SHIVA - Vangelo

After the collaborative “Santana Money Gang” (2025) with Italy's trapstar par excellence, Sfera Ebbasta, and a few years after the double bill dedicated to Milan's angels and demons, Shiva aims high and tries to write his own “Vangelo”.

Gone are the moments of apparent redemption following his legal troubles; we're back, cheerfully (?), to the trap clichés we've known well in Italy for a decade or so. 

It's a pompous album, one that takes itself very seriously and as a result sounds so overblown it verges on caricature at times. It takes an awful lot of self-confidence to open with a track like “V per Vangelo”, a sprawling celebration of self that has lost that hint of introspection glimpsed in the past. Worse still, there are fresh threats and boasts about never asking for forgiveness: “Take 6” proves that all the troubles of recent years haven't led to any shift in perspective, letting everything collapse into a tiresome narrative that mixes the biblical with the megalomaniacal, with risky comparisons to Christ on “Risorgere”. Shiva even goes so far as to prove that “Dio esiste” (“God exists”), a track built without drums: the kind of thing Kanye West would do, minus Kanye West's genius.

With the autopilot switched on for much of the record, we get more carbon-copy trap tracks like “Polvere rosa”, “Peccati” (where he sings a bit more than usual), and “Spie”. The one novelty lies in the production of a track like “Obsessed” (feat. Anna), clearly inspired by the Timbaland of twenty years ago, with its crowded, layered rhythms. That same influence comes through overwhelmingly on “Mayday” (feat. Lazza and Sfera Ebbasta).

The more pop-rap side is well represented by “Bad bad bad” (feat. Geolier), perfect for first crushes but useless for an audience old enough to vote. 

The collaborations are largely unremarkable, with the usual Kid Yugi stealing the track from right under the host's nose on “Babyface”. The only oddity is Tiziano Ferro on “Bacio di Giuda”, the most R&B moment on the record, though hardly a memorable one.

The best comes only at the very end, with “Coscienza”. Finally, a sincere song in which Shiva opens up and lays himself bare. This is how the whole album could have been: it might not have rewritten the history of our hip-hop, but at least it would have told the story of a man coming to terms with his own past and his own traumas. As it stands, though, “Vangelo” is an act of self-absolution that does very little to break free from the familiar, by-now-tedious templates of our trap scene.

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09/05/2026