Fabri Fibra - The Rapper in the Crosshairs

Funny and grotesque, catchy and sick, Turbe giovanili links the bad-trip aesthetic of Sangue Misto with the new rap language of Eminem. Richly imaginative in its lyrics (just listen to "Dalla A alla zeta"), provocative in content and virtuosic in flow, it depicts everyday life through a distorting mirror that heightens the obsessive, the depressing, the macabre and the kitsch. Nothing like it had ever been heard in Italy before: it borrows the confrontational edge of Nineties hardcore hip-hop and recontextualizes it through a new, irreverent language, delivered to the listener by a rapper who, like America's Slim Shady, plays with the concept of the rap persona, a character more or less overlapping with Fabrizio Tarducci.

The psychotic mood of the opener "Scattano le indagini" immediately imposes a dense, thick language, then the more melancholic "Luna piena" reveals an emotional side that is the flip side of the caustic cynicism scattered across so many of the album's rhymes. The wordplay is already stellar ("Dove fuggi?"; "Chi c'è"), the flow impossible to pin down ("Fuori norma"; "Ci penso dopo"), and the urge to unsettle the respectable leads him to title a track "Mi stai sul cazzo", which contains rhymes like "Al posto di un marchigiano alla porta/ è meglio in casa un morto". Beneath this violent, showy style, though, a deeper unease with the mechanisms of society shows through, surfacing in "In quanti?".

Setting aside the unpolished production, partly improved by the 2010 remaster, and a tracklist that's rather too sprawling, Turbe giovanili presents Fabri Fibra as an alien entity within Italian hip-hop, offering a new style in both language and content. Without recounting city streets like so many of his peers, nor the photo-romance love stories of pop-rap already in ruins after its late-century flare-up, Fabri Fibra blends fun and malaise in equal measure, coming across as dangerous, magnetic and unsettling.

The second album, Mr. Simpatia (2004, largely produced by Nesli), is a shock and, in the author's own words, "changed the history of Italian rap, no question about it". The world as seen through the title's alter-ego is a nightmare of depression, violence and bad taste, which drops Eminem's Slim Shady into a web of references to Italian crime and gossip reporting. It pulls off a double feat: it updates homegrown hip-hop, moving away from posses and militancy, while expanding its possibilities by folding in our national pop culture. Embodying a caricature of the worst in people, but behind the mask of the alter-ego and with pitch-black irony, it breathes new life into a genre in commercial decline. In the author's own words, interviewed by HotMc:

I tear this crucifix of the Lord off the wall

And I hang it upside down on your front door

And this cover with Pina's face on it

I stick it on the toilet seat

To start with, I've been kicked out of every social center

Because I don't express various political views

I go about it like it's therapy, it gives my back jolts of electricity

I don't describe reprisals and riots

What 99 Posse do isn't rap

They make me furious

They'll explode like the Red Brigades' goddamn bombs

Warning: this is not a new Fabri Fibra album

This is the death of Mr. Simpatia

If you find this stuff too vulgar

Take it back and fuck off

Voglio andare in vacanza, me ne vado in Tunisia

Or maybe in the Red Sea, don't tell me that's forbidden too

Sarò così sfigato da finire in mezzo a un attentato?

I tried to tell the story of Erika and Omar from a particular angle. If you look at the day of the murder, everything they did, aside from the homicidal outburst, is completely ordinary. I wanted to properly explain those five minutes of total delirium, treating Erika and Omar as two kids their age, with their own reasoning and their own paranoias.

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Despite two weak albums, Fabri Fibra made headway on Mtv and Deejay Tv, helped along by the 2010 reissue of Turbe giovanili. The wait for a more solid album, however, was starting to become pressing.

In and out of the mainstream: “Tranne te”, Counterculture, Guerra e pace and Squallor

The double-platinum Counterculture (2010), released after the promotional mixtape Quorum, is a more complex, politicized and cunningly provocative work, which beneath its overlong tracklist conceals an unlikely hip-house hit, the double-platinum “Tranne te”: a song that, blending danceable electronics with rhymes propelled by his still remarkably agile flow, charts a new path toward the mainstream for much of the Italian hip-hop of the era.

