Stoney

I had been intrigued by the review, so I listened to it. I thought, "Yes, it's an emo album, but come on, if people are talking about it so positively, there must be something good about it, right? Maybe we've given the word 'emo' too biased a meaning, maybe it's an inflated term, and it's not fair to hide behind stupid generalizations. After all, like with all genres, there's the commercial side and the hidden side that often conceals interesting things. Let's give it a chance." Well, here’s the problem: I did give it a chance, and I shouldn’t have. Who made me do that? Now I know that when it comes to Emo, it’s right to generalize.

DaveJonGilmour, get that fucking name off, you don't deserve it. "But where is the research, the innovation, the ability to engage, the great technique in Pearl Jam?" First point: where is it written that something is valid only if it researches and innovates. Second point: there is engagement; if you're not engaged, well... that's your problem, and the technique is there too. If for you these guys have no technique, go back to jerking off to Dream Theater. It's incredible how people see music in a one-way street, damn.

Phrases like "you will never understand," or "Italy is a dull country" are very convenient when you have no arguments. But let's do this: I take them at face value and accept that I do not understand. So, allow me two observations. The first is that if your goal is to denounce the condition of discomfort and suffering and people do not understand you, then you have clearly failed in communicating that message, and it’s time to do something instead of indulging in self-congratulation with each other. The second is that if we really cannot understand, then why do you keep bothering us about TV and radio? If you want to rap, do it at home; we won't understand it anyway. Why do you say that TV is a compromise to reach the audience, if the audience is dull and listens to Gigi D'Alessio? You see, you contradict yourselves without even realizing it and then talk about credibility... bah.

Framtom, I don't know if you realized it, but with your comment, you have completely validated my point. This is exactly what I meant: raising such barricades and defending oneself from accusations (which are not even accusations) by calling anyone who dares to say something you don't like a pseudo-intellectual son of a rich parent with a BMW (and demonstrating that you haven't understood). It's the "either you're with us or against us" logic that I was criticizing, and you hit the nail right on the head. Well done.

But tell me, is all this credibility really necessary? Why is it so important? What’s the point of pointing fingers at this sincerity, to prove to yourself and the world that the music you listen to is the right one or the best one? After all, if you don’t like rap, it certainly won’t be the sincerity of those who create it that will make you change your mind, and if you do like it, you’ll listen to it even if you know that the person behind it is a constructed character. Am I wrong? It seems to me that this whole sincerity story is just an excuse to shield oneself from criticism, so if someone comes up to you and says, "what the hell kind of music are you listening to?" you can reply, "well, I listen to sincere music made with heart, not like you." Because what’s happening today in rap and many other types of music is that people are not satisfied with just listening to it: they use it as an excuse to form a sense of belonging to a group that they can feel a part of and “fight for.” Granted that in 99% of cases, those who talk about the streets and suburbs exaggerate things, this means there’s an actual tendency to wear a mask. In reality, playing gangster in rap is like playing the bad guy in metal; they are nothing more than masks worn for just enough time to present oneself in public, and then in real life, one might be completely different. The blackster does it just as much when he says he worships the devil as the rapper does when he claims to be the king of his neighborhood, and maybe both are the most normal people on Earth. It’s the search for a collective identity that pushes one to embrace the dictates and clichés of this or that genre, based on a completely arbitrary choice that is entirely self-legitimized according to criteria that are far from objective. It’s not like embracing the ideology of a political party, which is a fairly reasoned choice based on the thought that represents us best; it’s more like cheering for a football team, which is chosen based on personal and instinctive preferences. Every fan is convinced they support the best team in the world and rallies against fans of rival teams, feeling superior simply because they wave a flag of one color rather than another. It’s the choice that legitimizes the choice itself; it’s a self-referential circuit where there are no objective criteria to dictate the rules, and this is not sincerity at all; it’s the death of personality, it’s the dissolution of individual identity in the formless sea of the indistinct mass, it’s conformity (dressing alike, speaking alike, moving alike), and in rap especially, this phenomenon is particularly exacerbated and, in my opinion, more irritating than in other genres.

