Articolo 31
Così Com'è

THE REVIEW

After a couple of uncertain and sly albums, Articolo 31 make the big leap in quality. If Jovanotti had opened the doors to Italian-style rap, Articolo 31 bring hip hop into millions of homes and contexts.

J. Ax (Alessandro Aleotti) and Dj Jad (Luca Perrini) were born in Milan and, like all respectable rappers, formed in the suburbs and degradation. As proponents of a genre little loved, and therefore little known in Italy, hip hop, they immediately make themselves noticed for some enterprising youthful considerations: they joke about sex ("Datemi una lurida") and chant praises to light drugs ("Maria Maria", which J. Ax, as he declared, makes ample use of). Best Sound signs them on, but the two likable guys from Milan struggle to break through. The golden opportunity is this energetic "Così com'è", an inspired album from the mid-nineties: now completely free from the constraints of success and the market, the two guys from the suburbs conquer the nation with an ironic, vital, uncontainable, fun album.

They invent slogans, catchphrases, sayings, they take great care of the musical part (this hip hop at times seems even superior to the original American one) and they triumph among the very young (but, surprisingly, also among forty-year-olds) thanks to catchphrases like "Il funkytarro", "Domani", "Un urlo" and the very famous "Tranqui funky". On beaches and in courtyards, millions of Italians dance and sing to the rhythm of "Move with tranqui funky, move your legs with tranqui funky". "Così com'è" is however a colorful, vibrant, enjoyable album like a box of chocolates. The most puritanical frowned, the picky decided to snub them, but the Articolo 31 phenomenon exploded without limits in the summer of 1995: this is a fact, not a supposition. They rise to first place in the charts and triumph, though not rewarded, at the Festivalbar.

Their main novelty lies in having transformed a difficult and extremely foreign musical genre (in America hip hop was born in the mid-seventies) into a fun and light-hearted commercial genre, always resorting to the use of female choirs as a proper counterpoint to an incandescent and vital sound (in "Domani" J. Ax duets, in the chorus, with a seductive female voice). Unfortunately then Articolo 31 got lost in albums and tracks of very poor quality and low level (notably the hateful catchphrase "Guapa loca"), but this third album is a wonderful and surprising masterpiece.