CAPO PLAZA - Hustle Mixtape

Hustle, hustle, hustle

Euro, money nella sacoche

Hustle, hustle, hustle

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There's been a reversal of course in certain strands of Italian trap, originally street-level, confrontational and underground, but which has quickly and irreversibly become institutional, mainstream and polished. It's happened to Capo Plaza too, who, after seeing his audience shrink with “Plaza” (2021), returns in 2022 with this “Hustle Mixtape”. As with many of his peers, the underground format of the mixtape is more a statement of intent than a genuine recording necessity, given that Atlantic and Warner are still very much in the picture, and in the end the difference from an album comes down to approach on the beat and a more direct use of language.

Overtaken by the newest generation of names like Paky, Rondodasosa, Rhove, Simba La Rue and many others, with more explicit content and a more dangerous, less polished image, some of the successful trappers have tried to rekindle their street credibility with harsher tracks and tactical collaborations, aimed at patrolling their turf.

Capo Plaza does so here with a dozen tracks whose beats teem with sub-bass and slang, from the opening “Hustle” through to the brand-name “Stone Island” and “Goyard”, which recall the bombastic bars of the late, lamented Dark Polo Gang. For anyone well-versed in this sound, it's like stepping back a good five years, both in the production and in the collaborations with buzzy French peers; on “Giungla” the theme, the flow and the beat are a tribute to the Tedua of “Mowgli” (back in 2018). Then, to keep the charts happy anyway, the tracklist also includes a melancholy, eighties-flavoured trap-pop number like “Capri Sun”, which would fit right in on Lazza's “Sirio”.

The trapper is nimble in rattling off his lyrics (just listen to “Hennessy”), but his creative vein has run dry: he doesn't have much new to say, and this return to a darker, edgier trap is defused by too many compromises (why all this censoring of swear words? why a couple of winks at radio play?).

Of the dozens of names that have popped up on the Italian trap scene, many will be forgotten, their inspiration too fleeting and their output too patchy. Capo Plaza, with a palmarès of platinum records and dizzying numbers on Spotify and YouTube, risks falling into that same category despite it all, unless he finds his own dimension again: even though we're talking about a so-called mixtape, at this point the next album will be the decisive one.

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02/09/2022