January 21, 2022 13:32
At some point in Dope boys alphabet, the documentary on the story of Noyz Narcos recently released on Prime Video, the founder of his record label, Ciro Buccolieri, says that the difference between Noyz and the other rappers is that he “does not make albums, but films”. What does it mean? “I think it’s an allusion to the fact that he fills songs with images, a cinematic writing,” Noyz explains over the phone. Then he reflects: “Or maybe it refers to the way I work. Every time it’s a birth, I’m picky as hell ”. I believe more in the second answer: between gestations of at least two years, clashes with producers, a fierce and suffered approach to music and a lot of life lived to precede them, his records are an exception compared to the way of conceiving them today, which he defines “cooked and eaten”.
But it is precisely the character of Noyz, that is Emanuele Frasca from Rome, who represents a short circuit of the rap scene. Forty-two years old, former tattoo artist, very attached to the city where he was born, despite being shy and not inclined to interviews is the only Italian to maintain a relatively large success – platinum records, club tour sold out, international collaborations – while remaining alternative, extreme, difficult to digest. It began in 2000 with the Truceboys collective, which later became TruceKlan, along with cult names such as Gel, Metal Carter, Chicoria. Since then, it hasn’t changed: raw lyrics and heavy voice, punk attitude, blood and skull aesthetics, movie quotes splatter, asphyxiating metrics, hatred of institutions. At the center of his whole life, made up of excesses and discomfort. Some consider it a religion, they tattoo their phrases on themselves, they put them in bio of Instagram. And then the basics: first close to metal (especially in the debut Do not sleep) and now crepuscular, always raw. Night Skinny, his collaborator for years as producer, says her gaze “scares him”.
I had never talked to Noyz before. I am struck by the essentiality of the words he says, the never talking about him, but also a certain education, humility, professionalism. I write it not because this constitutes news in itself, but because Dope boys alphabet it is filled with archival images showing a rude, “hating” boy. Instead, the feeling is of a person who hasn’t changed since the time, of course, but who has channeled that anger and that malaise into a purely artistic path, who has created music that is valid not only in the underground but capable of adapting to the times of the marketing and fashions. And resist, update.
This path started in 2010, when the album Guilty he began to scoff at sounds and lyrics, and ended up with Enemy (2018), in which he collaborated with a new generation of artists, from Rkomi to Carl Brave, from Achille Lauro to Coez and Capo Plaza, agreeing to contaminate himself. It was supposed to be the last record of his career. “I couldn’t find my place in a trap dominated market. I have nothing against it, but I am more extreme and fundamentalist. And I wanted to stop. Except that the response from the public was so warm that I gave up, ”he says. For personal satisfaction, then. For “business sense”. But also for the people.
In fact, one of the most significant chapters of Virus – his new album released on January 14, followed by Enemy – is Dope boy, autobiographical insight that tells of when people stop him on the street, asking him to do … still the music they grew up with. But there is no stardom in all of this. “I like to be generational, to have fans who don’t even use social media, don’t make ‘noise’ in the debate, but conceive music like me. All this is for them “. And in any case he and I agree that, beyond the niches, the general interest is still returning to more orthodox forms of hip hop in terms of metrics, sounds and format, as evidenced also by the success of the latest works by Marracash and Gué.
All the more reason Virus, by the same admission of its author, it does not want to betray the codes of all time, even if it is the result of experience and the desire to experiment. The one who once vented hatred and resentment, in fact, has turned into a rapper damn who has refined the pen. And now he has started writing directly in the studio. “Before it was different: I worked there for months when I was locked up at home, it was a torment,” he says. “Now I understand immediately if they are in the day, so I do it straight away, as if I turned on a switch. After silt what comes out. Call it experience, maturity. In this process, the contribution of the producer is fundamental, of those who take care of the bases of the songs, because we are in the studio together, we stimulate each other. I want it to be a real, physical relationship. For years I have heard the producer by email: I contacted those I liked, they sent me tracks, I chose which to compose the rhymes and amen. Today I prefer to work live, side by side. Just a few, trust me ”. The “few, trusted” in this round are Mace (who oversaw theother Victory lap, an airy gospel that for Noyz is “wonderful”), Sine, which carries the component urban, and Night Skinny, author of much of the music on the album, at high altitude rmore classic ap.
