Dargen D'Amico - Variations on the theme of Italian hip-hop

The most abstract and unpredictable of Italian rappers is the Milan-based artist of Sicilian origin Dargen D’Amico, formerly known as Corvo d’Argento and registered at birth in 1980 as Jacopo D’Amico. With his multifaceted, heterogeneous and incorrigibly erratic style, he embodies a whole series of variations on hip-hop music understood in its broadest sense, which he plays with the spontaneity of a child and the sharpness of an experimenter. It's hard to find anyone who, on their own, can even be compared to his changeability and eclecticism, to the point that over his long career he has crisscrossed the Italian rap scene in every direction, with important moments of trajectories that burst beyond the genre's stylistic boundaries.

His career has the merit of being in constant evolution, the incomplete and ambitious work of a musician who always seems to be searching for a new, more effective and efficient language to communicate with. His first two albums upended the certainties of the Italian scene by drawing on a wide range of approaches, often labeled as experimental, both musically and linguistically, and in hindsight deserve recognition as two groundbreaking albums that many of his contemporaries overlooked.

Sacre Scuole: when Dargen D’Amico nearly became the fourth member of Club Dogo

Where, then, should we start to tell the story of Jacopo D’Amico's career spanning more than two decades? With a librogame, that is, a type of narrative work popular back in the Eighties, which, instead of being read linearly from beginning to end, lets the reader actively take part in the story, choosing between several possible alternatives that change how the plot unfolds. The book in question is called "Il mistero del corvo d’argento" (1991), from which our Jacopo took inspiration for his first rap name, Corvo D’Argento. When he began taking his first steps in the world of hip-hop, through early freestyle battles in his native Milan and some collaborations with veterans like Chief and Dj Enzo, he met two rappers who were also destined to make history in Italian rap. They are Cosimo Fini, better known as Gué Pequeno, and Francesco Vigorelli, who became famous as Jake La Furia. Readers familiar with Italian rhymes will have recognized in these two names the well-known faces of two members of Club Dogo, as well as celebrated solo artists. Before the seminal "Mi Fist" (2003), however, the two of them, together with our Corvo D’Argento, released a short work that has since become a cult favorite, 3 MC’s al cubo (1999), credited to Sacre Scuole.

This was an early opportunity to appreciate the technical skills of the three, who debuted during a particularly dark period for the national scene. Amid a recording-industry crisis caused by the commercial overexposure of Italian hip-hop at the close of the millennium, the sole work released under the Sacre Scuole name feels like the proverbial breath of fresh air: still anchored to Nineties hardcore hip-hop, but with a creative drive that already hints at what would become the sound of the following decade. Great evidence of this comes from the dynamic tracks "Sul filo del rasoio," "Tempo critico," "Chiamati in causa tribunale" (feat. Chief & Solo Zippo), and above all Jacopo D’Amico's first gem, the torrent of words that is "Salvation Army Pt.1".

Unfortunately, this first flash of brilliance was destined to remain, for a long time, the only substantial testimony to Jacopo D’Amico's genius, with the notable exception of a guest appearance on the aforementioned "Mi Fist", more precisely on the dizzying extra beat of "Tana 2000", which contains one of the most iconic verses in Italian rap.

Musica senza musicisti: the refounding of Italian hip-hop

The long wait was rewarded by a sensational solo debut, now under the name Dargen D’Amico, fittingly titled Musica senza musicisti (2006), which over almost 80 minutes fully reveals his talents as an absolute standout, backed by the flair of someone who simply can't stay within the rules, bending them at will until they're turned inside out. It's no coincidence that he released it through the independent label he founded himself, Giada Mesi, as if to underline that there's no real market for this kind of music. Jacopo writes the lyrics, raps them in his own inimitable way, and is also the main producer of the 24 tracks on the album, making this debut a rare case of truly authorial hip-hop; where his peers rely on ghostwriters, production teams and long lists of collaborators, he operates almost entirely on his own, the sole man in charge of an act of refounding.

