On a typical day, Amen Arthur, a 22-year-old Biomedical Engineering senior at Stony Brook University, can be found either running from one class to the other, studying in an area on campus unknown to many, or writing down lyrics and coming up with a beat for his next song. But if he’s not doing either of those things, you may find him outside in his car waiting for his next Uber or Lyft passenger. And even then, you may still find him with a book in hand.
Arthur began working as an Uber and Lyft driver at the beginning of August 2017, and since then has learned one of the most vital rules of the ride-sharing game. “If you don’t know what you’re doing, you really won’t make any money with it,” he said. On his first night, Arthur headed over to Patchogue, Suffolk County, and brought home about $60, which he found very discouraging. However, the following night was a different ballpark and a different game; he drove over to Long Beach, Nassau County, at the advice of a passenger and made about $300 within a few hours.
The college senior commits to this duty on the weekends, some days during the week after a day of classes and sometimes even in between classes. As an Uber and Lyft driver, he gets the best of both worlds especially during a time when both of these ridesharing services are becoming two popular go-to forms of transportation. When he goes to work for the day he simply turns on both apps, and whichever one has a travel request first is the driver he becomes.
“If you work at the right times it’ll work out for you, but the big thing is the flexibility and doing it in conjunction with Lyft [which] allows me to beat both of them.”
Besides driving passengers around in his spare time, Arthur is also a rap artist. He’s always deemed himself as an artist, but he began to take it more seriously last year, which is right around the time he officially released his single “Amen Boi” on major platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.
Growing up in a Jehovah Witness household, Arthur was not necessarily encouraged to partake in such activities, nevertheless, he pursued music anyway, which is now a sole part of who is today. As a modern-day artist, he feels that one of his callings is to merge old school music with today’s mainstream music.
When asked whether he saw his future career in the music or Biomedical Engineering industry his answer was both.
“The way I look at it, Plan B and C are just another way to make Plan A work, and so to me, it’s one big plan, like a master plan,” he said. “So essentially I know I can make mind blowing things and things that can change the world. But in the world we live in, you can’t actually do that unless you have money. I wanna get to the point where I can have enough exposure so that I can make enough money to actually make a difference, to do what I actually want to do.”
What does he want to do? In the short term, he still wants to make and perform music and also find a job related to his major following graduation. In the meantime, he still plans to continue working as an Uber and Lyft driver up until, or shortly after graduation. And in 10-15 years, he said he hopes to use his degree towards research purposes.
“I wanna use that skill for its purposes and then use my artistic skills for its purposes, and just be everything I can be.”