SALMO - Playlists

Maurizio Pisciottu, aka Salmo, has been on the scene for a lifetime, ever since the tender age of thirteen, and is by now a heavyweight of Italian rap. Two years on from "Hellvisback", he releases "Playlists", an album recorded in Los Angeles and produced by Sony Music in collaboration with Machete Empire Records. The record, announced through a series of remarkable marketing stunts – first with the rapper's impromptu performance dressed as a homeless man in Milan, then via a video launched on Pornhub, and finally with a featuring from Coez on Netflix – is his fifth solo studio album.

The listen opens with “90MIN”, a critique of the average Italian that, far from being redundant, has an explosive sound. The song is a ticking time bomb where Salmo’s voice (or rather his scream) marks the beat, pounding on the four-on-the-floor kick: “Questa è l’Italy, è una mente contorta/ chiudi la bocca o ti levan la scorta/ informazione, sai, qui non informa/ I razzisti che ascoltano hip hop/ qualcosa non torna”. The track doubles up with the first of many featurings, possibly the most striking one. Over a nostalgic backdrop, in the style of 90s US boom bap, stand out the punchlines of a sacred monster of Italian rap: Fabri Fibra. “STAI ZITTO” is a scathing song, a tribute to old school hip-hop, in which the two rappers’ voices alternate perfectly:

Non credere a nessuno sotto i trent’anni

Mi vorrei reincarnare in un trap boy

Per potere dire solamente “yeah, yeah”

Senza offesa, anche a me piace la trap, poi

A diciott’anni mica scopi se ascolti gli Slayer

Overall, we're looking at a well-structured work that nevertheless comes across as fragmented, where the tracks at times don't seem to be the product of an overarching project, but rather appear as a series of singles. Songs such as “PXM” and “HO PAURA DI USCIRE” encapsulate Salmo's trademark: strong punchlines, ultra-powerful beats and lyrics that are current, ironic and never banal. Unfortunately, these sit uneasily alongside divertissements like “TIE” and featurings with sonic palettes and attitudes that are extremely distant from the rest of the record, including the feat. with Sfera Ebbasta. “CABRIOLET”, with which Salmo winks at trap, is a song built on multiple levels that, however catchy, appear completely disjointed from one another and from the rest of the album.

The collaboration with Coez is undoubtedly more successful: with “SPARARE ALLA LUNA” he created an episode closer to the rapper's own sensibility, with an old style backdrop and a chorus in the typical Coez/Broken Speakers style that doesn't disappoint: “Ho un piano in mente per la fuga/ Vogliono la mia carne cruda/ Ho l’anima che suda sotto la mia giacca/ Vogliono prendere la luna riflessa nell’acqua”.

Listening to the album, and in particular to tracks like “LUNEDI”, a splendid and desperate rap-ballad that closes the record, the artist's skill and power still come across as undeniable and above all inescapable. Salmo is able to imagine a world, fill it with subhuman characters and destroy it to the sound of punchlines. As a true urban storyteller, the rapper from Olbia has understood and reinterpreted the era he lives in. In doing so, he has managed to absorb the rules of the game and make them his own, breaking free from street rap without betraying it – indeed, (between one well-executed attempt and a perhaps less successful one) always keeping one foot in his home turf.

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20/12/2018