The exceptional and innovative abstract hip-hop that marks his distance from the rest of the scene can be heard on the second track, "Signora del lago o musica senza musicisti", a noisy, rough, glitchy and sensual piece, enriched by a melancholy refrain and a labyrinthine lyric, opened by a spoken introduction that works as an aesthetic manifesto: “Bisogna dire la verità sulla propria musica/ Questa non è una musica da luogo di cultura/ Col posto a sedere non cedibile/ Questa è musica da giovani, capisci?/ Ascolti con le cuffiette, tra te e te/ Questa è musica senza musicisti”. Still on this track, he wittily describes the work's manifold nature, artisanal and sophisticated, traditional yet also innovative: “Può ascoltarla l’intera famiglia, dal padre/ Fissato con Gaber e i quadri alla figlia/ Fissata con la gabber e la pastiglia”. As he will prove time and again over his long career, all of this is never without a certain sly irony, as the closing line suggests: “La ascolti dove vuoi, quando vuoi/ È una musica… i giovanotti si ascoltano questa musica/ Te la ascolti tra te e te, mentre fai altre cose, più cose insieme…/ È poco impegnativa, è la sua peculiarità/ Questa è musica senza musicisti, capisci?”.

“Ricollocamento di un operaio” moves between synthetic trills, building a surreal dialogue within an anxiety-ridden musical setting, handled by multiple “voices” playing various characters but all performed by Dargen D’Amico himself. “La fedina penale” blows the beat apart until it's barely recognizable, while the voice rattles off rhyme after hormone-fuelled rhyme with the illogical logic typical of free association of ideas: “Sono come Battiato, baby, a guardarne le membra non sembra/ E in realtà quando vi do spingo come l’animale”. “Variazioni sul tema Via Lessona” is a torrent of rhymes that plunges hardcore-hip-hop into an acid bath.

Even when more conventional forms of hip-hop music are hinted at, sung-rapped vocals still alternate with long instrumental passages, counterbalancing the typical wordiness that often afflicts the genre, or else the lyric becomes a mere list without verbs or syntax, as in the curious toponymic tribute "Zafferano vulcano siciliano". And it's precisely certain instrumental excursions, together with the exercises in linguistic and rhythmic deconstruction and the collage of stream-of-consciousness writing, that raise the album's stature, placing it on a level with the great Italian albums of the period, not just within hip-hop: the electronic magma of the introduction in primis, and then the frenzy of "Bobby’s Back To Houston" which, paired with the following, cinematic "Salendo sempre più (dentro te)", adds up to over nine minutes with the voice reduced to a mere backdrop, while "Domenica Messina" folds industrial sounds and glitch into an epileptic hip-hop scratching, and "Ciccio (fammi una canna)" uses recordings from a neighborhood market to turn them into a Mediterranean electronic fresco.

Some tracks are simply different from the already varied set of songs on the record, as in the case of the brief, tense "La linea della vita risulta occupata", which even recalls Massimo Volume with its dramatic, dreamlike spoken delivery, the chaotic punk-rap of "Salv Army III", the trip-hop of "Lunedì mestieri", or again "The Sleepy Molotov (analità universale)", which is almost a pseudo-philosophical divertissement for helium-pitched voice: three examples, among many possible ones, that hint at the sheer breadth of approaches the artist used to remap Italian hip-hop.

Rather than succumbing to the genre's stereotypes, Dargen D'Amico rereads and subverts them in an oddball track like “Commo una troia”, an exercise with a chauvinist lyric that turns into an unexpected intimate confession, and which, on top of that, opens with an elaborate piece of instrumental hip-hop full of electronic refractions. From the slurred, drunken delivery to the dialect borrowings, by way of a free interpretation of rhythm, it's easy to spot in this track a sabotage from within of rap's clichés, aimed at overturning its balances and upending its points of reference. The ending is a textbook plot-twist: “E tratti il tuo migliore amico come un cane/ Sì, mi tratti come una troia/ Chi le racconta a mia madre che ho già speso tutto/ Vivo con una troia, voglio sposarmi una troia/ Darò un figlio a una troia e sarò felice con lei?/ Chi le racconta a mia madre che amo una troia?”.

