Sound: 3/5
Lyrics: 4/5
Instrumental: 3/5
Idea: 5/5
Flow/Energy: 4/5
Music Video: (none)
Other: 5/5
Nocturnal Rainbows gets a 4/5
I plan to review all the songs on Hopsin’s Raw album, but since we’re not really going in order let’s jump to track eight, Nocturnal Rainbows. This song is probably one of the more heard song’s by Hopsin that didn’t have a music video. The song is mostly about a variety of topics, but the main one is the deception of others is falling on everyone. At first it just kind of seems like a sad song, but in the end when you listen to it more you realize what it is, and it almost feels kind of hopeful at the end. There’s two lines that really hit home for me, one being the line in the chorus, "The darkness provides the light for me,” which basically means a lot when thinking about it. It means you can see the bad and deception and the world, and thus we can see the light by avoiding it, or at least that’s what I got from it. The other line I like is "you have to work to put a smile on.” This an obvious straightforward message that tells itself. It actually is a very motivating line, and something I personally believe. Another thing I love about the song is what I can do with it in my mind. Many songs I hear that don’t get to detailed in the lyrics I like to play within my mind, and imagine my own music videos, and what I can do with the song in my mind goes into the other category a lot. For this I imagine a person who goes through their day to day life, and whenever they see something negative it places an aura around it, and the person sees things Hopsin mentions like pot and deceiving government policies and others. Slowly a Nocturnal Rainbow grows over the city. I like three different ending for it, one where the Nocturnal Rainbow stands, one where there are people who see the light in the darkness like Hopsin says in the chorus, and a normal rainbow stands with the nocturnal rainbow. And lastly one where the normal rainbow defeats the Nocturnal Rainbow. The fact I can put this into my mind I think shows how impressive the song is, and a huge reason I love the song. But there are reasons why people probably don’t like Nocturnal Rainbows a lot. One, he mentions pot, which he looks at negatively. He never says pot is bad for you, just kind of that it’s a timewaster. I’d of hated if he was like, "oh pot’s bad for your health,” cause then I wouldn’t of liked the song as much, but he put it under a different light that I can respect. Other people probably just didn’t want a rapper saying negatively about pot, and then turned it off. One part I actually don’t like a lot is where he mentions Obama. Personally, I don’t mind rappers talking about politics, it makes them look more intelligent, and if anybody was to do it, Hopsin would be up there. But he doesn’t sound that smart when talking about politics, and politics is a whole different ball game then the illuminati he mentions and everything else, and preferably I wish he’d changed the lyrics. But in the end I find this one of Hopsin’s best tracks, and definitely would place it in my top ten. Nocturnal Rainbows gives a lot of messages, even though it didn’t have direct one, it still easily earns the musical message badge for all the messages given within the song. It follows a good theme, and even the tone seems sad, it works for the song, and makes the album more diverse, which is always good. Nocturnal Rainbows is possibly in the top five of the Raw Album, and possibly top five of Hopsin’s songs as a whole.
Nocturnal Rainbows Review