Frankie Hi-nrg mc - The nerd who wanted to become a rapper

Rap, a word that's a weapon, a jumble of metaphors expressing an absolute and perfect concept, a direct blow landed on the system from the depths of the spiritual ghetto they want to drown us in, in that sea of chatter kneaded only from that false, opportunistic morality that uses censorship as a weapon of defense and shoots on sight at those - believe me, not many - who refuse every form of control enacted by the powerful, by the lords who control public opinion, by those who proofread the script called information, staged every day on the screens of an entire nation…

(From "Potere alla parola", 1993)

Incipit

Frankie Hi-Nrg Mc, registered at birth as Francesco Di Gesù, was born in Turin in 1969, though he has Sicilian and Ligurian roots; before making his debut he crisscrossed Italy due to frequent relocations, living in Caserta, Rome and Città di Castello, in the province of Perugia. He's one of the most talented rappers, writers and composers of the first wave of Italian hip-hop, a catalyst who, together with a handful of others, turned an underground phenomenon into a thriving artistic scene that's still bearing fruit more than twenty years on. Despite a career spanning over two decades, he has only 5 albums to his name. He's the author of some of the most important singles in Italian rap, several of which managed to seep into mainstream culture as well.

He's also one of the few historic names of Italian hip-hop to have taken part in Sanremo, in 2008 and 2014. He hosted part of the 2004 season of "Brand:new" on Mtv and presented the show "Street Art" on the SkyArte channel in 2013. He's also active as an actor, appearing in Carlo Virzì's film "I più grandi di tutti" (2011). As a video director he has independently directed many of his own videos, including "Quelli che benpensano" and "Autodafé", and has collaborated with artists such as Flaminio Maphia and Pacifico; above all, he directed the video for Tiromancino's "La descrizione di un attimo", which also won an award at the Faenza independent labels meeting. In 2019 he published an autobiography retracing his long journey towards hip-hop, back when the movement in Italy still amounted to Jovanotti, Coca-Cola and half-baked imitations of what was filtering in from the United States.

The origin of his stage name is a curious one, as recounted in his autobiography "Faccio la mia cosa" (2019, Mondadori): "The turn of 1986 is slow and flat, while at school I scribble my tags on the desk, still looking for a definitive one. The first one I use is Zap, with a lightning bolt running vertically through the writing, quick and easy to remember. Then I remember when Salvatore Gagliarde, my hip-hop buddy from Caserta, found the word HI-NRG in a magazine and said: 'Look, they've squeezed two long words into just a few letters: it could make a good stage name,' and I start working on it. I don't bother to find out whether someone or something already goes by Hi-Nrg: specifically, I have no idea it's actually a disco subgenre, characterised by a bassline that rises or falls an octave with every note (as in Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love' or Sylvester's 'You Make Me Feel'), and that it has nothing whatsoever to do with what I do, but I like the sound of it and keep it. The winding paths of creativity eventually lead me to my first real tag, which I spread across the full width of the desk, with the N stretched out horizontally, like a square-root symbol, covering the R and the G."

Chapter I: 1992 – 1997

He released his first single, "Fight Da Faida", in 1992, the same year he performed as a support act for hip-hop legends such as Run-DMC and Beastie Boys. That very first song was voted Best Rap Song in the History of Italian Music by the monthly Rolling Stone Italy, and was immediately recognised as a landmark track by the editorial staff of "Musica e Dischi", who awarded it their critics' prize. The track is one of the pivotal moments in the evolution of the genre in Italy, marked by highly original choices and a command of rhythm, meter and the hallmarks of hip-hop that you'd hardly expect from a debut single. While the structure follows that of a protest track, a manifesto of social rebellion in the American tradition, some of its solutions are unmistakably "local": not only is the beat dominated by a "marranzano" (or jew's harp), a typical instrument of Sicilian folklore, but the track closes with a fragment of a nonsense nursery rhyme in Sicilian dialect. It's at once a reclaiming of the author's roots and an all-Italian take on a style that, by tradition and its leading figures, is typically American.

About this manifesto-track, the author writes in his biography: "[as a] final touch, lu marranzanu, the Sicilian jaw harp, which I play by striking it hard against my incisors; I like the idea of adding a personal root to graft onto the hip-hop one. Right during the recording sessions, my cousin Vannina La Bruna drops by to visit us at Castello with her husband and daughter, on their way to the mountains; I've had a special bond with Vannina since I was a child, and this surprise visit makes me really happy, especially because she sings divinely and, in the family choir on the terrace at Giacalone, hers is the solo voice. As soon as I see her, I have a flash of inspiration: we both know 'Setti fimmini e un tarì', a nursery rhyme that uncle Gino taught us which, despite dating back to the late eighteenth century, sounds exactly like a rap; the lyrics are nonsense, kids used to sing it to accompany their games (or maybe it's an ancient hermetic message that no one has ever noticed), but it has the same cadences as a Young MC track and I think it's perfect as a third verse. Vannina raps it in a single take, the one you hear on the record".

