•
Rating: I don't even know where to begin.
Maybe from the end of 2013.
One afternoon on deb, among the list of listens, I open the link of someone who often posts stuff I like, and I find a rap video. Direct, raw, a punch in the nose. A beat that splits Satan's hairs into four and a river of words vomited from lips swollen with anger. I don't understand a damn thing: the river is overflowing, the expressed concepts, at first listen, about ten. In four minutes or a little more.
It's stuff that seems to me could be suitable for feeling young, I download the album and put it on my phone.
At first listen, the album kind of works, at a second and third too, at a fourth something starts to feel all out of tune and wrong: ME. Rap is not my genre, in fact, I've stayed as far away from rap as possible, and it was a conscious and semi-reasoned choice (as a teenager, I mean, you kinda think with your ass at that age... oh well, not everyone...). I know just Jovanotti, Articolo 31, 99 Posse, and the names of those who have been successful. I practically don't like a damn thing: "La morte dei miracoli," some things by Caparezza and very little else. Lately, I've recovered some works by Salmo, because he does stupid stuff that makes you feel young when you listen to it, and other stuff that's a bit less stupid, which for someone who's never really cared about rap presents fun linguistic findings. That's all. But the album I just downloaded, no: the album I just downloaded, I like. But I really like it: beyond the phenomenal beats, I'm absolutely captivated by what is said in the album. Oh god, more than by what is said, it's the form in which thoughts are expressed that captivates me. A good writer. But in the sense that he's someone who writes well, who knows how to use his language to encapsulate entire universes of emotions and sensations in five words. Then he has a voice that I find amazing, okay, and the beats too, already said before, a great disc of music "that pumps," nothing to say about it, but... I can't comprehend the talent I think I can glimpse between the lines of those texts.
Two thousand and thirteen ends, and that album ("Silenzio") ends up being the work that most resonated with me that year. 2014 begins, and I start to gather information about the duo in question: Rancore and Dj Myke, one EP and two albums to their credit. I know one already, I get the other and the EP.
They are two works that are musically similar and at the same time poles apart: both are based on tracks played by someone named Svedonio and "i bar tender," but if in "Elettrico" the guitarists do their best in striking out riffs with a rocky and angry soul, in the debut EP "Acustico," in complete faith to the title, all the samples draw from, well, acoustic tracks.
For the record: "acustico" is an absolute masterpiece in music as well as in prose, "elettrico" much less. both in music and in prose. With "silenzio" voice and turntables surpass themselves. This is to say that, at the time, even starting from the more enjoyable and Beautiful (without quotes, and with a capital B) work, I managed to become addicted to the other two works as well and, I repeat, we are talking about a musical genre I truly don't give a damn about.
Another year passes, it's the beginning of 2015, and Rancore and DJ Myke are among my regular daily notifications on Facebook, I've retrieved EVERYTHING Rancore recorded before becoming DJ Myke's partner (which means I retrieved everything he recorded from when he was 16 onwards), I've found out that that DJ Myke that makes beats I like so much is like a guru within the Italian rap scene, one of those who helped shape the movement at the time of its inception, or something like that. Damn, he's one of the man in scratch!!! (which I don't even know if I've spelled correctly... let alone know who they are).
In light of S.U.N.S.H.I.N.E. I think this preamble wouldn't particularly please the two, but I don't give a damn: I'm here to celebrate today, and let me do it.
We had reached the beginning of 2015... They start talking about a new work. An incessant advertisement made by the two on Facebook, "our new album is coming, get ready." Every day... In April I start getting fed up and my balls swollen, in May the album comes out, which however is not an album but an EP and my balls start to get crushed, even though I begin to see the light: everything falls into place: yet another flash in the pan. Sure, I believed in it for a year and a half and maybe I'm utterly dumb, but everything returns to a flat, typically apathic Italian state, my infatuation was still due to the lack of competition and the scarcity of topics that orbit around my Italian listens (which then wouldn't even be true, but oh well). They try to make it big with lots of advertising, they build up the hype and then: boom! They screw you over with 5 probably lame songs, at 10 euros a download.
Bam! Another slap: the album is free download, the advertisement made so far wasn't about them, but the music...
Download starts, download comes, we load everything onto the phone and begin to listen to this stuff, which from the start, free or not, is a scorching disappointment (besides, I had not only forgiven but even "promoted" a tribute/cover to De André made by the two. Stuff that until the day before I heard the tribute/cover, I considered De André untouchable by anyone, even by Dante, and yet they managed it... Christ, an EP to the damn after 5 months of advertising worthy of "only premium has the champions," why? why???).
