They ring the intercom, lunch has arrived. It’s two in the afternoon. We pay for the delivery, Mace sits down at the table and with a knife begins to open the vacuum-packed containers of Al Noor, an Indian rotisserie in via Ripamonti. We are in the Vigentino district, in the south of Milan. It was once considered a suburb but today, especially after the opening of the Prada Foundation, it is almost the center. We are in the musician’s studio-house, an open space loft. On the walls hang the paintings of his father, Antonio Benussi, painter and graphic artist, and the posters collected in his many trips around the world, which sprout behind large potted plants.
In one corner, between synthesizers and drum machines, is a sitar brought here from India. “I never play it, it’s out of tune. I keep it as a souvenir, ”explains Mace, who wears her long, dyed green hair pulled back into a slightly disheveled ponytail. He is wearing a pair of red pants and a blue turtleneck sweater. Simone Benussi, this is his real name, was born in Milan in 1982 but grew up in Pioltello, in the hinterland, where in the late nineties he approached music and formed the duo La Crème together with rapper Jack The Smoker. “My friends had started rapping, and I wanted to make the beats,” he says looking back on those times.
Mace has been on the scene for years, but has crossed genres, commuting between hip hop and electronics. In Italy nobody makes the beats (the basics, in the language of rap) like him. You recognize his style immediately, and he is innovating the world of Italian hip hop.
As a producer he has worked with the most interesting names in the rap scene: Fabri Fibra, Colle der Fomento and Marracash, among others. But he has always been a restless one. He closed the experience with La Crème after only one album, he dedicated himself to electronics and founded the collective Reset!, Which for nine years organized parties and DJ sets in Milan, even making world tours. In 2012 he discovered the trap, and he realized that that was the sound of the future. So he began releasing instrumental trap singles, before returning to producing backing tracks for Italian rappers, such as Marracash and Gemitaiz.
Until the beginning of 2021 his name was known above all to insiders. Then he made a solo album, Obe (acronym for out of body experience), recorded together with the singer-songwriter and friend Venerus and with artists such as Salmo and Blanco. That album, especially thanks to the success of the single La canto nostra, played millions of times on Spotify, has become one of the most listened to of 2021 in Italy. It is full of suggestions, full of fascinating sound details, and brings together different audiences: young trap fans, those who love nineties hip hop and those used to listening to other genres, such as rock and soul. This is why it is one of the best rap albums of recent times.
While we eat mutter pilau rice with saffron, cumin and peas, I try to better understand how Mace works, who writes, composes and arranges songs that then makes others sing, or rap, to others. “I conceive music as a choral process, based on the encounter and harmony between people. I think I have a bit of a hippy work ethic, that world has always fascinated me. Obviously I live in the present, it’s not that I hug the trees or put flowers in the cannons. In the studio, when I work as a producer, I have to be a bit of a musician and a bit of a psychologist. I have to be patient and help the musicians find their way, live with their ego. My ego, on the other hand, I try to keep it under control, in fact the dream is to tear it to pieces ”, he explains.
On which are his favorite records, he has no doubts: “Everything that came out between the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies, from Funkadelic to Black Sabbath. They lived on the road, ate together and shared every moment. That’s why they did magical stuff. And then the Beatles. Even if I do rap and electronics, my main source of inspiration remains them ”.
A classic of Indian cuisine awaits us, chicken tikka masala: marinated chicken with spices and yogurt dipped in a spicy sauce between red and orange. Al Noor’s is delicious, says Mace, “because the sauce is creamy.” He tells me about his latest project: “I recently returned from a short stay in San Gimignano, in the Tuscan countryside, where I worked on my new album together with Venerus, Gemitaiz, Enrico Gabrielli of Calibro 35 and others. There was also a friend of mine who plays the sitar very well. We recorded a few things and did some lysergic trips ”.
“Come on, let’s go to the terrace, I’ll smoke a cigarette,” he says pulling out a Winston. On the steps, where Tibetan prayer flags are hung, I notice a copy of True Hallucinations by Terence McKenna, writer, naturalist and exponent of psychedelic culture, considered the Timothy Leary of the nineties. Mace is a firm believer in the therapeutic power of psychedelics. “When you listen to music under the influence of psilocybin, the active ingredient extracted from hallucinogenic mushrooms, you feel like you are hearing it for the first time. I consider it a therapy, and it helped me to get out of one of the darkest periods of my life ”.
The terrace is covered with a synthetic lawn. Mace shields himself from the sun with one hand. “Psychedelics also help me connect with nature. On the weekend I escape to the mountains, a couple of hours from Milan, perhaps in the company of some mushrooms, to seek peace. I have made many trips, the first at five years with my parents, when we went to Sai Baba’s ashram in India. But I recently found out that there is no need to go to the Mount Bromo volcano on the island of Java. You can also feel good on Alpe Veglia, if you are at peace with yourself “.