It's no coincidence that this very track would go on to inspire another maverick, belonging however to the following generation, namely Tedua's “Purple”.

The whole album, avoiding monotony and continually, surprisingly shifting styles, stands as a work of fundamental importance for the birth of a new Italian hip-hop school, one that overcomes subservience to American models and reconnects, without any particular embarrassment, to our singer-songwriter tradition: it's no coincidence that the artist himself has described his own style as “cantautorap”, and that he himself named another maverick, Lucio Dalla, as a point of reference. Back in 2006 the link between these two worlds might have seemed like a stretch, but fifteen years later the idea of merging rap and songwriting would become one of the pillars of our pop-rap.

This densely annotated, expansively developed miscellany of an alternative hip-hop possibility rests on an exceptional command of language and its rhetorical-musical devices, of delivery and flow, of the most irregular metrical solutions, of wordplay, rhymes and assonances comparable to that of the genre's masters. Needless to say, none of this draws much attention from the wider public, so much so that one might have feared Dargen D'Amico would retreat towards a more palatable style in the near future. A true maverick, he remains misunderstood for a long time, or more simply little known.

Making a virtue of formal flaws: a bold doubling-down

In 2007 he takes part as composer and collaborator on some tracks from “Figli del caos”, the album by his friends Two Fingerz. When he returns to his solo career, rather than scaling back his ambitions, he raises the stakes, indeed doubles them: Making a virtue of formal flaws (2008) is even more imposing, a colossal double album that clocks in at a full two hours, for a staggering total of no fewer than 35 tracks. No one had ever attempted anything like it in Italian hip-hop, and it will be hard to find a point of comparison even in the future. Overall the record overflows with content and ideas, in which nothing is truly negligible, even allowing for the tendency to scatter its abundant creative energy across too many different fronts.

There's a general shift towards a more conventional musical form, still quite elaborate and personal, but now free of some of the quirks that could make the debut a tough listen. If that earlier record wiped the slate clean of early-2000s sound, completely remapping the possibilities of Italian hip-hop through an abstract, electronic lens, this time the tools of Musica senza musicisti are used to extend the reinterpretation and experimentation into more singer-songwriter and pop territory as well.

The parade of noteworthy tracks is a generous one: the winking, Snoop Dogg-indebted “SMS alla Madonna”, which transposes the American rapper's swag in its own way into a quirky romanticism blessed, as ever, with inventive lyrics (“Ho fatto pelle contro pelle con compagne acerbe/ Poi tramutatesi in modelle/ Con loro ho mentito sul mio valore/ Avrei fatto di tutto pur d’arrossarne il candore/ Sognandolo fino a perdere la testa/ E a scrivere canzoni ben peggio di questa/ Fino a rinnegare il bum bum cha/ A rinnegare il mio nome, a invidiare quello di Jerry Calà”); the dark, jagged electro-rap of “Low cash”, which closes on an obsessive repetition (“Sono così pochi questi dindi che li guardo/ Da vicino, li sorveglio come bimbi, perdo/ Tempo a dare un nome ed un cognome ad ogni soldo”); a new abstract manifesto like “Tra la noia e il valzer”, verbally torrential too, with frantic production; the hypnotic, bitter nursery-rhyme of “Al Meccano”, which sticks to a pop-rap template despite a centrifugal force repeatedly pulling it off course; the oddball electro-rap about a stiff neck of “Alì il thailandese”; the atypical club music with reflections and atmospheric pads of “Anche se dite no” (feat. Two Fingers), with its deranged spoken-word passages breaking up the four-on-the-floor beat (“Assieme valichiamo confini scoscesi/ Alfabetizziamo paesi con le gesta dei primi francesi/ Tieniti le capitali, dammi gli animali e paesi/ E l’amore di catanesi, more come cinesi/ Lasciami a piedi nel tacco dello stivale/ Spacchi naturali, è vertigine/ Tieniti stivale, tacco, spacco vertiginoso e vita infinita/ Sono un poeta, la mia morte sarà l’origine”); the unexpected ode to meal vouchers of “Tike Restoran”, which pairs linguistic exercises with a rave-like rhythm.

