Review Summary: Does anybody in this world actually care about Hopsin?
Hopsin may be the most hated rapper in the world right now, and it isn’t too much of a challenge to see why. Most of
No Shame, and for that matter, most of his music in general depends on one incredibly flimsy conceit: that the world cares deeply about Hopsin and all his problems, including the assault charge he’d picked up in Australia after allegedly beating his girlfriend that had led to him being banned from the country. It’s a given that rappers mention their personal lives in their music from time to time. Hopsin, however, assumes that everybody in the world wants to know every single unnecessary detail about his life and then proceeds to beat his listeners over the head with it for an hour and ten minutes straight.
Throughout the history of hip-hop, rappers have been able to discuss their personal lives to varying degrees of success. The one rapper that Hopsin is most often compared to, time and time again, has been Eminem. In the late 1990s and the early 2000s, Eminem’s albums were critically acclaimed, sold millions upon millions of copies and yet the overwhelming theme through his music was him rapping about his life and all his problems, whether it being him reacting to sudden fame or his troubled relationship between his wife and his daughters. Yet, there were several main differences: the major one being that people actually cared about Eminem. There was a time when what Eminem was doing was new and when people wanted to hear him talk about his life, because he 1) went from being dirt-broke to being one of the world’s biggest celebrities over the course of a year, and 2) because both what he was going through in his life and what he was discussing in his music were pretty controversial and that he was able to turn his personal problems into good, interesting music.
Hopsin has accomplished absolutely none of these things. There’s no reason for anyone to actually care about him or his life or his relationship with his girlfriend or his son. It’s not interesting, he’s not breaking new ground. And most of the time, he just comes off as an insufferable asshole.
The best moments on
No Shame come early, when he’s not assuming everyone in the world cares about him. “Right Here” sees Hopsin documenting where he came from in rap and giving somewhat of a tribute to his influences (one of them obviously being, who else - Eminem), and “Twisted” sees him boasting about himself while still remaining just a little self-aware. “Black Sheep” falls under the
no one actually cares about you Hopsin category of songs on the record, but it’s able to remain afloat due to the admittedly great production that complements the track perfectly. “The Purge” still remains one of Hopsin’s best songs, an admitted banger that may just be the greatest highlight of the entire album.
No Shame really falls apart near the end with the worst song made by any artist this year, the extremely awful and incredibly racist “Happy Ending”. On this track, Hopsin describes going onto his favorite website (Backpage.com), discovering an Asian massage parlor, and eventually having sex with the masseuse. If that’s not all, the chorus is Hopsin in an unbelievably stereotypical, fake Chinese accent singing about “sucky sucky”. And if
that’s not all, the entire song’s flow isn’t stolen from Eminem like most of Hopsin’s work, but rather… stolen from R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet.
On the 9th installment of his
Ill Mind of Hopsin series, he discusses his relationship with his wife and his son that he isn’t allowed to see. However, he sounds vindictive, unable to analyze himself or why things could have turned out the way they did between his wife and him. Even when Eminem was at his most depraved, there would always be some sort of relatability to what he was saying, deep inside the darkest parts of us that we never wanted to think about. But there’s no way to relate to Hopsin. When he’s trying to make a heartfelt message or statement to his son, all he’s doing is blaming his son’s mother about her breasts being elastic and telling him that the next time he sees her, he’s going to “assault the bitch”. On Eminem’s equivalent, “Mockingbird”, he at least had the decency to at least try to explain things to his daughter in a way that would make sense to her and to at least try to analyze himself and the wrongs he’d made. But throughout his entire career, Hopsin’s biggest, most glaring flaw has simply been his inability or incapability to seem just the least bit human.
