Review Summary: An album that demonstrates how to distract your listeners from any skills that you have.
Like many others, I first discovered west coast rapper Hopsin through his diss of Tyler, The Creator on his video “Ill Mind of Hopsin 4”. This video featured a few lines calling out the Odd Future leader at the height of popularity for his latest album, Goblin. I really did not know much about either rapper at this time, but from what I heard; Hopsin seemed to have a better flow and lyrics, so I decided to check out his album.
One of the first things I noticed when listening to this album is that Hopsin, in fact, does have a really smooth flow and is a pretty decent lyricist. Unfortunately, the very next thing that I noticed is that there are numerous repeating elements in his music that continuously detract from the skills that he is trying to show. This is in no fault to the instrumentals which are nothing special, but they complement the lyrics just fine. The main problems with this album are very basic and could have easily been improved. A large majority of the choruses don’t seem to merge that well with the verses lyrically or are just off-putting due to the way that he sings them. Then, a song like I Can’t Decide is completely destroyed when it enters the chorus, which just happens to first appear at the beginning of the song. It’s such a shame too, because the verses for that song are pretty powerful dealing with gang violence. The chorus for that song is the only one that attempts to use auto-tune as an effect, not as a crutch, and it fails miserably.
A guest appearance by other rappers is a mainstay in almost every hip hop album today, which can really add to a song if used correctly. Hopsin does not do this. Cryptic Wisdom, while not having a very good voice, is completely overshadowed by the truly mysterious and horrendous voice of fellow Funk Volume record label mate SwizZz. I don’t know who this guy is; all I know is that I never want to hear his voice again. He totally sucks out all of the good that a song has, which is shown in How You Like Me Now. This baffles me because the previously mentioned song could have been one of the best on the record. SwizZz’s voice and lyrics are so dreadful that it ends up becoming one of the most memorable things about this album.
Hopsin’s RAW is one of the most confusing albums that I have ever heard. From the laughable album cover to the very real and angry lyrics, the album is at constant polar opposites. His lyrics and flow on the verses in nearly every song are fantastic. His obvious inspiration from early Eminem is extremely prevalent, which should make this a great record; however it is utterly destroyed by the very weak choruses and horrible guest appearances. But when his songs work, they work really well. Nocturnal Rainbows is a great song, but it’s not worth sifting through all of the other songs to get to. RAW is a mess of a record from an artist that shows a tremendous amount of potential that needs to learn how to enhance his skills instead of detract from them.
