No revival, just the desire to do old school hip hop with a style that has sculpted an entire genre. “FoglieMorte” is mature melancholy without traces of trap. Firm in the hands of two key figures of the scene. Their first real meeting 22 years ago, when Neffa signed the bases of Fabri Fibra’s debut album. Then they were “youth mobs”. Today, within this hit, there are adult regrets…
“Dead leaves” born to split and rocks. Three minutes in which old school hip hop re-embraces soul and melancholy. In order for this opening sentence to make sense, just take a look at the two signatures of the song: Neffa (with i Mixed Blood in DNA) e Fabri Fibra. “Maybe I thought about you without having the answers/Walking on a path made of dead leaves”, goes the melody. There are the Neffa of yesterday and that of today, in this new piece. He raps velvety as he has always done, but does not give up a melodic touch imbued with nostalgia and regrets (“Behind the corners of my mind you go / Without deluding myself that this time you will return”). Three minutes of piece, but the song is a “slow-burner”, it grows with each listen, it insinuates itself, i beats they hit and massage, the song also captures the attention of those who often tend to direct this attention, head bowed and step fast, to an illuminated screen.
AND Fiber? He enters, plays the part of him, pressing, also well in tune with the defeated mood of the piece. And he places his dubious existentialism dedicated to a past destined to be eternally burdensome: “Now I wonder if I was ever true/Or if I pretended to fight boredom.” Mature verses, mature beats, clear artistic spectrum. All correct, right to invest in other people’s hip hop responsibility in addition to those already adequately trapped for years. Shit, we’re not talking about “cash” here! Possible? A typo, perhaps? There is no talk of having to “turn around the day”, there is rapping and not speech, there is a strong albeit synthetic narrative. There is a piece of life, melancholy, which tends to repeat itself, threatening. Does everything go so smoothly because the relationship between Neffa and Fibra comes from afar?
Lhe bases of “Turbe juvenilei”, Fibra’s very tough debut (2002), were signed by the mentor Neffa. A couple of years ago Fibra declared: “To him (Neffa, ed) I owe a lot. I was a huge fan of him then and still am today. I tried to give my best by describing the province with the poetics of the 90s: less puns and more narration”. The style of “FoglieMorte”, in the end, is still this. 90s at heart, but without a revival effect, but with the intention of passing on a way of understanding hip hip that contributed to defining the genetic code of the genre. So they may be three radio minutes, those of “FoglieMorte”, which risk being dried out by the first insistent sunny days, but this does not take away from the fact that we are faced with a mid-season hit that is done and finished. Subtly ambitious. Proud. “You can look for me in this night where many people get lost”. Melancholy, we repeat, but it is not an insult