Compared to the naive raps of a Jovanotti or Radical Stuff, or to the carefree Otierre — who are nonetheless held in great esteem by the author for their 1992 demo — the track shows a social and political commitment that closely recalls the militant approach of Assalti Frontali. Frankie Hi-Nrg's flow, however, really seems to have no rivals among his Italian contemporaries: a dizzying command of language, which in retrospect makes him a forerunner of the eloquent Caparezza and Murubutu, combined with a love of speed, long verses and lines that demand serious breath control. The accusation could not be more violent or direct, in the year of the 1992 unrest and the "Mani Pulite" investigation:

[UNCHANGED - This text is in Italian and consists of song lyrics quoted in full; per rule 4quinquies, lyrics must be left exactly as they are, not translated]

About the track, Fabri Fibra writes in his "Dietrologia" (2011, Rizzoli): "When a rapper adds something of his own, journalists talk about it, and whether they get it right or wrong, they give this genre its existence. It happened with Articolo 31, who put a lot of themselves into it and it worked, you could like them or not but they definitely worked. The same happened with Frankie Hi-Nrg: he talked about the real mafia with 'Fight Da Faida' and it worked".

In 1993 the debut album Verba Manent established him as a leading figure of the Italian hip-hop movement, with caustic and unusually committed lyrics paired with supple, dynamic funk backing tracks. Dj Style's contribution is essential, providing the canvas on which Frankie's flow can run wild. Besides the masterpiece "Fight Da Faida", there are other sensational singles: "Faccio la mia cosa", a manifesto of militant rap commitment; the rave ecstasy of "Disconnetti il potere", like hearing Prodigy bent to the hip-hop gospel; the lightning-fast rapping and retro backing track of "Omaggio Tributo Riconoscimento", dedicated to the Varese-born Otierre, destined to become national stars alongside Articolo 31; "Books di sangue", with a lounge appeal that lightens the tension of a conscious album which, even on this track, never fully abandons a certain political content in its "message"; "Potere alla parola" (which samples King Crimson's "Elephant Talk" and plays with shifting time signatures) — these are the major moments of a work that bends the rap idiom to Italy's political and social issues, establishing itself as a reference point for the scene that was then emerging across the country.

The lyrics are an all-Italian bible for this new music, full of daring, virtuosic solutions on multiple levels: unpredictable and intricately structured meters, a vocabulary ranging all the way to the erudite, and a web of rhymes, including internal and partial ones, that forms the true backbone of the lyrics. The points of reference seem to be Public Enemy and Rakim more than the posse crews springing up in social centres across the peninsula. Even having to choose among so many memorable moments, it is perhaps "Potere alla parola" that best captures the author's verbal explosiveness, with verses like: “Questo è il messaggio che ti sto indirizzando/ Il crimine sonoro che sto perpetrando/ Violando quel tacito codice incivile/ Del silenzio da cui mi differenzio in quanto/ Presenzio e sentenzio ritmica la rima/ Ossessiva e percussiva offensiva e persuasiva/ Dirada la nebbia luminosa come il Sole/ Perché la lingua batte se la mente vuole”.

One last note on the album, regarding its emancipation from the American scene: few English terms, references drawn mostly from national pop culture, and the choice to avoid even the words "intro" and "outro", replaced by the self-sufficient Italian coinages "entro" and "esco".

A year-and-a-half national tour follows. Also in 1993, he produces part of the soundtrack, with Vittorio Gassman, for the show "Camper", performed by Vittorio and Alessandro Gassman at the "Festival dei due mondi" in Spoleto. As would become his habit, he steps away from the spotlight while waiting for the new album, with the notable exception of 25 April 1995, when, alongside the celebrated 15-time Grammy-winning saxophonist Michael Brecker, he performs "La cattura" in Piazza Plebiscito in Naples.

Chapter II: 1997

The Death of Miracles (1997) is perhaps his most mature album and the one containing his best tracks, but it has the drawback of feeling a bit stretched thin: the 14-track listing includes an incipit, an "outcipit" and as many as 4 other tracks that serve merely as interludes, little more than curiosities. The full version also adds 4 remixes, further breaking up the sense of cohesion of the original work. The sonic flow and the message of the album do indeed seem united by a sense of tension, anguish and greed, following a single despairing perspective on Italy and its sick society. Whether because of racism, violence, hypocrisy or petty ignorance, Italy is destined to die: it is a "court of miracles" where people on the margins of society gather, a congregation of the poor in soul and body alike, destined, as the album title says, for death.

