In “Ill Mind of Hopsin 8,” the Funk Volume co-founders lays some unkind rhymes towards co-founder Damien Ritter before declaring he’s moved on to his own company Undercover Prodigy. Hopsin seems liberated (if a bit angry) by his separation from Funk Volume, and spoke at length with HipHopDX about his split with Damien Ritter. Hopsin originally founded Funk Volume with Damien Ritter in 2009, and announced his departure from the label via a social media post back in January.
The song itself does pretty good job of explaining the specifics of Hopsin’s complaints, including Ritter’s gambling problems, his conflict of interest being the manager, label owner and accountant, and “shitty” distribution deal with Warner Bros. However, Hopsin says the problems were only apparent for “a month and a half, two months prior to the actual break up.”
Speaking on his new outlook with his own company Undercover Prodigy, Hopsin is upbeat. “To be honest, it’s a better situation for me. I wish the other guys, I hope they come back to my side so we can work things out ‘cause I would love to create a whole new platform and usual arise together like we were doing, but Damien might get in the way of that.” Apparently Damien, as manager, holds the rights to most of the label’s back catalog – including some of Hopsin’s own work.
Hopsin doesn’t plan on releasing a full-length project in 2016, but does reveal he’s currently working with TY Dolla $ign and King Los. “I will say that I’ve made more connections in the past two months than I made within the whole time being on Funk Volume.” We’re excited to see what Hopsin can put together now that he’s found freedom from a bad situation.