Writing Project 2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Writing Project 2 - Essay Example The text is written in a way to criticize one’s self. Before anyone could call him an idiot or sick he calls himself ill-minded. The context of the song is the over popular rap image of hip hop artists. In today’s world, TV and media has made the youngsters believe that good life is about making money and doing drugs because that is what the superstars do. It is called the celebrity lifestyle. And everyone seem to join that club. It is just a smoke screen and people are wasting their lives, dreaming about that dream that someday they will have lots of money like those superstars they see on TV and then they will have ‘fun’. Hopsin 5 addresses this ‘fun’ in this song and trues to make a mockery of the vision it generates in people’s minds. Asking â€Å"Is that all you think life really is?† (Hopsin 5, 2012). It is very hard to find the subtext in this song. Rap songs are generally very explicit and there are usually not many hidden meanings. The general idea behind a rap song is ‘being real’ and not hypocritical; saying what you mean exactly how you mean it. Hopsin 5 does exactly that. He is trying to wake up his generation who in his opinion are like zombies. Their brain cells are rotting because of drugs and pop culture. At the start of the song Hopsin says this addressing the ‘kids’ he sees on the street. He says he has become a freak for those kids who stare at them. But in fact Hopsin 5 is observing them when they talk about cursing school and dropping out of school. Later in the song he addresses the same issue of dropping out and says that many kids are in school because their parents send them there, it is not their choice. Referring to a gift they have but they don’t appreciate. Hopsin 5 was not as famous as some of the rap superstars like Snoop Dog, Eminem or Jay Z. He starts his song by saying that he doesn’t like rap and shows his disgust. But he raps only b ecause it works, it delivers the message and more importantly he can â€Å"if the shoe fits, wear it". It is very hard to say that Hopsin was a credible figure at the time he released this song and that his image and his personality would have ‘sold’. He calls himself a freak that the kids stare at him, only to make him more difficult to agree with. Pathos of Hopsin 5’s argument is very strong. In fact it is the single most powerful aspect that actually convinces the listeners that what he has to say is the truth. It is the pathos (the emotional appeal) that has got him over 32 million views for his song on YouTube (Hopsin 5, 2012). He puts his heart in the song and its shows. Other than the context, subtext and intertextuality, the video shows him persuasively and even aggressively talking or even ‘rap lecturing’ some ‘kids’ (kids is a just a slang for youngsters, the age group can range from 13-30) who are doing drugs and acting †˜cool’. The song is filled with second person narrative. The word ‘you’ has been used extensively, for each and every listener of the song. And that makes the emotional exorcism even stronger. The listener immediately starts to analyze himself. The target is the kids that are hooked to hip hop and ‘you’ is used to give them the rap lecture. This ‘you’ is the main weapon of the pathos as Hopsin 5 delves into what ‘your’ image of a fantastic life is. He shows ‘you’ the mirror and rephrases the dreams these kids cook up; to sell drugs so they can make them lots of money, and showing their bullet scars as trophies and that it is fun to live life like that. In the song he talks to this girl who is pregnant. He tells him that she is pregnant because it’s her own fault. All that glitters is not gold. If girls go to the