It's one of the most important Italian albums of the 1990s, arriving just as the initial drive of the hip-hop movement had already run out of steam and little remained of its founding fathers. Frankie Hi-Nrg returns after 4 years, at a time when rap had climbed high up the charts and spread across the whole country. Wisely, he delivers an album profoundly different from his debut, completely setting aside its more jovial, barricade-storming side in favour of darker, more dramatic and sarcastic tones, within an atmosphere of bleak reflection. He doesn't abandon social commentary, but channels it with less impetuousness and more severity, wrapped in a bitterness that borders on contempt.

The key track is "Quelli che benpensano", a hypnotic indictment of a contradictory bourgeoisie, of opportunistic do-gooders who live only to climb the social ladder. These individuals are targeted in the first verse: “Come lucertole s’arrampicano/ E se poi perdon la coda la ricomprano/ Fanno quel che vogliono si sappia in giro fanno/ Spendono, spandono/ E sono quel che hanno”. The second verse attacks those who live by appearances, status symbols and economic one-upmanship, within a frame of exasperated, desperate consumerism: “Vivon col timore di poter sembrare poveri/ Quel che hanno ostentano e tutto il resto invidiano/ Poi lo comprano”. Finally, the last jab is aimed at hypocrites, the protagonists of the third verse: “Ognun per sé, Dio per sé/ Mani che si stringono tra i banchi delle chiese alla domenica/ Mani ipocrite, mani che fan cose che non si raccontano/ Altrimenti le altre mani chissà cosa pensano/ Si scandalizzano/ Mani che poi firman petizioni per lo sgombero”.

The video, among the most iconic of that era, would deserve a separate discussion altogether. Suffice it to say here that it is considered one of the landmarks of Italian music video history, an unusual case of an Italian track from the last millennium with over 60 million views on YouTube. It's no coincidence that the song has also been reinterpreted by Fiorella Mannoia, Caparezza and Jovanotti, proof that it's not just a genre classic but a masterpiece of Italian music of its time. In 1998 it also won the Premio Italiano della Musica (PIM) as song of the year.

The rest of the tracklist doesn't match this legendary peak, but it keeps surprising. The gloomy "Accendimi", about television and its hypnotic power (“Ti dico quel che vuoi, ti mostro come sei/ accendimi la bocca e ti vedrai/ nel mondo nella scatola/ e vivere una favola potrai/ se resterai a casa senza uscire mai”), anticipates the funereal "Giù le mani da Caino", an indictment of the death penalty set to a spectral toll of guitar (“Ma ancora non è nato il delinquente/ che veda nella pena della morte un deterrente/ E spesso capita di fare fuori un innocente come niente/ E questo me lo chiami un incidente?/ Boia dal cappuccio trasparente vivi nell’anonimato/ Immune dal peccato, signore incontrastato della tua mediocrità/ Orfano del dubbio, testa nella sabbia: vittima della tua stessa rabbia”).

The brutal "La cattura", which opens with the chilling lines "Sono solo, braccato come un cane e non mi muovo, se abbaio muoio" and continues with “L’adrenalina sale in un flash/ e spalanco le ganasce in un grido silenzioso/ e l’angoscia di colpo si mette a riposo/ perché c’è la morte, di cuoio, con una frusta/ Ingoio la saliva e me la gusto/ e se questa dunque deve essere la mia ora/ dico: prego, dopo di lei Signora”. In this tunnel of suffering, the only slightly more serene moment, where restlessness at least outweighs the deathly aura, is "Il beat come anestetico", the track most easily linked to the dynamism of the debut. "Autodafé" is another extremely dark moment of personal crisis: “In cattiva compagnia soprattutto se sto solo/ Negativo come i G in una picchiata/ Prendo il volo, salgo, stallo e aspetto il peggio/ Che non sta nella caduta ma nell’atterraggio/ Come dice Hubert/ Malato immaginario più di quello di Molière/ Sono il mio gregario e mi comporto da Salieri/ E non chiedermi il perché/ Che come il Tethered quando perdo il filo poi non mi puoi più riprendere”. In the chorus, a sample from Ice One nods to the national "scene", to which Frankie Hi-Nrg remains something of an outsider, far removed from the dynamics of cross-pollination, collaboration and exchange that nonetheless characterized many early-Nineties experiences.