The second record is no less generous, offering up: the soul with hints of deconstructed gospel of “Ci ricamo sopra”, featuring Daniele Vit's voice; the surgical, Eastern-tinged, psychedelic flow of “Limitato dal poeta” (“Limitarsi a vicenda è la vicenda dell’uomo con Dio”); the manifesto that sidesteps the rhythm of the title track (“Gli spiego che la morte è la fine, il sogno è l’inizio”); the hypnotic refrain of “Origami love”; the musical criticism delivered through citations and complex rhythms of his masterpiece “Come l’Italy e San Marino”, with a dizzying lyric full of wordplay, references and content (not without irony: “E se dico copulare al posto di scopare/ Dirà che il cd è sperimentale”); the deafening acid instrumental of “Mar do alvo”; the anti-pop of “Un grande pregio delle boy band”, which together with the goofy “La banana frullata” makes up the two most frivolous moments; the rhythmic cubism, convulsive and disorienting, of “Il cielo dei ricchi”; the danceable vocoder exercise of “I Love You But It Hurts”, close to the more emotional, robotic side of Kanye West.

Dargen D'Amico works by varying the rhythms, interweaving styles, often making the lyrics more “real” and less stereotyped, playing with language, with structures, with citations, with typically postmodern references, with nods to rave and club culture, with social and musical criticism. Not least, he pokes fun at himself, turning into a parody of a rapper and then slipping back into the guise of the urban philosopher, the hyped-up kid, the failed Latin lover, and so on. If Musica senza musicisti defined his style, Making a virtue of formal flaws confirms his stature as one of the most important rappers in the country.

The production is more collaborative too, with Crookers and Roofio of Two Fingers making a substantial contribution. The roster of guests sharing the mic has also grown, including an Emiliano Pepe destined to become a loyal partner in crime. Either way, little changes in terms of authorship: this too, like the debut, is a record in which Dargen D'Amico's artistic peculiarity shines through in every track and every detail.

CD’ and Nostalgia Instantanea: singer-songwriting, pop and the hypnagogic state

CD’ (2011), which combines two 2010 EPs and adds a few unreleased tracks, veers towards a more singer-songwriter-like, emotional sound, one that's decidedly closer to radio-friendly fare (“Odio volare”; “Bere una cosa”; “Nessuno parla più” with Fabri Fibra and Danti) or even to the most lightweight summer dance-pop (“Ma dove vai (Veronica)”; “Orga(ni)smo (uni)cellulare”) and club-floor cheese (“Mi piacciono le donne”).

The theme shared by these tracks, love, isn't exactly a spur to originality, but there are still a few memorable moments. Such is the case with “Briciole colorate”, which opens with cinematic music and offers an imaginative rap-spoken-word, even if it's weighed down by a certain wordiness. The nearly 7 minutes of “Perché non sai mai (quel che ti capita)” are another memorable moment, a mutant mix of dance music, rap and spoken-word that recalls the free form of the first two albums, also echoed by the restless “Un Dio a parte (un poeta e un po’ no)”, which contains the lines “È musica più leggera della musica pesante/ Ma è più pesante della musica leggera/ Ho costruito un ingresso principesco/ Ma lo senti dall’odore che è cartongesso/ Ho costruito un personaggio principesco, ma lo senti dall’odore che sono di cartongesso”. “Malpensandoti”, at nearly 6 minutes, is a grey, melancholy, singer-songwriterly urban rap.

From a star performer one expects nothing but masterpieces, and CD’ doesn't belong in that category, torn as it is between pop, singer-songwriting and more “musica senza musicisti”. That's not to say there aren't tracks worth remembering here and there, lines worth jotting down or ideas worth savouring on repeated listens, but it lacks the explosive force of the first two albums.

During the same period he also collaborates with the aforementioned Crookers, with Fabri Fibra, with a Marracash at the very start of his career, Don Joe, Shablo, Rancore, and quite extensively with his friends Two Fingers. With DJ Nic Sarno he also founds the oddball duo Macrobiotics, whose sole work Balerasteppin reinterprets the lyrics of a handful of classic tracks, Italian and foreign, rearranged without any regard whatsoever for the originals. It's an exercise in estrangement that is bound to amuse the more curious listeners.

