Fifth studio album by Marcus "Hopsin" Hopson, rapper from Los Angeles, California. The production is entirely done by Hopsin, except "Black Sheep", produced by Harry Fraud. Eric Tucker, Joey Tee and Michael Speaks are the only guests. Published by Undercover Prodigy, distributed by 300 and Atlantic, it obtained a good commercial result, entering the first fifty places on the pop chart and in the first fifteen of rap records.
I want to give context to this album. Hopsin comes from a complicated moment in his personal life. In early 2016, he had problems with Damien Ritter, co-founder of his own label, who he decided to leave to found his new label Undercover Prodigy, under which this product is released. He had a son, whom he cannot see, after pleading guilty to assaulting his girlfriend and being banished from Australia. He vents all his frustrations towards these individuals in the 73 minutes of this album. Too many. The music may not sound the same all the time, but it's very similar indeed, and there's a common thread, a crazy snare drum that destroys the music in every track: it comes at random and hammers all the time for reasons I don't understand and in a way I don't understand.
Hopsin has a good flow, I have nothing to say. Unfortunately for him, he has neither music nor lyrics. It's a big problem, because the musical genre he proposes, is based on music and lyrics. Most of the time, he's screaming. Even when he cries, he's screaming. Alright then. This dude is taking it out on everyone and everything, it's understandable to spit aggressively. If technically I don't feel like discussing it, because there isn't much to criticize, for better or for worse, lyrically, Hopsin is at his worsts ever. He attacks everyone he can attack, especially his ex girlfriend, and all his blows bounce off him, resulting in ultra-misogynistic, ultra-violent, shameful, embarrassing and meaningless bars, like the one in which he declares that he would have preferred that the child he loves so much and that he so longs to know, had been aborted. Man, what was that? He justifies these sentences with "uh, but if I had looked him in the eyes maybe I wouldn't have written it". He continues to dig his grave without realizing it. Unjustifiable.
Now, even if you had never listened to Hopsin before this album, you might immediately notice something that is evident from the very first moments. This guy is an Eminem fan. I don't mean a casual fan or that he owns an original copy of "Infinite", etc. Hopsin is a true Eminem fan. I don't know if you saw that video, I mean the one of "Stan", with Dido. Ok. Hopsin is Stan. Hopsin is a stan. This album isn't a real album. This album is a mixtape of an Eminem stan. An amateur mixtape. There are amateur beats, a delivery style where the rapper is doing his best impression of Eminem, and lyrics that are direct and indirect homages to Slim Shady's most successful songs. It's all imitated, copied, stolen from Eminem's songs, albums, covers.
I was going to write that at least the cover, this Hopsin cover was original. There's him in the center, without clothes, a canvas covers the intimate part together with the title, on its two sides two girls. All three have snakes on them. Then, you don't see them, but there are black roses below, on the ground. I've seen those roses before. On an Eminem album. But I didn't remember which one. If I go to look at the covers of Eminem's albums, I can't find any roses. Nowhere. Until I get to the compilation with which Eminem was retiring from the game, "Curtain Call", 2005. And here are the roses, red, on the floor.
What on earth can a forgotten compilation album cover hit on this Hopsin album? Uh, it has to do with it, because I haven't even mentioned "Happy Ending" yet, which is why I'm here. This song, number twelve on Hopsin's album tracklist, is one of the worst of the decade. The boy describes as literally as possible his sexual encounter in an oriental massage parlor and he does so by creating a track that is as racist, sexist, more offensive and more annoying as possible in every respect. There is such indifference and ignorance by this dude to the ever-lucrative human trafficking market that it's far-fetched, astonishing and absurd. Some compare it to Eminem's "FACK", which comes from "Curtain Call" and is a perfect comparison, fits perfectly.
No Marshall Mathers fan would want to remake his worst song ever, which by the way completely ruins an album that's still his best and would have been one of the best ever in hip-hop without that garbage. There are thousands of Shady songs to imitate and copy, but only a huge fan would find inspiration straight from the worst of him. Hopsin has this great merit, he sees the pearl where everyone else saw manure, and from there he manages to grow something good. Or at least, that's what he thinks he can do, because the final result is mortifying, he should make you ashamed of being a human being. Ultimately, one of the worst releases of the decade. Do not listen. Never recommended.
PS. Wow, man. I wasn't satisfied with what I had written. This record is really weak. But I was still not satisfied. Do you know why? I had seen those roses. Yes, I already wrote where. But I had seen them elsewhere too. I couldn't figure out where. They were actually, in an Eminem single video, damn it, but which one? He has published hundreds of them. I thought it was one of the first three albums, and I was wrong. I knew it was one of the most personal songs, one of those dedicated to his daughter, and I remembered the audience throwing roses on stage, and so, it was easy to find: "When I'm Gone", 2005. A classic. From "Curtain Call". Still. It almost seems like a statement. Hopsin copies the essence to make his version in the dedication to his son, "Ill Mind Hopsin 9". If I take this LP and start breaking it down, I can tell you which tracks of Eminem he's copying to each track, they're all copied, they're all bad imitations. Last, but not least: the snare drum, which here is the Godfather of everything, is just like that of "When I'm Gone", where in that case, however, Eminem masters the rhythm and delivers an authentic masterpiece.
No comments:
Post a Comment