Of all the emcees in
hip-hop music today, Hopsin is one who has that element of
different but not gimmick, crazy but not demented; which made perfect for our
interview. Performing at Alrosa Villa on Sinclair and lodging at America's Best
Value Inn (adjacent to the venue) I knew this interview would be, well,
different.
The full video interview
can be seen below:
As I got out of my car to
meet my homie and cameraman Sam Blake, I was confronted by a woman
offering me $10 if I would go with her to help fill out some sort of paperwork.
As tempting as that deal sounded, I declined and headed for the hotel lobby. As
we entered, the door to the lobby was locked (which explained the enormous
splintered cracks that were running through it as if someone tried to bust it).
It was soon after that
Hopsin and his labelmates SwizZz
and newly signed Dizzy Wright would meet us outside of the
lobby. As the interview commenced and we were getting the lowdown on Hopsin and
his week-to-week doings as of late, a random man off the street, who called
himself "Red Hawk," somehow got into the locked lobby and decided to
join us. Red Hawk claimed that he had been an author for 17 years and that he
used to have a giant red mohawk. As intrigued as we were to hear the rest of
his fascinating tales, we had to ask Red Hawk to leave in order to finish out
the rest of our interview.
As far as the interview
goes, Hopsin had a lot to say. The Funk Volume headliner explained his
excitement for the new year citing that all of Funk Volume has come a long way
in 2011 and their experiences and fan-building have prepared them for an
explosive 2012.
"We've grown so much
in the past year," said Hopsin. "We've done all our homework in 2011,
so now we know what to do (for this year)."
As far as a release date
for Knock
Madness is concerned, Hopsin was aiming for March of 2012 but
nothing is set in stone.
"There's no release
date," he said. "It could be March, could be April, could be June.
Like my man Super Hot said, 'Just gonna wake up and it's gonna be there'
(laughs)."
Hopsin also touches on how
he got started in rapping, what he would do if someone came at him with a beef
and much more. Lessons learned from this whole experience: Lock the door to the
room you're doing an interview in, never conduct an interview in America's Best
Value Inn and Hopsin definitely keeps it real no mater what, whether you agree
with him or not.
On touring: "It's
been cool. I think the only downfall from it is it takes me away from being in
the studio and working on my album so I'm going to have to tone down on it a
little bit but it's been cool. We've been getting a lot of love everywhere we
go so I can't complain."
On Knock Madness release
date: "(On release date) No, there's no release date. It could be
March, could be April, could be June. Like my man Supa Hot said, 'just gonna
wake up and it's gonna be there' (laughs)."
On what to expect from
Knock Madness: "I'm still going to have my raw lyrics in it.
I want to go deeper with the meanings of my songs and I want to make music that
actually motivates people to make a positive change in their lives so that's
what the whole album is going to be based on, to be knocking the madness out of
everybody's mind to see what's really real."
On getting into rapping as
a teenager: "I started making parody songs in high
school just messing around and stuff and over time I just got good and just
started making beats and writing real lyrics and writing real songs and over
time, just thought of a rap name, now I'm here."
On beef situations: "The
thing about me is I don't care about anyone in the industry at all. Like, at
all, except for these guys right here but I don't care so I don't care to be
friends. I'm doing everything on my own, I've got my own fan base and it's
building. Fans don't care about the industry, if they like the artist, they
just like the artist. Who cares who the artist is working with? If the artist is
making good music through their own sources, that's all that really matters at
the end of the day so I don't care. If there's something I want to talk about,
I just talk about it and I know the risks, I'm a grown man. I know what the
possibilities are whether someone is seeing me or somebody, who knows but I
know the risks when I'm doing it."
"I'm an emcee, me and
SwizZz, we been doing shit since high school rapping and doing little cyphers
and it happens, that's stuff we're prepared for that's stuff he's prepared for,
come on bring it, that's what we like to do. I mean that's not the only thing
we do but as an emcee, once you start rapping, that's part of the process of
learning and being prepared for situations like that and unfortunately
for a lot of rappers, I am that guy who calls out names from time to time. It's
not just me doing it because I just want to try to get famous off of it, I do
it it if I see something, feel something, why can't I speak on it, I can do it
and I'm doing it, period. So if somebody takes a shot at me, it is what it is.
I'm just going to do what ever I can do to recover from it."
On expectations of Funk
Volume in 2012: "This past year we've come a long way
and we've learned a lot from learning how to start our own tour and learning
how to just market music better online and all that and learning the proper way
of interacting with fans and we've grown so much in the past year so now, 2012,
we've done all our homework in 2011 so now we know what to do in 2012 cause
this past year we kind of knew but we were still like, 'let's try this or lets
try this, hopefully this happens or hopefully this happens.' But now it's like,
'Ok we're going to do this.' And this is like we know according to our
calculations, this is what will happen so we've learned a lot from personal
experiences. We've done a lot of good stuff, we've made a few mistakes but
we've learned from all that in general so that's why we're so hyped for 2012
cause we see the vision and we see the lane that's open that nobody is on right
now."
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