Marracash and the faith that keeps him standing in 2026
In the song “Something to believe in”one of the central points of 2019’s “Persona,” Marracash raps: “The faith that still keeps me standing is the skeleton. Music, you relieve and keep the soul intact, say the word that wakes the golem, give a heart to the Tin Man. Make the stage my church, the lyrics my will. Hold my hand steady if and when the time comes. And give me a voice forever and true things to say, be my anchor, something to die for”. At that moment Marra no longer felt part of a community. He looked at the Barona boys and no longer recognized himself: he perceived a gap, a distance, also linked to new forms of careerism and to increasingly bourgeois interests on the part of those who no longer showed class pride, the one he carried within him as a boy. An identity fracture, personal and collective at the same time, brought into focus in a jewel album. Diamond.
Seven years have passed. “Persona” was certified, precisely, as a Diamante album and perhaps it is no coincidence that in that very symbolic song there was a feat Guèwith whom Marra will share the stage on the occasion of the two celebratory concerts of “Santeria” next September 12th and 13th in Milan. In this 2026, that hero’s journey, which started from afar, reaches a new fulfillment: Marracash further closes the circle of the trilogy that began in 2019 and continued with “Us, them, the others” in 2021 and “Peace is over” in 2024. A path that had at its center the disconnect between Fabio and Marracash, between the man and the artist. The 2025 stadium tour, which then continued in the arenas, represented a key step: as he himself explained, it served to bring these two dimensions closer together, to fill that gap, at least for now. The closing of this long chapter, in 2026, can only start from the Barona.
The Barona Block Party on April 18 thus becomes a gesture as symbolic as it is true: performing in the neighborhood where it all started, and from which Marra never left, but with a different look. If in 2019 the sense of detachment dominated, today there is the desire to strengthen a bond, to rediscover a sense of community, another fulcrum of the three latest albums. Even in contrast to the great contemporary shows, the block party is a direct, almost original, form of connection with the public, a popular party that has to do with the history of hip hop culture and beyond. Last year they experimented with it, for punk, the Idles, in their Bristol, and Tyler, The Creator, for rap, in his LA. Marra’s is a choice that is part of a broader return to the roots, as he also demonstrates the trip to Nicosia, Sicily, in September 2025, where he received honorary citizenship. An increasingly lucid process of realignment and total recovery of one’s identity. Because, precisely, Marra and Fabio have gone back to overlapping, no longer dueling.
Within this process, it also plays a central role friendship, a feeling of pure love, in many cases free from conditioning, expectations and toxic superstructures, precisely those told in the trilogy. In short, we magically return to the start: it is no coincidence, perhaps, that “Something to believe in” was shared with Guè, and that 2026 marks the tenth anniversary of “Santeria”celebrated with two great lives in September, one of which is already sold out. A fundamental record, which has become a cult, which at the time should have represented a turning point, but which Marracash really failed to exploit because he went through that crisis which he would later recount in “Persona”. After having reunited with “his” family in Barona, meeting up with his lifelong friend, Guéon that stage, together, it will ideally close that passage that has remained suspendedall to once again reaffirm the founding values of his poetics. Marracash found himself: from crisis to reconstruction, from distance to rapprochement. The dots connect, it looks like a movie. And the faith that still keeps him standing, in this 2026, remains the same as always. The music. The skeleton.
