Kaos One
kARMA

Kaos One is one of the strongest mic warriors that the Italian hip hop scene can boast of having had. A career not very extensive in terms of production, yet active since the Eighties, when he was still rapping in English. A hardcore sound not suitable for everyone's taste, yet respected by practically everyone within the environment. "Karma" is his third solo venture, released in 2006, 7 years after his last official work, and the MC's concept continues its spiritual journey. If "Fastidio" is a furious testimony of taking a stand within the hip hop scene, while "L'attesa" is a declaration of war and personal reflections, "Karma" is a sign of mature awareness.

The album sounds one hundred percent hip hop, to quote one of his classics, and in my opinion, it's even more "fresh" compared to previous works. Thanks to a sound contextualized for those times through the productions, primarily by Don Joe; that raw street hip hop sound, that way of using samples, feels like it's straight out of a pre-major Club Dogo album (just think of the mixtape "Roccia Music" for instance). Hardcore isn't dead, it simply doesn't intend to smell old, and in this, Kaos finds the right balance even in the flow itself: more aggressive and refined, compared to the early days when due to lower quality, it risked being excessively dirty and incomprehensible. The cover is splendid, and it encapsulates the concept of the album: Kaos wants to leave the scene (something he has been saying since '96), yet at the same time, he delves into deeper and more mature paths. Less self-celebration and rhetoric, more of a psychological descent into the depths of his mental prisons, a concept that will develop more cryptically in "Post Scripta," although less incisive on the conceptual level.

"Uno" and "La zona morta" are two slaps in the face, where the master shows that the knife is still sharp; a critique of the emptiness within the scene seen through Kaos's eyes, where the reason has been lost along with the values of a culture that fed the artists, but especially journalists and fake net specialists (citing Bassi and his "S.I.C."), turning it into a potato chip advertisement phenomenon. Around this concept also revolve tracks with more burning themes, like the controversial "Pandemia" where faith in the Divine takes center stage, the pearl "Algoritmi," with mathematics seen as a metaphor for the study of hip hop matter, down to the straightforward "Blah Blah" (the album's minor episode in my opinion). However, Kaos didn't present himself alone, as indeed some of the best moments are the collaborations: above all "Il senso senso," with the participation of the full Club Dogo (Don Joe does the production), a brilliant sample of "Fame," a catchy chorus, and three precious verses, where the rappers on the mic give their best. A small masterpiece, as is "Mu-Sick" where Calabrian rapper Turi, maintaining his funky style, manages to stir things up appropriately. Among the rest, Colle Der Fomento in "Firewire" and Moddi MC (a talented Sicilian freestyler) in "D.C.D.V.," another small underrated gem. Masterpiece "Insomnia" (produced by Shablo), the most intimate and touching track of the album; Kaos's lyricism is in perpetual search, and in this track in particular, he finds a less rhetorical and more introspective dimension, which in some ways recalls "Cose preziose." The album closes with "La fine," preceded by the key monologue taken from David Fincher's "Seven," a fitting closure for a great album.

"Karma" is a badass hip hop work: fresh, gritty, deep, though at times excessively sickly and rhetorical in content, despite being a trademark that Kaos has always carried with him even when he rapped alongside genre monuments like Neffa and Melma&Merda. But that's another (great) story.