Apart from the fact that the verses quoted by kosmogabri seem to be written by a 6-year-old child, the point is that if you sing about not bowing down to the majors who wanted you to sell out to 12-year-olds, but you do it at TRL in front of an audience where the oldest is 14, it seems only fair that your credibility would be affected. The fact that those same 12-year-olds listen to it and elevate it to myth status despite him saying something similar is symptomatic of many things... And then, I hate to repeat myself, but the discourse is always the same: those who have really taken punches in the face from life don’t go around boasting about it, they don’t flaunt it, they don’t use it to play the hero, they don’t build a persona around it, and above all, they don’t sell it. Here, the distinction between social critique and posing like a wannabe is blurred, serious and pressing issues like the backwardness of the suburbs are mixed with trendy TV attitudes. Today, pretending to be a gangster is a trend, just like listening to emo. If these people truly cared about issues of similar relevance, they would stop acting like clowns and get serious, they would fight against the economic and social logics that have truly marginalized them instead of exploiting them to their advantage to switch sides in the barricade.

Look, I don't want to come off as the usual killjoy, but there are really a lot of people born and raised in the suburbs who have had a tough life, and they certainly don’t turn to rap because they have more important things to think about. Instead, it seems that the only way for these people to redeem themselves is to make a rap album… who knows how many have managed to do it differently, perhaps by finding an honest job, for example, and who knows how many unfortunately haven’t succeeded and ended up in a bad place. So let’s have a realistic discussion and call things as they are: we’re not in New York and we’re not in the late '70s; rap has lost its original identity as a grassroots genre of protest. Today, that old attitude is only left in form, which has progressively transformed into fashion: acting like the Black kids who grew up amid gunfire in Harlem even if you come from a well-off family, even if you were born in central Rome, is cool and gives you an air of a seasoned man, which in rap is everything; what matters more is the image than the music. The combination of rap + lyrics about tough suburbs is now a well-established trend; practically EVERYONE is doing it, and we might as well say it’s almost the only theme tackled in rap today, part of the genre as much as guitars are to rock. There’s no rapper who doesn’t have a song about how much they suffered as a kid, another about how they’re better than everyone else, and one about how many girls want to sleep with them because they have money. In short, it’s really hard for me to take people like this seriously, especially when they are promoted and supported by the industry and the MTV circuit, complete with performances at TRL in front of crowds of kids like Finley, Mondo Marcio, and other similar abominations.

And wouldn't you know it, the usual genius pops up saying, "you're just bitter because you're envious"? At this point, this reasoning applies to everything: do you dislike Marco Carta? Well, it's because you're envious of his success; don't like Dream Theater? Well, it's because you're envious of their skill; didn't vote for Berlusconi? Obviously, it’s because you’re envious of his money. It's the go-to phrase to throw out when there are no arguments left. Soon enough, they'll find a way to say that if you don't like going to trans, it's because you're envious that they've got bigger ones than yours.

x Uncle Ozzy: do Linea 77 make good music? Bah, de gustibus... but as you said, they don’t think twice about selling out with Tiziano Ferro. And do you see Cripple Bastard on TV? Or Novembre? We’re still talking about bands with a limited market, and anyway, in terms of the validity of their proposal, they don’t seem like these monsters to me... It’s always because of the usual story that if you want visibility, you have to make compromises; otherwise, you’re stuck in the underground. Of course, don’t get me wrong, better Novembre than Marco Carta, that seems obvious to me. x Vivaldi: but stop doing drugs, and maybe you’ll quit saying bullshit.

I find it ridiculous to wait for someone like him, born and raised in such an environment, supported by De Filippi's circuit, launched as a pre-adolescent idol with a clean face that appeals to moms, to grow artistically. I don't know where you live, but if you're in a medium-to-large city, one evening take a stroll in a venue with live music, and you'll notice that there are plenty of people who are artistically worthy and have so much to say. There are thousands of young people who, out of passion, have cultivated a musical culture, then picked up an instrument and now voice their opinions. Unfortunately, rock culture hasn't arrived in Italy, hip-hop culture (when it still made sense) hasn't arrived either, and the movements that have influenced the rest of the world have either arrived too late or been packaged and sanitized for commercial purposes; in Italy, we barely know the Pink Floyd. In Italy, we believe that rock is Ligabue's and hip-hop is Mondo Marcio's, we still have Sanremo deciding who should sell and who shouldn't, setting the parameters for what can be aired on TV and what can't, and then we have a frenzy of crazy girls swooning over Finley and now, of course, Marco Carta. What can I say... you have to admit that from the perspective of someone passionate about music (real music, not entertainment), it's hard to digest certain things.