Kid Yugi

Closing the review of “I nomi del diavolo” (2024), we pointed out Kid Yugi as one of the few rappers in the brand-new scene showing uncommon personality and skill. This impression remains valid and makes this “Anche gli eroi muoiono” one of the albums that could make a difference in the Italian hip-hop scene of 2026. With a personal style ranging from literary, cinematic, and pop culture references—brutal yet introspective—Kid Yugi seems to be facing his most defining litmus test.

He sinks his teeth into the microphone in the opening “L’ultimo a cadere,” a pitch-black and explicit trap track with autotune, pushing forward head-on in the following “La violenza necessaria” (featuring Shiva) and repeating this register in the horrific “Berserker” or “Gilgamesh.” It works, certainly, but he fares better when he tries to deviate from a model that has by now exhausted those who have followed the scene for many years. The dark beat of “Eroina,” perfect even for a crossover audience, marks the first change of pace. However, “Amelie” perhaps leans a bit too much toward relational pop-rap.

More than the old-school hip-hop of “Jolly,” his songwriting seems to show its best in a song like “Mostro,” atmospheric and melancholic, without drums, or in the painful introspection of “Tristano e Isotta,” featuring an old-school electric guitar solo. He even becomes political in the album's most surprising track, “Per il sangue versato,” with a pacifist message in the middle of a tracklist where violence is flaunted, exacerbated, and brandished: it is the classic problem afflicting many Italian rappers in the last decade—the need to coordinate very different registers to gain key positions in thematic Spotify playlists.

It is a pity, because the subsequent “Per te che lotto” and “Davide e Golia” prove that when he takes this path, Kid Yugi manages to sound dark and emotional, ready for a wider audience not necessarily flattened by trap clichés—even deep and often creative in his lyrical imagery. Collaborations abound, predictably, but by far the most interesting is the one with Artie 5ive in “Bullet ballet,” a double assault with a fast beat that evokes dreams of a new “Santeria” (the highly successful 2016 album by Guè and Marracash) between two of the most interesting names the scene has presented in recent years.

In the jargon, Kid Yugi is called a lyricist, a rapper who stands out for his texts, and in this “Anche gli eroi muoiono” he proves it repeatedly, without ever becoming wordy, didactic, or boring like some of his colleagues. He alternates these more thought-out songs with more straightforward and violent ones—less original but still effective—yet he also adds much more, slightly fraying the final result. It is an album that seems written to win big, riding the success that brought the previous chapter five platinum records and sent this one immediately to the top of the national streaming charts.

As with its predecessor, “Anche gli eroi muoiono” is therefore an appreciable album, but it does not seem to fully exploit Kid Yugi's evident potential. When he is left alone to dig into his pain-poisoned soul, he possesses a pen unlike few others in Italy.

27/02/2026