A pitch-black album, unrepeated and unrepeatable, it's a loose, entirely bleak social concept record, shot through with deep unease. Right at the heart of the golden decade of Italian hip-hop, one of its founding fathers steps in and delivers a work that will prove hugely inspiring for the more intellectually inclined rappers to come. Once again a long tour follows, over 18 months, taking his rhymes, old and new, up and down the peninsula.

Interlude: 1998 – 2003

In the good five years separating this from his third album, he takes part alongside Elisa in the La Comitiva project with the song "Nottetempo" (1999), localizes Nas and Puff Daddy's "Hate Me Now" (1999), and in 2000 directs a series of music videos, including the already-mentioned one that accompanies and helps drive the success of Tiromancino's "La descrizione di un attimo". As proof of his great musical restlessness, in 2002 he even performs at a contemporary music concert with the ensemble Alter Ego for Rai Radio 3, conducted by Frederic Rzewski. Not content with that, he also takes part, alongside maestro Alvin Curran and the aforementioned Alter Ego, in the contemporary opera "Brut Beat Brute Bruit" (2002) for the "Festival delle Nazioni" in his hometown of Città di Castello. That same year, together with the hilarious Banda Osiris, he creates the theme tune for Rai Radio2's long-running, hugely popular show "Caterpillar", on air for over twenty years. The following year he collaborates on the track "Passaporto Per Resistere" with Rza of Wu-Tang Clan for "The World According to RZA", the only Italian present at the international gathering put together by the American producer and rapper.

Chapter III: 2003 – 2008

I Was an Autarchic (2003) has to wait another six years, following a pace that sees the record released in a climate completely different from that of 1997: a new generation of rappers has arrived to take over the scene, a crew who never lived through the heroic era of the posses and the centri sociali, but who know American Nineties music inside out. As a result, this third album becomes a record out of step with its time, written by a scene outsider pursuing a personal path far removed from that of his peers. "Rap lamento" (an anagram of "Parlamento") is an attack on the politics of the day, set to an irresistibly whistleable tune, while "L'inutile" is an entertaining dig at mass-market, commercial music, complete with improbable variations worthy of a rap Zappa and a hilarious guest appearance from Paola Cortellesi.

"Chiedi Chiedi", the lead single, is aggressive and dark, but with "Anima nera" the album and the artist reach a new level of emotional communication, finding the meeting point between pop and hip-hop in a deeply felt rap with a poetic chorus sung by Pacifico: it's one of the finest tracks of his career and one of the most significant of this period, the ideal bridge between the origins of Verba Manent and a singer-songwriter soul that would find mainstream success just a few years later, climbing the charts.

Lighter in tone and atmosphere, the album doesn't abandon its political and social accusations, nor its jabs at the music industry, though it never matches the paranoid, anxious, depressive peaks of The Death of Miracles. After all, after reaching the summit, some kind of decline — however dignified — is inevitable. The fire of his early days, the pioneer's fire, and the flame of the conscious rapper have been tempered by time, and perhaps by advancing age too. This time the tour is less colossal, cut down to 10 months.

Amid other directing work on music videos, both his own and for other artists, in 2004 he also manages to perform at the final of the Sanremo Festival with his friend Paola Cortellesi. That same year, besides hosting the important show "Brand:new" on the now-defunct Mtv, he also writes a column for Rockstar, in which he turns his attention to TV criticism.

It's no coincidence that this is considered the ideal moment for a retrospective — albeit a highly creative one — of his entire career: Rap©ital (2005), derived from the show of the same name, collects revised and radically reworked versions of his classic tracks, following mash-up logic. Frankie Hi-Nrg tours Italy for 8 months, introducing his songs to a new generation and rekindling the interest of longtime fans thanks to these renewed, often radically transformed versions. Throughout 2006 and 2007 he also keeps busy with all sorts of activities, from DJ sets to fairy-tale songs for children.

2008 is an important year for his career, not only for his return to Sanremo, finally as a competing artist, but also because it sees the release of his last album tied to the Sony-Bmg major label. DePrimoMaggio (2008) focuses on the tragedies of the working world, job insecurity and the social distress that stems from it. "Call-center", the radio single, along with "Rivoluzione" and "Precariato", carry weight less as standalone tracks than within the thoughtful, close-knit atmosphere of the record as a whole, with choruses less immediate than in the past but themes that remain as engaged as ever, bolstered by polished production and guest collaborations. It runs just over 33 minutes, an honest downsizing of output that keeps pace with an inspiration that's growing steadily less vivid.

