FABRI FIBRA - Zarathustra Style

“Zarathustra Style”, the joint album by Fabri Fibra and Neffa, is one of those forbidden dreams that every fan of Italian hip-hop has nurtured at least once. When Neffa gave up rhyming, he handed his beats over to none other than Fabri Fibra, in a kind of passing of the torch. An absolute pioneer of the Italian scene showed, with that gift of beats, his esteem for what was then a young talent destined to become one of the most revolutionary and celebrated Italian rappers of all time. Two generations face to face, back then, whereas today Fabri Fibra has turned fifty and Neffa is nine years older still: both decidedly old school compared to the very young artists currently dominating the scene. Together they present a project that runs counter to market logic, with no big hits, no guest features, even though it would have been easy for two heavyweights like them to land plenty. More than anything, “Zarathustra Style” relies on atmosphere and mid-tempo beats, wordplay and careful attention to meter and flow, as if we were back in the days of Uomini di Mare or “Neffa e i Messaggeri della Dopa”.

The emotion, on first listen, is undeniable. The intro, with a classic boom bap and Fabri Fibra's hypnotic voice obsessively repeating the hook, commands the listener's attention. On the first real song, “Trip”, the two sound in good shape, and Neffa seems to live up to his project “Canerandagio” (2025): a bass-heavy beat, the two voices trading off on the mic with good dynamism, an intricate lyric in an Italian stuffed with English terms. The dark mood continues on the gloomy “Jay-Z”, on the even more spectral “Alienazione”, and this is where the album's most interesting aspect emerges: two rappers confronting the specter of death, of malaise, of the void menacingly creeping in at the edges of life and career.
Fabri Fibra can certainly still hit hard, as on the faster, more aggressive “Stupefatti” or on “Fatti avanti”, but above all Neffa is often busy exploring his own shadows, as on the melancholy, pop-soul “Promesse di agosto”, or in hallucinated nightmares set to rhyme like “Demoni”.

I swear this feels like a horror movie
I play my cards, I'm molotov
Inside me legions are fighting
[…]
And I swear I'm not the type
But it's a good time to be scared
When the monster comes, you don't speak
You've got a scream inside like Thriller, ah, Michael Jackson
Walking Dead, zombies like inhuman heroes
They see it through with demons

By the tenth track, the forgettable “Le date”, it becomes clear that “Zarathustra Style” is simply long-winded, a total of 23 tracks for an hour's listen. The atmospheres, the lyrical content, the flow and essentially the ideas the two put into music are all too similar. The trouble with a track like “Strada buia” isn't that it's bad in itself, but that it shows up as track seventeen on an album that has already offered up similar messages, sounds and rhymes many times over by that point. A display of technical skill like “Carta pazza” can't be the turning point that an album this long and monotonous would need; even the livelier “Money”, a decent parting shot, arrives when the listener is already worn out. Neffa and Fabri Fibra may well have fun with us on “Alfa Omega”, but a track this dynamic and varied shouldn't be the exception, it should be the rule. In the end “Zarathustra Style” works but doesn't surprise, and so it disappoints: when you have two champions on the mic, it's the perfect chance to write a joint album that makes history. The temptation here is to pull out the best tracks and put them in a playlist.

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16/10/2026