Seven Italian artists you will hear more about

The top 7 of talents to keep an eye on this year is composed by a handful of very heterogeneous names that, if you listen carefully, show a very important peculairity for these days. What unites them all, in fact, is their uniqueness and, if you want, the strangeness of their style, asthethic and, sometimes existencial choices. Thanks to their intuitions and an ambitious desire to take risks, they move around visuals containing old advertisements, dance refrains (yes, for real) and a new way of composing music: without labels and without boundaries between genres. If indie was the definition of a way of making music, indipendent from the big industries, today this term enters the real musical genres, collecting the songwriting within it. According to these young talents, songwriting is also something else: from the live guitar and voice to the autotune, from rap to synth-pop, the new players are making room in the musical undergrowth by jostling with a unique plasticity in mixing genres and an intrinsic and naive diversity. They often come out of nowhere, with self-produced video clips and non-existent press kits. Maybe they won’t be the new monsters of the scene (cit.), or maybe they will, and we will have won this bet.

Predicting hte future in advance when it comes to the artists we will talk about this ending 2018 and a rampant 2019 (we are marzulliani, if you know who Gigi Marzullo is), is quite complicated, but we tried anyways, in random order. 

MERIO

Label: Costello’s
Genre: Rap, Hip Hop

Perhaps you have already heard of the young boy from Brescia, already linked to the hip pop world thanks to the old collaboration with Fratelli Quintale lasted until 2016, when he started working on his solo project. "September" is the single that a few weeks ago has brought him to the surface, thanks to a quick writing, without too many frills and a video that we strongly recommend: a real time machine between Rebook, Italia Uno, old advertisements and Nesquik. Despite the stylistic proximity to the previous collaborations (among which we also find Bosca and Ceri), Merio deviates from the indecision of the best known ex-colleague. Merio takes a risk with a taste much more genuine and rap. Rap that we can hear loud and clearly, even in one of the previous pieces, such as "Sempre", extracted from the disc Pezzi di Merio out in September 2018. Needless to say, we look forward to it.

BARTOLINI

Label: Talenti Digital
Genre: Synthpop

A breath of freshness comes from Rome that this time leaves aside "the usual, thank you" to become the home of digital. We have already wondered if this isn’t the new answer of the north quadrant of the Capital to the super chatted Lovegang of south Rome: we will find out only continuing to follow the new wave taken by Talenti Digital, the collective of Bartolini, emerging open-source artist that - we do not yet think this is a miracle, but almost - succeeds, for the moment, not to imitate anyone else. He’s holding a more shabby and rustic poetic, the same figure that very often disappears in the transition from small to large public, which we wish him to have soon. With indelible refrains (ti metto like / o mi dimenticherai) and a romantic style like a Casanova 3.0, Bartolini is preparing to warm a winter that, we hope, will see important stages for him. Not roses but likes, no chocolates but a lot of playlists as gifts. The only flaw? All this talking about digital, but, for the moment, you can find him only on YouTube. In short, c’mon Bartolini, we can not wait to scroll your next deeds on our screens.

JACOPO ET

Label: Fulmini Records
Genre: 88trap, pop

If you thought 90s had come to an end, you were wrong: take out from the closet high-waisted jeans and leather jackets because Jacopo Ettorre, from 1990 with fury and sunglasses, has put on a new indipendent project. Referring to 883, comics, bar fights and obsolete Italian clubs we thought would never come back, Jacopo breaks the door of the Spotify Viral 50 playlist with “Fuori”. A disco hit with bestial and cocky lyrics, which don’t seem totally true, something between “Fatti mandare dalla mamma” and something with an indefinite flavour that we like to call 88trap. The provincial air and blandly dance you breathe in Jacopo Et’s songs are completely different from anything else that’s currently in Italian music. That’s why we put him in the list of names to be discovered – and probably, due to his Instagram stories, even to hate. Follow. 

GENTE

Label: INRI
Genre: street pop

The young boy from Bologna travels on the same train, destination: street pop or Graffiti Pop, as someone calls it, led by Coez, Liberato, Carl Brave x Franco 126 and colleagues, although he still enjoys playing the role of the experiment without a label. Only two singles out (Gentegentegentegente and Odia la verità) in evidence twice in a row in the aforementioned playlist of Spotify. An artist that dribble the independent chaos of the last few months thanks to a qualitative gap due to a mix of ingredients easy to mix how hard to get: from the excellent productions of Parix Hilton, producer and guitarist on the last tour of Sfera Ebbasta, to lyrics with a philosophizing flavor (he quotes Rousseau and talks about a pair of Nike, then he speaks about a consultative referendum, never decisional) with which scolds his newborn public thanks to a fun psychology on the contrary (non stare attento, non t’informare / così sei costruttivo, così sei funzionale). We look closely to the next developments.

TUTTI FENOMENI

Label: self-produced
Genre: trap 

What did he come to do? To stop the latinization of the arabic language. That’s what we read on the Instagram profile of the smartest guy in Rome, still not well-known to mainstream news, but to us: clever enough to have this nicknames and not even think for a moment to play the role of the phenomenon. If you remember, we had already talked about him in this article: Tutti Fenomeni rieds the hype thanks to a collaboration with Tauro Boys (in “2004/2005”) and a real Internet hit thrown out on YouTube some time ago (“Troppa Vendetta”),. With a unique style, taken out from you don’t know where (probably a crossword) and refrains that stuck in your ears, this new talent is the meme of trap and perhaps the latest avant-garde of pop. This is the reason why we strongly hope that Tutti Fenomeni will not turn out to be too immature – or too unprepared – for what he will give us in the upcoming months. Always if he wants to. Who knows.

SPERANZA

Label: self-produced
Genre: rap

Many people say he is the next big thing… for the moment I will say he’re only “big”. Yes, because a really huge heat must have pushed Speranza, rapper from Caserta, to get so involved in that way. Aggressive lyrics, he spits out different kind of videos on YouTube where he sings with his gang, that, unlike him, mantains a rather peaceful attitude. In these videos Speranza gets his hair done by the barber, and throws deckchairs in the middle of the sea. He wears absolutely outdated clothes but his refrains break off. Despite the hooligan impetus and the throbbing vein, the rapper inexplicabily manages to leave behind a vague (I said vague) hint of the magical dialect of Liberato. He’s in the mood of an already famous artist and he’s absolutely credible. We leave you to discover it with the title of his most views piece on YouTube, a song with an indispensable eloquence: “Chaivt a mammt”. Enjoy the show, guaglioni. 

VOLTA

Label: self-produced
Genre: synthpop 

Last but not least, the circle closes with Alessandro Capocchia aka Volta, of which little is known yet. Particular signs: that trick of hiding your face (or, as in this case, part of it) does not stop working. The dark sunglasses to constantly cover his eyes, only a few live concerts, the pieces out are just tow or three: in all aspects comparable to the beginning of Gazzelle and I Cani, which seems Volta is following the shining example. We could say many things: seen and reviewed, neeext !, nothing special… but Volta is coming out from the pile. Something in his lyrics is strongly detached from the rest: the sincere irony at the bottom of everything he says, the refined citationism and some brilliant metaphors let us see a profound culture behind seemingly innocuous and romantic pieces. Poised between the safe ground of those who preceded him with confidence and the (future?) desire to get his hands dirty with what really goes through his head, we put him in the list of guys to keep an eye on because something tells us that soon he will expose himself properly. Cmon bro, take a risk.