Interlude: 2009 – 2013

Next comes the long-awaited release of material as an independent artist, a new tour starting in 2009 spanning 50 dates, and a contribution to "Domani 21-04-2009", the tribute track for earthquake victims — confirming his social conscience, following his 2008 collaborations with Emergency and, in the name of energy conservation, his part in the "M'illumino di meno" campaign promoted by Rai Radio 2.

Among the most important moments of the period was Massimiliano Bruno's theatrical show "Potere alle parole", on which he collaborated directly, based on the lyrics of his songs. He also wrote for Raf in 2011 and for Fiorella Mannoia in 2012, accompanying the latter on a triumphant tour across the country. After the already mentioned hosting duties on SkyArte's "Street Art", the long-awaited new album finally arrives.

Chapter IV: 2014 – 2020

Essere umani (2014) is a comeback limited to just seven tracks, avoiding intros, outros and skits. Seven songs, starting with the two presented at Sanremo 2014: a title track weakened by a chorus that's a bit à-la Jovanotti and a somewhat uncertain vocal delivery, and "Pedala", which more successfully translates the artist's style into a radio-friendly track.

Then there's the hushed jazz of "L'ovvio", but the track worth keeping is "Atteso imprevedibile", somewhere between Battiato and a fast, minimal dance sound. Pared down to the bone like this, Frankie Hi-Nrg's sound proves less exuberant than on his first two albums, more restrained and intimate. The flow is similar, the beats and grooves minimal: an exercise in clean essentiality.

2015 is one of the key years for a socially engaged Frankie Hi-Nrg, from turning down the role of ambassador for EXPO 2015 to a trip to Zambia with the NGO ACRA. But he is, quite literally, tireless: he even takes part in the 58th Zecchino d'Oro (he'll do it again two years later!) and holds exhibitions of national and international standing, between Milan and New York. The following year he continues to split his time between divertissement and social commitment, between the theme song for a film starring the roguish Chef Rubio and ACRA's humanitarian mission in Mozambique. In 2017 he manages to debut as a poet with the theatrical show "#ANTROPOCENE", alongside Marco Paolini and Mario Brunello, and keeps up his humanitarian work, now in Senegal, as well as other charitable contributions. With "Estate 2020" and "Nuvole" he also comments on the lockdown, addressing its psychological consequences too. Even if a new studio album may never arrive, it seems unlikely we won't hear from Frankie Hi-Nrg again, even if in a guise other than that of rapper.

Outcipit

A standard-bearer for the transition from the posse scene to the golden age of homegrown rap, this certified nerd obsessed with computers, video games and classic puzzle magazines, with his black Ray-Ban Wayfarers and classic thick, "bottle-bottom" lenses, served as the interpreter of an epochal shift in Italian music.

Never particularly prolific, he has always respected his audience, avoiding needless self-celebratory releases—though these would have been justified by the respect paid to him by many rappers and others who count him among the most important Italian musicians of the 90s. If we imagine the Italian golden age coinciding with the period 1993-1997, closing it out with Frankie Hi-Nrg's masterpiece, then we can also identify in him the seeds of the rebirth that takes place at the turn of the century, including through artists who don't seem easy to connect to the author of "Quelli che benpensano".

As an example, then, we can let Fabrizio Tarducci—known as Fabri Fibra, who upended and revolutionized a stagnant scene between 2002 and 2004—speak for himself. It was he who wrote, in the preface to the autobiography "Faccio la mia cosa":

I had no plans and no particular interests, I didn't follow football, I didn't go out with girls, I didn't go dancing, I was looking for something that just wasn't coming. Until that day when, watching TV, this guy appears who starts rapping in Italian. It wasn't Jovanotti, but he was rapping in Italian. I was floored. The rhymes I was hearing weren't dedicated to some girl, they talked about current events with a flow I'd never heard before, the words were enunciated perfectly, grabbing all my attention. [...] The song was 'Fight da Faida' and the rapper was Frankie hi-nrg mc. From that moment on, Italian rap was the only thing I cared about, I couldn't think of anything else, I wanted to learn to rhyme like that guy on TV who seemed to have arrived from the future and who had changed my life with a couple of verses.

In the mid-2020s Italian scene, dominated by layered productions and an often sterile digital aesthetic, the choice to strip away every electronic frill and return to the essentials is the rapper's latest radical act. With Voice and drums (2026) he carries out a systematic subtraction, reducing the sonic framework to a primordial duel between Donato Stolfi's drums and the scratches of his faithful Dj Stile.

An "extreme synthesis", as the rapper himself calls it, which works well because the source tracks are generally excellent to begin with. Masterful reinterpretations of a now-classic career. Unfortunately, though, no new material.

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