Maybe it’s because those moves that are always too accentuated have become a stylistic feature that is fascinating in its own way, maybe it’s because that way of rapping that is never completely on time has become an aesthetic trademark or maybe it’s the choice to season the dialogue with the public with a motivational rhetoric halfway between a good punchline and a self-help manual (the now famous slogan «Don’t let your humility turn into insecurity and your confidence turn into arrogance» is a good example), but Tedua on stage has now developed a unique charisma.
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Tedua is accompanied, as at the Forum, by four musicians, three backing singers, a DJ and his lifelong friend Vez Tè to double-tap him. The concert is therefore in line with what has now become a must in Italy: rap played with a band. On a conceptual level, as happens with other colleagues, it could work, but managing a band when it comes to urban and groove is not always easy. If abroad the Americans have taught us that the best way to make this choice work is to rely on the beat, to lean on it, thus returning to the black roots of the genre such as funk, r&b, soul, in Italy too often we find ourselves witnessing a banal transmutation of the sound into that pop-rock that Vasco dreams of but which inexorably ends up stopping at the national-popular attempts of Achille Lauro. The problem with arranging certain beats in a pop-rock key is that some pieces inevitably end up stalling, losing groove. If in the albums the guitars are set in a rhythmic context of 808s and trap drum kits, live the risk is to get bogged down in the high school rock band (not by chance the citation of Phantom Planet), not for the quality of the individual instrumentalists, who are on the ball, but for the overall sound result. It is no coincidence that when the acoustic guitar dominates you end up moving fearfully in the oratory area. We understand that here we are talking – and singing – about Paradise, the most Christian of concepts, but musically the result is not as exciting as it could be. So today, so yesterday at the Forum.
The magic of Tedua’s live show is elsewhere. It’s not in the arrangements, it’s not in the outfit with which he rightly tries to distance himself from the trapper-with-a-bag aesthetic of many of his fellow guests of this two-day show, nor in the scenography (this time a step back from the Forum one, except for the visuals, which carry forward an aesthetic made of watercolour morphings of battles, demons, saints and paradises), but in Tedua’s ability to make us believe in his vision. Someone said that to achieve a dream you have to convince the people around you of that dream and Tedua knows how to do this in a special way. So special that it makes us digest without too much difficulty certain cringe passages of the performance (above all the interlocutory finale of the second date in which instead of closing with a bang he ends up getting lost in a moment of strange egotrip in which, followed by a camera that projects the images on the big screen, he signs autographs in the front rows while the system plays the studio version of Another Purgatory), time never in time (and damn if you stop everything with pop-rock you will continue to highlight this weakness!), the artist’s obsession with numbers and – above all, as already told here – comments on social media (« This song received many direct comments”, he says of one of his songs, “the mayor told us to close at 11pm, I know that tomorrow you will complain on TikTok about the songs that I didn’t put in the set list”, he will repeat several times). If this isn’t magic.
In a live show that – at the end of the day – sounds more like a missed opportunity to raise the bar again, Tedua still comes out the winner in front of his people (55,000 over the two days). From him he has the charisma, the guests of the evenings (among many Annalisa, Angelina Mango, Sfera Ebbasta, Lazza, Capo Plaza, la Drilliguria) and 12 months of success. But rather than the umpteenth relaunch of his career, here we are simply talking about the closing of a circle.
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In the cauldron of Italian urban artists, Tedua remains firmly on the podium of the most intriguing, talented, intelligent ones. Compared to his colleagues, many pardoned beyond all common sense, he is an artist on a mission and for this reason the attention on him and his choices will be increasingly greater. But ambition, as we know, is a double-edged sword: if on the one hand it gives that extra energy that led Tedua to push himself beyond his limits, on the other it is a load that brings with it many expectations. For this reason, a wasted opportunity, a choice left half way, a possibility not properly seized have a different specific weight compared to the sea of mediocrity of much of the surrounding scene (urban and mainstream). We expect a lot from Tedua because in the past he has already shown us that every step forward can be a leap. Because national popularism can also be achieved by relying on talent, even by continuing to amaze (a clear example is the collaboration for aesthetics with David LaChapelle).
Perhaps now Tedua’s only brake, paradoxically, is himself and the fear of disappointing others. If he manages to move away from the suffocating pressure of comments and social media to focus on what he really feels about his art (perhaps assisted by a team more attentive to the creative direction of the live performances), the bar could be raised to a level to which no other colleague in the his generation now seems capable of arriving. Right now, and particularly in the live sphere, we’re not there yet, but it’s almost there. Perhaps in addition to trying to convince all of us, at times, Tedua will have to learn to convince himself, ignoring the background noise. We hope so, the Italian urban desperately needs it.
