Ill Mind of Hopsin 7

Continuing his Ill Mind series of YouTube singles, Hopsin recently released “Ill Mind of Hopsin 7,” a sweeping conversation with God that examines his faltering relationship with the higher power. Whether the emotional depths explored are genuine to Marcus Hopson or a lyrical fabrication that his emcee alter ego Hopsin sells with reckless and honest abandon, this painful song of lost faith is the series’ triumph. The music video’s sparse setting features Hopsin wandering alone and apparently lost in the desert, and is a fitting backdrop to the rapper’s deity diatribe, which bounces between faith and skepticism. Some user comments (please, avoid the YouTube comments) express rage at supposed anti-God lyrics, but what makes the song so strong is that Hopsin is begging to the very God he’s questioning. He wants to believe, but—weighed down by logical inconsistencies, dogma and self-doubt over his own humanity standing in contradiction to religious teachings—Hopsin is searching for a sign that, by all logic, God should be able to provide. In the absence of a sign, he doesn’t reject God; instead he chooses to find solace and direction in the only thing he knows true—his life is his own: “Do as you please, and I’ll just do me.”