Baby Gang brings together the entire rap scene for its first Forum

A banner is hung in the stands of the Assago Forum: “There are no bad boys”, a phrase that also stands out at the entrance to Don Claudio Burgio’s Kayros community. There are various flags around, from Italian to Moroccan, Tunisian and Algerian, but it is not a comfy international political meeting. After Jamil’s opening, a video appears on the mega-screen of the arena in which a world in ruins passes between wars, tsunamis and floods. The shot moves to the Milan Cathedral which catches fire and crumbles. The only gaze that is intercepted on the LED walls is that of Baby Gang, looks like a Marvel super hero who survived the Apocalypse. The lights go out and then come back on. A roar.

The rapper inaugurates his first Forum after the legal troubles and postponements of the date that followed, with “Marocchino” and “Guerra”. He raps, immediately throwing away the mask: “I have a dark past and I don’t deny it”. The audience is electric, rapping word for word, and it’s different than what prejudice might suggest: it is made up of very normal girls and boys, the kind you meet every day on the streets, many of them second and third generationsexactly like Zaccaria Mouhib, this is the real name of Baby Gang, which has Moroccan origins and today is one of the most listened to names in our country. A platform descends from the sky and in turn transforms into a screen on which the words of the songs and images appear. Baby, branded Stone Island, raps well, casually, holds the stage, an element that is not at all obvious given that he never worked his way through the ranks. Around him, during the evening, there is practically the entire Italian rap scene: from Fabri Fibra, Sfera Ebbasta and Geolier in Tedua, Lazza, Simba La Rue, Emis Killa, Ghali, Kid Yugi and many others. This is because, over time, the story of Baby Gang has become the symbol of one, if not the only remaining social elevator that works in Italy todayor rap. Capable of projecting a boy, bar after bar, from a disastrous present into a better future, passing from criminal street life to an audience of thousands of people in the space of a few years. We like it exactly for this reason, because it is like an Avengers who saves himself first and foremost.

It’s not a question of “getting to make money to put an end to the past” as one might trivially thinkthere is something deeper that has to do with the redemption of an existence. He says it openly even in his bars, in “Karma”: “I want to go to heaven. I don’t need the Visa or the repentant facethis life will suck even as a rich person with money”. In “Cell 4”which is a letter from prison, opens: “What do you want to know? That I’m sorry for what I did? Oh, sure. Not a single day goes by without me feeling remorse”. In the live performance, punctuated by some choreographed ballads, there is space for rap, electronics, the Latin world, references to the melodies and slang of migrants, or rather all the soundtracks that envelop the asphalt of our cities and provinces. On “Caramba” and “Cella 2”, which arrive after the unreleased “Misere”, Baby Gang enters a cage, with two guards inside, which projects upwards and disappears. A few moments later the rapper finally returns to the stage “free”to sing “Mentalité”one of his most famous songs, with a musician playing a burning piano next to it: “Grow up quickly because here there is no one waiting for you and taking you with them. I live the street, I live the street until mon frè I die as a rich man, I will die in the street”.

Shortly after the song ends, he addresses the audience: “You don’t know how much he suffered, how much he dreamed of this day. Luck doesn’t exist, to achieve things you have to put in the effort and work your ass off. If you believe in something, put your heart into it and do it. If I could do it, anyone can do it”. Between fathers locked in penitentiaries, Christmas and birthday presents never received, drug dealing, hunger, violence, invisibility, criticism of the police, social envy, Baby Gang traces, song after song, his neo-realist story of redemption. It’s a mirror. The boundaries of which were defined with a perfect and lapidary phrase by Don Burgio, who recalls how music is not a cause, but often a consequence: “Reality doesn’t suck because there’s Baby Gang, but there’s Baby Gang because reality sucks”. “In Italia 2024”, the final track, created with Fabri Fibra and Emma, ​​raps with a new awareness: “A pen can hurt more than a gun”. He stands still for a few minutes looking at the audience, filling his heart with the thunderous applause he receives. The camera moves to the eyes, framed in the screens. Freedomrepresented by a disappearance from the stage and a cinematographic reappearance in the stands of the rapper from Lecco, who metaphorically escapes from some people dressed as police forces, it’s too big and personal a concept to get involvedbut Baby Gang is certainly finally happy on that stage.

Ladder:
Moroccan
War
Que Lo Ke
Gangster (Paky)
Mama Africa
Baby (Neima)
Robbery (Neima)
Karma
Where were you (Sacky)
Baby Gang (167)
Gennaro and Ciro (Sacky)
Awa
Cell 4
Miezz a Via (Geolier)
She
Never-ending story (Medy)
Start
Marijuana (Ghali)
Double hublot
Misere (unreleased freestyle)
Caramba and Cell 2
Mentality
Lecco city
Bentley (Simba La Rue – Jlord)
Artificial paradise (Tedua – Kid Yugi)
Have a good day (Rocco Hunt)
Alone
Agent (Emis Killa)
Remain (Lazza)
Trains (Ghost)
You want me
Casablanca (Morad)
Next (Morad)
Mocro mafia
Calculators (Sphere – Geolier)
In Italy rmx (Emma – Fabri fibre)