Having recharged his batteries, he releases another thoroughly atypical solo work, Nostalgia istantanea (2012), which attempts to carry the stream-of-consciousness technique, here in a hypnagogic key, into his strange idea of hip-hop music. Conceived from fragments recorded right before falling asleep and right upon waking, then duly edited and reworked, it's an album far removed from conventional song form, split into just two long compositions of 18 and 20 minutes, with no choruses and no radio-friendly concessions.

The opening track, "Nostalgia istantanea," co-written with Emiliano Pepe, is a long verbal journey through religion, philosophical visions and clever wordplay, set against a melancholic sonic structure marked by synth and piano loops paired with hazy beats. The second, monstrous track, "Variazioni sul tema nostalgia istantanea," is entirely Dargen's own work, music included, and is a danceable psychedelia, a shifting, deformed sonic puzzle that drives a torrential freestyle. Just a sample of these two sprawling pieces: "Il segno della croce non è nelle dita/ Il segno della croce è sulle spalle/ Gesù non alza la mano/ Al diavolo, Gesù alza la voce/ Il segno della croce non è nelle dita/ Il segno della croce è sulle spalle/ Gesù si rialza ogni volta/ E si riprende la croce/ Se Dio si incarnasse ancora/ Finirebbe su una croce tutta nuova/ Ripreso dai telefonini in aria/ Ecco che cos'è la nostalgia istantanea".

On August 10, 2012 he releases on his YouTube channel the video for the title track, which portrays Lucio Dalla, who had recently passed away, paying tribute to him also as a major artistic point of reference.

Vivere aiuta a non morire and D'iO: kitsch and singer-songwriter introspection

Dargen D'Amico returns with Vivere aiuta a non morire (2013) to a more conventionally understood album, ideally picking up where CD' had left off. The opening is grand, with the floating "V V," with that lopsided, free, stream-of-consciousness style that has made him one of the most charismatic rappers in Italy.

Elsewhere, the drive to craft catchy, tamarro, over-the-top dance tracks takes over, as in "Un fan in Basilicata," "L'amore a modo mio" (with J-Ax), and above all the two kitsch bombshells "Bocciofili" (with Fedez and Mistico) and "Il Cubo," shamelessly club-ready songs, vulgar, brazen, dripping with bad taste and a touch of (self-)irony, alongside a sound brought up to speed with the best productions of the moment. Rising above this trio of parody, provocation and crowd-pleasing is "Lorenzo De' Medici": a visionary lyric, a shape-shifting structure, a flow of words and narrative inventions balancing immediacy and verbal creativity.

"A meno di te" tries out a Pendulum-style approach, like a watered-down Salmo. Intricate rhythmic patterns define "L'Italy è una," pushing a none-too-brilliant lyric into the background. The melancholic rap-paced pop of "Con te" (feat. Perturbazione) is a fine moment with radio appeal, but the piano ballad "Il presidente" operates on another level of inventiveness entirely, an organic mass of music that surges on a chorus building quietly beneath the most melancholic melodic chimes. The closing "È già" (featuring the unmistakable voice of Enrico Ruggeri) is one last dramatic jolt, light years away from the album's more carefree and vulgar moments.

Equally capable of playing the life of the wildest, most promiscuous parties and the role of the discerning rapper obsessed with creativity, Dargen D'Amico delivers a complex fifth album, split between an experimental past and a far more singer-songwriter-oriented near future.

D'iO (2015) confirms the transition, as is immediately clear on "La mia generazione," a power ballad that ideally crossbreeds a rock concert with emotional rap, and later on the touching "Modigliani," perhaps his finest work in this vein even allowing for a vocal delivery that doesn't always fully back him up (and which shows its limits live). It's also an album that at times looks back to the past, as on "Amo Milano," a track straight out of the late Nineties, or "Las Vegas Honey Moon," which could have come from Making a virtue of formal flaws, with its fractured rhythms and tightrope-walking lyrics. The sound of "Crassi" is likewise classic, a sumptuous mix of synth, vocoder and bass-heavy beats, where the imaginative lyric stands out: “Anche mio padre era un poco di buono/ Un fantasista di dubbia moralità/ Non mi verrebbe mai in mente il bisogno/ Di fargli intitolare la via di una città/ Per cui mi chiedo cosa diavolo passi/ Per la testa dei figli di crassi”.

