Radical Stuff
Hardswallow

Kaos One, DJ Skizo, Sean, and Dre Love are names that anyone with the slightest understanding of the Italian Hip-Hop scene cannot fail to recognize. Such a statement might sound rather amusing given that the album in question is entirely rapped in English, and Sean and Dre hail respectively from Cape Town and New York. But we're talking about one of the very first crews to take the stages of the peninsula, whose first steps date back long before the album's release, and for whom the contact with native English speakers was probably indispensable to codify the art of composing verses in rhyme.

We are in 1994: in Bologna, Sangue Misto (another group that needs no introduction) releases what over the years will often be pointed to as the pinnacle of Rap in the language of Dante, marking the practical transition from "Posse scene" to "Hip-Hop scene", the Milanese Radical Stuff looks more explicitly and directly at what comes from South Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queensbridge. However, it would be profoundly unjust to label "Hardswallow" as a mere copycat of the styling coming from across the ocean: while more than winking at American records of the time, the sound has its personal identity.

The productions of Skizo consist of a simple and effective recipe based on granitic drums (listen to "I Don't Give A Fuck" to understand what I mean...), deep, minimal-cleansing basses and samples (especially winds) borrowed from old Jazz and Funk vinyls, as per the best tradition of the genre. To this is added his excellent scratches and the parts played by the Lo Greco Bros, a band of remarkable depth with whom the crew often collaborated, resulting in a live-recorded album made a couple of years earlier.

What can be said about the MCs? Each endowed with his recognizable style: Kaos with his now-famous hoarse and angry vocal tone, Sean fluid and musical, and Dre, technically impeccable and full of class, make the most of such a sound canvas. It’s difficult to point out a track that stands out from the others: each song is crafted with extreme care, a sign probably of a long and thoughtful gestation. The cheerful lightheartedness of "Summer Fever", the menacing and energetic "Don't Test Me", "Stop Frontin", and "Hip-Hop Ganxta", the captivating "On Tha Run" (a classic jam piece!) and the hardcore style concentrate in "Same All Jazz" are certainly memorable.

Speaking lyrically, the album does not particularly shine for originality, the topics are more or less the same in all tracks: pride in their artistic choices, constant marking of the difference between "hardcore rappers" and impostors, exaltation of their abilities, a bit of healthy goofing around, and those 3-4 things that cannot be missing from a Hip-Hop record since the days of "Rapper's Delight." This, to be clear, does not detract in any way from the album’s value (after all, we're still talking about ‘94!) and indeed, it violently highlights the passion of these guys, who, to have a say in this cultural movement that completely captured them, surely had to study hard to assimilate languages and sounds far removed from the customs of their country of origin.

In essence, every Italian B-Boy who considers themselves worthy of the name should get their hands on this record (don’t ask me how...). It will inevitably sound dated, listening to the whole album may seem a bit heavy (21 tracks for 73 minutes of music), and times have certainly changed. But it is precisely to keep alive that positive thrust, that hunger for knowledge, that pure pleasure of creating something for the fun of it (moreover in a period when very few had the means to appreciate it) that it should be periodically dusted off. Those days are gone, but I have reason to believe that if the new generations looked a little more at the pioneers' spirit than at current phenomena, they would get a clearer idea of what it means to BE HIP-HOP.