The lyrics are often metrically very intricate too (“6791”; “Counterculture”; “Qualcuno normale” with Marracash), frequently aggressive and offensive (“Escort”; the festive, caustic “Vip in trip”, which goes platinum) but there are plenty of tracks that simply work thanks to Fabri Fibra's knack for doing a lot with a little, as with “3 parole”. The third single, “Le donne” (platinum), is the clearest proof that the idea of making more danceable rap is, even for him, no easy feat.

If, in the days of Mr. Simpatia, Fabri Fibra's acid-tongued style was a novelty for the Italian scene, by the time of Counterculture there's little new ground he hasn't already covered himself. The hip-house, the electro flirtations and the generally more danceable production fail to make this sixth album a worthy follow-up to Tradimento, despite considerable commercial success: it debuted at number one on the Italian album chart, staying in the top five for four weeks. A new mixtape, Venerdì 17 (2011), closes out the release cycle tied to Counterculture, underscoring how, promotionally too, Fabri Fibra has become a major name in Italian music, backing the release of a new album with the kind of resources usually reserved for stars.

After founding his own label, Tempi Duri, he launches a joint project with Clementino called Rapstar, responsible for the sole release Non è gratis (2012), recommended only to completists.

The more reflective, literary, bitter and introspective Guerra e pace (2013) is his peak as a rapper, balanced between Lil Wayne-style free association and virtuoso, often exquisitely meta, flow. He namechecks Baustelle in “Bisogna scrivere”, the first real song on the tracklist and one of the most dramatic and moving in his entire discography:

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Over sparser, often electronic production, he lets loose with the rhymes (“Voce”; “Tutto in un giorno”) but manages to hone his surgical diction even further, delivering lyrics that are lengthy yet easy to follow, suited to a crossover audience closer to pop than to hip-hop alone, as can also be heard in the much-anticipated collaboration with Neffa on “Panico” and the one with Elisa on “Dagli sbagli si impara”.

There's no shortage of radio-friendly singles either, but “Pronti, partenza, via!” is a minor entry among his hits, an electro-rap track that echoes “Tranne te” with far less enthusiasm. When Mr. Simpatia roars back on “A me di te”, crude and unpresentable, he sounds a bit dated. More rewarding is the deafening brostep of “Frank Sinatra”, something rarer than rare in Italy, a dystopian hip-hop track that ends up fragmenting and burying the rapper's voice under a thousand glitches.

The extremely long tracklist, however, is far too sprawling, and it lacks the kind of innovations that could rival what he's championed in the past. Guerra e pace is, in its own way, a mature album, replacing the unpredictable impetuousness of his early days with the craft of a scene veteran, who can toy with vocabulary and meter however he pleases but who, on the other hand, fails to channel that talent into shifting the direction of Italian rap once again. The platinum certification arrives all the same.

Somewhat by chance, between 2013 and 2014 Fabri Fibra became a protagonist, alongside rapper Vacca, in the most famous and best-remembered rap battle, a full-blown diss war that overshadows the many other controversies Fabri Fibra has stirred up over the years. The back-and-forth essentially ends with a track that proves, if proof were needed, just how steeped in hip-hop culture Fabri Fibra is and just how skilled a rapper he is: “Niente di personale”, in its full version running over 11 minutes, is a rhyming massacre in which the rapper from the Marche region deploys technique and personality, wit and power for the occasion. The fact that further episodes followed in this diss saga is little more than a formality, because “Niente di personale” is almost uncomfortable to listen to given the firepower Fabri Fibra brings to bear, a display of superiority in this kind of hip-hop exercise that's hard to match in Italy.

In contrast with his standing as a rapper known to a very broad audience, by now fully embedded in the advertising machinery of big-budget products, Fabri Fibra arrives at his eighth album, Squallor, and surprises his fans: he announces it on Twitter on April 7th, and that same day it becomes available digitally. The only promotion is on social media, almost as if it were itself a targeting choice.

The physical format clocks in at, so to speak, a mere 76 minutes, while the digital version runs past 91. The effort demanded of the listener, however, isn't paid off especially well: the opening “Troie in Porsche” is enough to understand that, over stylish production and with his usual lean rap delivery, what follows will be a parade of tracks with little substance and few new ideas.