The album's other soul is more contemporary, ranging from the psychedelic hip-house of "La lobby dei semafori," a dazed generational anthem that is one of the album's high points, to the funk-tinged glitch-hop of "Amico immaginario." "La mia donna dice" is one of his most elusive linguistic adventures, with sudden shifts in speed and rhythm, fractured syntax, and phonemes treated as raw material before meaning.

The synth-funk orgy of "Io quello che credo" is another showcase of his best singer-songwriter rap, steering clear of choruses and catchy melodies: it's a fluid sonic magma, in constant mutation. When a catchy chorus is added to the linguistic flow, tracks like "Parenti" are born. Dargen D'Amico is still skilled enough with his flow to allow himself to play with a sparse, vaguely dub rhythm on "Lunedì chiuso," another crash course in wordplay and surreal lines ("Prometto che mi depilo le ascelle/ Così non bagno la camicia in Tv").

In fits and starts, as on Vivere aiuta a non morire, Dargen D'Amico mixes doses of creativity with (ever-growing) nods towards singer-songwriter territory, more emotional pop and tear-jerking ballads. He does what a Jovanotti has done over the years, but crossbred with the oddball, ironic, incorrigible style of a rap virtuoso, who churns out wordplay and evocative sonic settings for his rants and his free associations of ideas.

Variazioni, L'Ottavia, Ondagranda: sophisticated reworkings and collaborations

Isabella Turso helps Dargen D'Amico revisit his back catalogue in a classicizing key on Variazioni (2017), with six new tracks drawn from songs previously left on the cutting-room floor. While the tracks are overhauled and offer fans a new way of reading the rapper's art (as is the case with "Ma è un sogno" and "Le file per fare l'amore"), at the very least "Cambiare me" and especially the much-discussed collaboration with Tedua, Rkomi and Izi on "Il ritorno delle stelle," the most successful track on the record and one of the key moments in the 2017 Italian scene, deserve a place in Dargen D'Amico's major songbook.

In 2018, L’ottavia also became available, originally an octet of old unreleased tracks included in the deluxe version of D’iO, reread in light of the experience gained on his later albums. Far from leftovers, these are instead new additions to his frenetic stream of consciousness ("Ottavia", "Mahler"), his oddball pop-rap ("È troppo facile innamorarsi", "Miniere") and his most demented ideas ("Cattivi"). More than a curiosity, it's a completion, the final brushstrokes on a painting in which the hybrid form between singer-songwriter tradition and rap has been explored and, by now, surpassed.

It's no coincidence that the following project, Ondagranda (2019), made in tandem with Emiliano Pepe, represents a substantial departure from what we heard on his most recent studio albums. Certainly it doesn't have the scale of his most iconic albums, with 11 tracks taking up just 36 minutes and a few moments of pure messing around, but the sonic substance is also fundamentally different: Pepe adds a soul sensibility that nonetheless bends to Dargen D’Amico's taste for the absurd and the naive, and there's a strong influence of 1980s electro-vintage kitsch, as well as a Neapolitan flavor. Two examples of this quirky blend of nostalgia, parody and hip-soul fusion are "Sposami (scusami)" and the Pino Daniele – Lucio Battisti hybrid of "Siamo sexy sexy", but also worth remembering are the Neapolitan-flavored "Canzone sensibile", another torrential set of lyrics in the vein of "Anche secondo me", and another moment of disarming poetry like "Lo preferisco vaginale": “Tu mangi la vacca io mangio il mio cane/ E non c’è nulla di grave o di anormale/ Lo preferisco vaginale/ Per te è un presidente e per me è un criminale/ Tu lo vuoi clitorideo, per me è volgare/ Lo preferisco vaginale”.