Listen to this blessed sunshine. Once. Twice. Three times. And damn it...
Sorry for the lack of professionalism (which has always been a characteristic of mine) but really: I have no words. I'm not that good, translating into prose what sunshine gave me in those first three listens is impossible. It was love and devotion before, it's true, but there was also that sense of uncertainty that pervaded me when I thought "I wonder how they will continue, I hope they don't get lost along the way, and so forth). Now love and devotion have gone and left room for something I manage to give to very few things in the world: FAITH.
Sunshine is an album made of 4 songs and something I won't even bother to explain. I listen to it at least (at least) once a day since May. It's October... 5 months. In the era of the internet and wild downloading 5 months straight is equivalent to about 4 lives on a moon of Vega. Or something like that.
I found in the proposal of the two the Beautiful (the previous one) the Beautiful of the first twenty minutes of Pixar's Wally, the Beautiful of De André, the Beautiful of Leonardo's anatomical charcoal drawings. That Beautiful which the hell "is a subjective concept," the absolute Beautiful, that thing that MUST exist because the life of man is different from that of any other mammal.
And then, come on, let's get to this damn October 17th...
Turns out the day before yesterday the two Roman artists are stopping by in Milan. Cantiere social center, rap night, to close the concert by Rancore and DJ Myke. It takes me 30 minutes on foot, it's raining, but I also like to be in the rain.
I'm alone, I arrive right on time for the start of the concert, too bad that R&DM decide to take an hour and a quarter's leave. I thus witness the concert of about ten guys, who more or less seem all sharp to me. Whether they are good or not, I don't know, but they don't seem like intergalactic idiots to me, which is a bit of prejudice born of ignorance, that I reserved for all rappers. Of course, I've never heard of any of them, this scene is, for me, all underground, but they make me have a pleasant hour. There's a guy coming directly from Sardinia to inform us that those from Casa Pound in Porto Torres or I don't remember where broke into a social center, he asks for solidarity, a collective "up yours" to Casa Pound, he does three pieces and seems like a damn genius to me. I couldn't recover his name, and that bothers me a lot, I'd like to listen to more of his stuff. Among others, the one that struck me the most is a damn whippersnapper. His name is Shiva, between a "lava stone," a "harakiri," and two or three other images, seems to be greatly influenced by Rancore but I might be wrong. It sure impresses me: I may not know a damn thing, but he's little more than a kid and half the social center is shouting his songs in his face, knowing them by heart, I'd chant them too.
Finally (more for those of you who have read this far, rather than for me) my two new maximum idols take the stage. They do all the pieces I want to hear except "Where are you, spirits" and "Snow" (which is a Rancore piece prior to the collaboration with DJ Myke and thus I didn't even expect to hear it, if I heard it, it would have been way too much). They do all the pieces I wanted to hear, and I'm happy (yes, they're good, Rancore in particular, why they're good is long to explain and I don't feel like it, but they are seriously good, so much I didn't expect it) but the infracardial trust in humanity arrives at the start of the concert when Rancore's microphone goes shitty, and the entire audience sings the eight minutes of Sunshine from memory.
I had goosebumps.
Not because the song is beautiful (yes, it is. I mean, well. I'll let you listen to it because if I had to tell you what I think of it, I'd be quicker to post you a photo of me in tears, I think) what gives me goosebumps is that half the audience is people like me: people who don't even know what rap is, people totally alien to the scene, and we ALL know it. We all know all, but the concert starts too late, and the audience cools down quickly, and at two-thirty when everything ends, I honestly don't have the strength to feel guilty for not giving the support deserved to the colossus of talent and art I had before my eyes. Anyway, as I was saying, what makes me thank God for being present that makes my eyes red and makes my neck's bristles stand is that as much as we attempt to be desensitized, we will always and anyway be sensitive to the Beautiful. As the "mercanti di liquore" said: "El pueblo entiende la poesia/sempre que ce ne sia."
How was it? I don't know, I was there, and that's enough for me.
Now, if you've read this far, it's because, God knows how, I've entertained you, and so you owe me a favor. And you'll do it right away, please (Bioshock style): open the link below in the first comment, and if you must talk about this page, start with the music. Thank you.
It will be full of errors, I'm not even going to reread it once: let it be vomited on the web just as it poured from my fingers.
Loading comments slowly
