Five Times Over

This track was born from a real headline: The median US home now costs $416,900 — five times the median household income of $83,150 — while home prices have risen 53% since 2019 compared to just 24% for wages. Majik delivers the report through hip-hop, letting the data hit as hard as the beat. Lines like "San Jose ten-point-five, New York nine-point-eight, you're a mouse" anchor the track in specifics that generic coverage misses. The mood — frustrated, confrontational, data-heavy — reflects the emotional reality behind the numbers. Every Majik's Studio news track exists to make you feel the story, not just read it.

[verse 1] Four-sixteen-nine, that's the median home, eighty-three-one-fifty is what the median home earns alone. Do the math, that's five times over what you make, and the mortgage rate still sitting at a number you can't take. Hundred-six-seven-thirty-one, that's what you need to qualify, but the median household's twenty-three K short, no alibi. Thirty-four percent of income just to make the monthly note, that's before the groceries, the gas, the lights, the winter coat. Since twenty-nineteen prices up fifty-three percent, but the wages only climbed up twenty-four, where'd the money went? LA is twelve-point-five times income just to buy a house, San Jose ten-point-five, New York nine-point-eight, you're a mouse in a maze designed to keep you renting till you're gray, paying someone else's mortgage every single day. Homeownership was the American Dream, they say, but the dream costs five times what they'll ever pay. [chorus] Five times over, five times over, the house costs five times what you make. Five times over, five times over, how much more is a family supposed to take? Five times over, five times over, the American Dream is wide awake and it's a nightmare. [verse 2] Nineteen-eighty-five the ratio was three to one, now it's five and climbing, damage being done. Home prices up four-fifteen percent across the span, income only two-fifty-five, that's not a plan. Only twelve cities left where median income buys a home, the other thousand metros, you're locked out, you roam. Teachers making seventy-five can only touch twenty-one percent of listings on the market, eighty percent irrelevant. Used to be at forty-nine percent in twenty-nineteen, now the doors are closing on the working and the clean. Hundred K a year and you can only reach thirty-seven, down from sixty-five, this ain't the path to heaven. First-time buyers at the oldest age on record now, thirty-eight years old before they take the vow. Generation locked out, equity denied, wealth gap getting wider, nobody can hide. [chorus] Five times over, five times over, the house costs five times what you make. Five times over, five times over, how much more is a family supposed to take? Five times over, five times over, the American Dream is wide awake and it's a nightmare. [bridge] They say just save up, just work harder, just be patient, but the math don't lie and the math says you ain't making it. Prices rising faster than the fastest you can earn, and the gap between the have and have-nots continues to burn. Five to one in twenty-twenty-four, near the all-time high, and the only thing that's affordable is asking why. [chorus] Five times over, five times over, the house costs five times what you make. Five times over, five times over, how much more is a family supposed to take? Five times over, five times over, the American Dream is wide awake and it's a nightmare. [outro] Four-sixteen-nine divided by eighty-three-one-fifty. Five times over. That's the number. Five times over. That's America.