you can download the track here on my website, or on iTunes, Amazon, etc.

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That’s right- I’ll be performing LIVE at the first monthly event called Life Elevated.  Life Elevated is a monthly hip hop event dedicated to positive hip hop culture.  I will be performing with the famous DJ Shawn Phillips, DJ RBH, Crate Dwellers, and there will be a 1 on 1 B-Boy battle ($5 to enter, winner takes all)!  It’s going to be mad fun!  And the best part is if you come with a friend, you can both get in for only $2!!!  Don’t miss it!In addition, anyone who comes will get a free download of my latest album “Equations”!  Hey- you can’t beat that.  Hope to see ya there Wednesday night August 25th!

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“Whenever religion, politics, and hip hop collide, the result is always something to look for. So it is with Phoenix-based rapper Arhythmatik, whose clever, creative beats and words never tip-toe around controversial or taboo topics, without resorting to the language or vulgarity of some other artists. A devout Mormon, producer, emcee, underground musician, and father of three, Arhythmatik is a satisfying blend of seemingly different influences and experiences. For an interesting interview with an ambitious, principled rapper, read on.”  

That’s the intro to an interview I just did with Linescratchers.com.  Check out the rest of the interview and my answers to some of their questions here: http://www.linescratchers.com/?p=1037#more-1037

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Here is a fascinating article by Michael Snyder from The Business Insider.  What are your thoughts on this?  Is this country doomed?  What is the solution to this encompassing problem? http://yhoo.it/dr6Ds8

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The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it

Posted Jul 15, 2010 02:25pm EDT by Michael Snyder in Recession

The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.

So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and “free trade” that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn’t tell us that the “global economy” would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.

Here are the statistics to prove it:

•    83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people. 
•    61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
•    66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
•    36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything to retirement savings.
•    A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
•    24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
•    Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
•    Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
•    For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
•    In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
•    As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
•    The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
•    Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
•    In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
•    The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America’s corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
•    In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
•    More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
•    or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
•    This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
•    Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
•    Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
•    The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

Giant Sucking Sound

The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new “global” labor pool.

What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are “less attractive” than ever. Compared to the rest of the world, American workers are extremely expensive, and the government keeps passing more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the United States.

So corporations are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed. Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing so, there really is no incentive for them to stay.

What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about six unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of “chronically unemployed” is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.

Many of those who are able to get jobs are finding that they are making less money than they used to. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of Americans are working at low wage retail and service jobs.

But you can’t raise a family on what you make flipping burgers at McDonald’s or on what you bring in from greeting customers down at the local Wal-Mart.

The truth is that the middle class in America is dying — and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild.

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IT’S LIIIIIIIIIIIVE!  Go check out my latest track entitled “AcadeMICS” in iTunes, Amazon, CD Baby, everywhere! This song is the first to be released from my “Equations” album.   The track features DJ 501 on the cuts.  This song was actually made over 3 years ago.  It was the first song I made after I completed my Pre-Algebra EP.  The title of the track represents the fact that the average hip hop fan has no idea where this music came from and the history and culture behind the music (half of the MC’s out there don’t even understand hip hop’s origins).  To truly appreciate what hip hop is, and what is “good” and “real” hip hop, people need to understand how it originated.  This song isn’t a history lesson or anything, but it does emphasize the 4 elements of hip hop culture- B-Boying, DJ’ing, MC’ing, and Graffiti art.  The best way to improve the state of hip hop music is to gain a better understanding of the art and culture behind it’s origins.  If we want to make hip hop worth anything of value, we need to become educated and study hip hop’s history; thus the name, AcadeMICS.  The emphasis is on the MICS at the end because what better way is there to learn about hip hop’s history than from the tool that brought hip hop to the masses?

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Well it’s officially official! I’ll be releasing 1 song each month from now on starting next week!  Each 12 songs will be part of the same album. You will be able to stream, download and purchase the songs right here on your favorite rapper’s blog or on your favorite download service- iTunes, Napster, Amazon, etc.  The first track that I’ll be releasing is called AcadeMICS.  The first 12 tracks I will be releasing are part of an album I’ve been working on for quite some time entitled Equations.  So let the countdown begin!  Here is a sample of the song that will be released next week- AcadeMICS.

ARHYTHMATIK- AcadeMICS 

[See post to listen to audio]

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But how can you be upset at something as dope as this! This is Flare DJ, the first scratch app in the iTunes App Store to utilize the new iOS 4’s API that allows you to access songs in the iPod app. Pretty dope!

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The USA had little to no debt before the income tax was passed in 1913.  The income tax was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, so Congress had to amend the Constitution to pass the income tax.  The income tax was never to exceed 5%.  Now look where we are.  Read on to see what taxes Obama will have you paying in just 6 months.  It’s shocking. (more…)

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