Even electro-rap has become a habit by now ("Amnesia"; "Il rap nel mio paese"; "Dio c'è"), the meta games and the veteran flexing have already been explored on Guerra e pace ("Lamborghini/ Rime sul beat"; "A casa"; "Dexter" with Nitro and Salmo) and the new hits don't have the power to break through ("Come Vasco", not even a gold record). The provocations don't sting, the many collaborations don't add much, the commentary on the scene and society almost always spins its wheels. Worth noting a few flickers of affinity with a trap scene that, in Italy, is still in its infancy ("Trainspotting"). Really too little for a heavyweight like him, an impression that not even the live document Squallor Live (2015) manages to dispel.

Back in the mainstream: Fenomeno, the new hits and the countless collaborations

The ninth album is preceded by its title track, "Fenomeno", released in March 2017, partly inspired by a song dating all the way back to 2003, "La cosa più facile" by Uomini di Mare. Destined for double platinum, "Fenomeno" is produced by the hit-making production duo Takagi & Ketra, who manage to pair a fairly traditional beat with a chorus that instantly sticks in your head:

Fallo anche tu, eccome no

You earn more, it's convenient

Qui nessuno diventa autonomo

Senza fare un po' il fenomeno

Tutti vogliono un fenomeno

Tutti vogliono un fenomeno

Ma se poi diventi un fenomeno

Cadi a terra in questo domino

Fenomeno, the album, arrives in April 2017, at a time when Italian hip-hop is gaining ever more attention. The new generation, raised during the 2000s and 2010s, see Fabri Fibra as an institution — he who, in his day, was a revolutionary on the scene. The rapper from Senigallia chooses to describe the mechanics of a new kind of celebrity ("Red Carpet"), letting his experience and the wisdom that comes with age carry weight ("Money For Dope 2017", over a melancholy beat by Bassi Maestro).

He nods to west-coast sound ("Cronico") and to trap ("Dipinto di blu" with rising star Laïoung; "Le vacanze", produced by Don Joe and young Yung Snapp), but when "Nessun aiuto" revives his old anxious, uneasy style — updated, yet still a gut punch — recounting the friction with his brother and mother:

Mille paure che affronto, mille viaggi, mille fisse

Mia madre dice a Nesli: "Distruggilo nelle interviste

So they'll see that, if you insult him, he doesn't react

In this carousel of styles, not always coherent and at times a bit forced, we also find two hugely successful singles, very different from each other and relevant for different reasons: the quadruple-platinum "Pamplona", together with Thegiornalisti, embracing an it-pop sound that dominates the charts of the period and that stands as the most crowd-pleasing, pop-friendly Fabri Fibra ever; and the triple-platinum "Stavo pensando a te", a nostalgic production by Big Fish that allows the rapper to write a love song that becomes an instant classic of the most cross-generational, mainstream kind.

Fenomeno captures a career increasingly tied to hits, his own or others', that connect Fabri Fibra to both pop and the new wave of hip-hop. This parallel career path, also linked to a new way of understanding celebrity in music - built on pooling together different fanbases to boost streaming numbers and the reach of posts across social networks - can be traced back to "Festa festa" by Crookers, a track Fabri Fibra already features on back in 2010, and continues with guest appearances on songs by Emis Killa ("Dietro front", 2012) as well as Tiromancino ("L'inquietudine di esistere", 2011) and Luca Carboni ("Fisico & politico", 2013). After the new wave of Italian hip-hop explodes, he is called upon as a guest by, among others, Lazza, Carl Brave, Mecna, Clementino, Nitro, MadMan, Gemitaiz, Mondo Marcio, Metal Carter, Bassi Maestro, Izi, Maruego, Dardust, Charlie Charles, Claver Gold, Salmo, Nerone, Madame, Grido, Ernia, Sottotono, but also by Francesca Michielin and Negramaro. In some cases it feels like a tribute to someone regarded as a mentor, in others an alliance between rap heavyweights, and in still others a bridge toward a different sonic world, one that also helps him sound more contemporary.

This constant presence coincides with a phase of his career that often looks back to the past and to consolidating his standing in the scene, as also reflected in the compilation Il tempo vola 2002-2020 (2019).