Bir Tawil: exploring a territory claimed by no one

After two collaborations, he returns as a solo artist with his seventh album, Bir Tawil (2020). The title refers to the region of the same name between Sudan and Egypt, an administratively ambiguous land with no effective control, which neither of the two sovereign states has officially claimed. It's easy to read between the lines a reference to the stylistic territory inhabited by Dargen D’Amico. The 15 tracks, spanning 76 minutes, are deeply personal, given that there are no guest features and the point of view couldn't be more alternative and off-kilter.

Three tracks stand out from the rest of a one-of-a-kind album: "Vedova" is a nine-minute delirium that reinterprets the otherworldly suspension of Vladislav Delay's "Anima" (2001) in a bizarre, pseudo-demented style; "Internet è un virus" is an exercise in mental association, a gem of his uniquely fluid writing style, underpinned by rhythmic destructuring; "Non sono più innamorato" is a 13-minute synthesis of the Ondagranda experience but with the verbal frenzy of his first two albums and a disorienting sense of compositional development, returning to the eternal theme of relationships and emotion.

While hip-hop dominates the charts, often tailing along with the trap trend, Dargen D’Amico returns to continue down his own, "other" personal path, with an album he raps, sings, produces and releases himself. It comes from an "elsewhere" claimed by no one, and it's simply unique. The ideal seal on a career with no equal in Italian hip-hop, and confirmation that, despite so many mutations, the revolutionary artist behind Musica senza musicisti and Di vizi di forma virt is still ready to point toward a different, innovative trajectory, one that might inspire future rappers, perhaps those of the next fifteen years.

The pandemic, the temptation to retire, and Sanremo

The two years between 2020 and 2021 were not the happiest for the rapper, stripped of live performances and thrown into financial crisis. Things finally changed after he took part in Sanremo in 2022. Riding this new wave of public vitality, he released Nei sogni nessuno è monogamo (2022). These 12 tracks, with no big-name producers or guest vocalists, arrive less than two years after the exceptional Bir Tawil, which went almost unnoticed, and represent the other side of his creativity, the more pop-rap, danceable side already seen on Vivere aiuta a non morire (2013) and D’iO (2015).

D’Amico is a seasoned songwriter, a lyricist at ease with wordplay, skilled at rhyming fleeting hedonism with everyday metropolitan decay. This dozen songs moves between fragile relationships, melancholy and self-deprecating humor, using rhythm to lighten the seriousness. There's a line, in the opening "Patatine", a floating, emotional rap, that sums up the concept with poetic precision: "‘sto ragazzo ride sempre, ma non è felice". The lyrics are children of the pandemic years but also the fruit of the candles piling up on the birthday cake, now that he's past forty. Even though this chapter doesn't rank among his masterpieces, it's a sign of vitality from a multifaceted artist. It's his own little covid album, light without being silly, melancholic without tipping into self-pity. A great excuse to go back to one of his shows or rediscover his discography.

Riding this unexpected mainstream maturity, he returned to Sanremo 2024 with "Onda alta" and then released Ciao America (2024), thirteen new songs marked by a strong electronic, danceable component, combined with a substantial return to some approaches used in the past. The album closes with two tracks that once again seem to reaffirm the potential of an artist who, when left free to explore his creativity, truly has something more than the rest: "1/2 Kilo" offers few points of reference, a dark, dystopian beat over which he reels off an elusive lyric, both deep and immediate; "Vita x sempre", a storytelling gem wrapped in a cloud of sweet serenity. It's hard to ask for more, after all these years. And indeed, little comes from Doppia mozzarella (2026), released just weeks after yet another appearance at Sanremo, which was also his most disappointing one. It's disheartening to note that this could reasonably be considered a minor chapter in Dargen D’Amico's entire main discography, without even the excuse of being one of his side projects. There's no coherent thread, nor any reason not to pick out a handful of tracks worth replaying (the acrobatic flow of "Tecno Tango", the abstract moments "Moto ondulatorio" and "Ipertesto") and painlessly forget the rest.

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