The result is difficult to frame, between moments when everything seems to slow down (Cry later, with a soft refrain with autotune by Sfera Ebbasta) and others in which the system sounds raw and minimal, almost disturbing (Foot locker) like the stories of perennial anxiety he tells. “Watch me drive on my knee as I read the map,” he raps in steering wheel 4, and it seems to get lost with him. Surely it is a stimulated work influenced by the pandemic (“it was not easy to record, we continued in fits and starts among the lockdown“), And it certainly has an effective title (” the name Virus it came as an enlightenment after recording it, even if I was just looking for an English word that would contain its meaning, as I had done in the previous albums “), but it remains complex to place in Noyz’s path. Self Enemy it represented an opening to the new, to a less extreme sound, here you really are spoiled for choice. “For me, it’s just the most varied I’ve done: introverted and mean, hard and melancholy.”
On the one hand, for the first time, there are international collaborations, with Raekwon of the Wu-Tang Clan and Cam’ron, stars of American rap whose presence here is a certificate of esteem. “I looked for them, but they are not random people,” Noyz explains. “The fact that they are interested in my story and decide to send me their stanzas means a lot to the work I have done over the years.” And there are, again for the first time, also pieces that are more like traditional songs. They are the result of session of collective writing which was attended by Ketama 126, Franco 126 and Coez, children of the street but with a more pop path than Noyz. All together in a villa, to exchange stanzas, ideas, opinions. And in songs like Blister e steering wheel 4 their hand is felt, but in an unexpected way: the structures are canonical, the rhymes soft, but the lyrics and refrains are not easy, indeed even more gloomy and melancholy than those of Enemy. We take Spine, with Coez: it is a love song distant from that My love song which bothered comparisons with the sacred with at times blasphemous tones and which had brought him so much attention in 2013, but contains an effective crime news metaphor, which few can afford: love is her, yes, but with a gun in her hand. towards him. “I stripped off the bastard’s robes and cursed,” he says. “Coez helped me, he was afraid to do it. Afraid that people will not recognize me and keep asking the usual things. But I am happy to blur my imagination also in this, let’s say, sentimental key. Always keeping the winning dose of realness. Anyway, it’s always me, that’s it ”.
And the other side of the album, which proceeds according to the usual script, confirms this. With his father (him) who gladly calls his children together (the new generations, from Rasty Kilo to Speranza and Geolier, because “confrontation is fundamental”), the arrogant and self-celebrating Roman ditty (Virus), hatred “for breakfast”, the hymn of belonging to public housing (the same Cry later). And a root recovery through Verano zombie pt.3, which closes a series of zombie summer dating back to 2005 and 2007 respectively, in which he returns to rapping with Metal Carter and Gemello. Again Noyz says he did it for “people who have been asking for it for years”. But is that all? “Actually no, I also wanted to give a reminder of what my music was before”.
Because if Enemy was still inserted in a path of scraping, Virus it is the first album truly independent from the past, which opens up accounts with the future. The identity card says forty-two, the employment contract is rich and signed with a major, much of the discomfort he told at the time of the Truceklan has disappeared from his life. A lot has changed around him, something is also changing in his music. In the documentary it is said that, listening to the historical pieces, one gets the impression that he brings out the worst in himself at the microphone; and now? “Now there are not only negative feelings in my songs, thankfully. Of course, the hatred is still there: I hated the state at twenty because it disappoints me, I still hate it because it continues to do so. But life, especially professional life, has given me blessings ”.
Never so new, never so old. “I’m not here because I made the easy hit,” he concludes. And it turns out: “If I knew how many collaborations that would bring me visibility, I refused. I got to where I am because I tested the world of music: my success is the son of my coherence, of the hatred I have given off, of the grim pieces. In this I am an exception, it is true. Precisely for this reason I will never be able to change, people would no longer believe me “. And also Virus, in the end, is another good film by Noyz Narcos.