Before and after Caos: one rapper, a hundred rappers

In 2022 Fabri Fibra releases his tenth album, Caos, a record that is proudly and openly old-school, the kind meant to be listened to from start to finish. A veritable whirlwind of collaborations, the first half of "Caos" is brash and highly radio-friendly. Fibra is in great form, putting on trial a long list of unnamed - because they don't even deserve a mention - would-be hit-makers and parasites (on the urban "GoodFellas", featuring Rose Villain), the rotten absurdity of Italian society (amid the shimmering europop synths of "Stelle", with Maurizio Carucci) and pretty much anyone who crosses his path, including himself ("Brutto figlio di").

Accompanied by a thoroughly charming video that sees Fabri Fibra dressed up as an office worker and Colapesce e Dimartino as two land-registry clerks, "Propaganda" is certainly the standout track of the first half of the tracklist, with the rapper slyly rhyming about Italian political communication (especially the kind dressed in a hoodie) and the two guests perfectly at ease on a harmonized chorus only they could pull off. Equally irresistible, if more retro, is the chorus entrusted to old friend Neffa on "Giostra"; on "Caos" it's Madame's turn, as perfectly at home as ever between cloud-rap atmospheres and more synthetic textures, while the anguished chorus is handled by Lazza.

After "Fumo erba", "Demo nello stereo" and "El Diablo" - all admittedly a bit flat and somewhat predictable - "Amici o nemici" ushers in the darker, more reflective section of the record, whose high point is certainly "Cocaine". Here, alongside Guè and Salmo, Fibra turns brooding as he tackles the scourge of cancel culture and the distorting excesses of political correctness. Another key passage is "Noia", where alongside Marracash he explores his own inner darkness.

Fabri Fibra, 23 years after his debut and with a central role in the evolution of the genre in Italy, no longer has anything to prove. On his first record with Sony, after fifteen years with Universal, he writes a tenth album that doesn't chase trends. He does so by drawing on his considerable technical skill with rhyme, donning the many masks of his past, but with great self-awareness and a touch of self-deprecating humor.

Caos (2022) was a pleasant surprise, following a run of less inspired albums. In the years since, Fabri Fibra has also become better known among a younger audience as a judge on "Nuova Scena", Netflix's rap-themed talent show, the Italian take on the "Rhythm + Flow" format. While Los Angeles Burns (2025) is a more uneven, less sharply focused album, which, like its predecessor, has its dips in inspiration but also shows flashes of the old lion of the scene, now approaching fifty.

It alternates between various incarnations of Fabri Fibra: the hit maker, the introspective rapper, the over-forty who still wants (and manages) to stay relevant, and also the cult artist who can nod back to his classics more or less explicitly. When his rhymes land, he's still unerring, without needing to show off technical flourishes and without ever losing clarity of communication. Amid the glut of releases in our mainstream hip-hop scene, it's still an above-average album, but within his discography it feels above all like one more excuse to remind everyone that Fabri Fibra is still around and can still add something to the (new) scene.

Compared to other Italian rappers, even veteran ones, Fabri Fibra has shown over the course of a long career that he can play the part of the disruptive innovator and hit songwriter, the artist who hosts big names and rising talents while also lending himself to countless collaborations, the rapper who scandalizes but can also move you. Unlike many of his peers, he has found a multifaceted language that, depending on the moment, speaks to very different audiences: Italian rap connoisseurs who still thank him for Turbe Giovanili and Mr. Simpatia or even those who remember Sindrome di fine millennio; electro-house sound lovers who recall his influence on the mainstream of the 2010s; younger listeners who see him as an institution still tied to the present, more a veteran than a dinosaur.

At the dawn of the new millennium, it was common to wonder how rappers who had emerged in the Eighties and Nineties - artists often uncompromising and with controversial public images - would age. The history of hip-hop has answered this question in many different ways: careers simply cut short, slow and inexorable declines, the occasional miraculous comeback, and, more rarely, a second act that, without disowning the past, evolves and cross-pollinates. Fabri Fibra, who at the turn of the millennium was still just a promising newcomer, has found a way to grow old while still being a rapper, broadening his language enough to remain, even now as he approaches fifty, one of the most important Italian rappers.

Contributions by Michele Corrado ("Caos")