Fabri Fibra: “Rebelly rebel against the fake ideals”

As soon as I met Vis à Vis Fabri Fibra, I explained a priori that I would have liked to name, provocatively, the interview as follows: “My useless interview with Fabri Fibra”. The reason, I have argued, is inherent in the fact that in “While Los Angeles burns”, his new album is contained, totally in the sunlight, everything that could be asked. What do you think of discography? Of today’s rap? Of social networks? Of the war? Of life? Of his family? Of the future? It’s all there, among those bars that, after over twenty years of career, still seem to be written with blood.

There is no need for an average, there is no need for anything else: just listen. “That you say such a thing is actually a beautiful compliment …”, Fibra replied, who then took one of his usual moments of silence to reflect. He put his thoughts in order and began to explain the heart of the project deep and unexpectedly, perhaps also to prevent the interview with the interview. Because fiber, from small to great things, has always been a disintegrator of certainties. A Joker. The biggest who shattered with this album? That an Italian rapper, almost fifty years old, cannot make one of his best and most significant career albums. Here all the dates to see it live, on tour.

Fiber, this is the eleventh album.
Today everyone rades. More and more people ral. It is not easy, but when you learn it, in reality, the most complex aspect is to find topics that can really concern people, their life. I spent various phases, including the one in which I wanted to amaze the rappers. And the more wonderful them, but the less I spoke to people. So I started a job, which never finished and has come down to this eleventh chapter, to try to say things to the people and at the same time be current with the rap formula.

What changes, growing, at the level of topics?
Going forward, in reality, you have more things to say, because precisely it grows. But of course, not being a boy anymore, you can no longer say bullshit. What was left in my hand so? Topics that I add up as if I were in a conversation between peers. I can no longer do only the rhyme in which I say “I am the best”, but the one in which I say “I am not the best because the market only wants the summer hits” yes.

In “Karma ok” rappi: “The labels always expect the hit, the Italian rap sucks. All in search of the summer single, I also do not make fun of. Better this that staying around. Or locked up in some office to photocopy live”.
For me, the finger aimed towards the outside is no longer enough. The finger must be focused on oneself. I can say certain things also because I took away so many satisfactions and many weights. If you make a summer hit and Azzecchi, in my opinion you can say “that balls the summer hits”, on the contrary today you look like a rosicone.

In the interior samples “L’Omaleta” by Guccini, an operation similar to that with “The sky in a room” by Paoli in the antero of “Chaos”. Yours, as was that of the singer -songwriter, is a j’acuse: “The industry that is a supermarket, put the price to me”.
I deal with this because I can do it. Because I come from the car-production, from independent labels and then arrived in Major, taking the whole path. My criticism of industry is not just a criticism of the label, the label is just a part of the scenario.

Describe it, then this scenario.
Let’s take the audience, for example: half of the people who listen to Rap listens to him today because they bounce from the phone. So many actually don’t know what you, rap artist, are really doing. They approach rap as we approach the ranking music. So the way of relating to the rappers is deformed, it is a lens that already departs the root of this musical genre.

The market?
It’s another part of the scenario. In Italy there is no longer the underground. Today you can make the discs at Curren $ y in Major, without thinking about the general public. This is because in Italy there is only Major, there are no alternatives. What I tell is simply what we see every day: there is a musical market in which the only thing that matters is the result, the ranking. The only way to spread your music is Instagram. There is no sector criticism: all talking about rap, reaction on the records, without saying anything. Often they only report the numbers, “how many platinum records have been achieved” etc, and that is actually the thing that should count less. Hence my bar “Industry is a supermarket”.

The rappers instead?
Many Italian rappers to get to where they think we have to arrive start singing or put the tip to the tip. In short, they are no longer rap. Rap here is not tradition, it comes from outside, it is imported, but it is the only real revolution in Italy in recent years. So much so that when we took him to Major for the first time, they immediately put the sticks in the wheels. Today everyone says “the rap goes, the rap works”: yes, but it is still welcomed and treated in a different way. Rap is a system error.

As in all your albums, even in this there are many particular productions, many curated by Marz and Zef. Do you always want to rap on something different?
I started doing this disc two years ago, in Santa Monica, with Pietrino (2nd Roof, ed) with which I had worked on the “chaos” album for the “Intro”, for “cocaine” and more, and even earlier also for “phenomenon”. We grew up listening to the same things, such as the dogg pounds. Then Marz arrived, who after Marrageddon started sending me beat. I started doing dozens of auditions … I write about everything, on all the foundations that send me and interest me. But then I keep only a few things, those where a magic is created between words and sound. I work like this. Neffa always says: “You have to bring all the songs to the top of the tower and decide which throw down and which you keep.”

When did the title arrive?
In the end. Every time I returned home from the study I saw the images of LA that burned. And it was like this for weeks. I always wait for divine messages to close the records. I remember that the title “chaos” came because one night, between 2 and 3 in the morning on Rai, I was watching a program in which unknown writers presented their books. One said, “I write to put order in my chaos.” Fuck, it was my perfect description. Among other things, I already had the closed “chaos” trace. Here it was the same: I had closed tracks, but I did not have the title of the album, which arrived seeing those images.

It is an open title, which means much more than what it expresses on a literal level.
Yes, it is a sort of “while the world is going to whores”. The whole world burns and while this happens … everyone can attack the phrase they want.

But it is also an album full of life. In “How will it end?” Rappi “Let’s see us tomorrow, let’s build a tomorrow”. Then there are pieces as “sbang” with Noyz Narcos in which you enhance the power of the word, “alive” which is a sort of your “reckless life”, “towards other shores”. Everyone has a light.
He makes me goosebumps this reflection….

Why?
I come from a period where I lived on the thread of a blade. I imagined myself as if I were at the end of my artistic life: my latest album, my latest album with Major, I did three removals so the last few days in the apartments. There was an end in everything. I wanted to re-pay because I did not accept the conclusion of something. In the song “Cometa” I say “A thousand things that I would like to restore, do not forget …” as if to say “Don’t forget all this life”. In this album I made a piece on my father, on my family, I broke the cock to the other rappers: it seemed to me for really that I was getting a fucking comet on me. But there is a reaction to all these thoughts….

Just in “Cometa” Rabs “it would take a comet to erase so badly, these wars, these crises, these bombs as much Easy, these weapons always charged as there was no limit”. And then close with “Things never seen, for those who resist ”. So, don’t you give up?
Yes, the fire … he doesn’t bring me down with him.

You mentioned the piece on your father, it is titled “My father”. And it’s very hard (“Fuck dad, I dream of dead without any pity”). Furthermore, there is also a piece on a child you don’t have, “son”, in which he gives him the advice. What was the most difficult to write between the two?
It was the easiest traces to write, it was enough for me to find the right instrumental. I am what in rap and in the music scene risks most of all. I’m done so. I make such pieces because I want people to have the tools to understand me. It really bothers me when they tell me: “You are always pissed off”. It is not true. My music is pissed off, but it is music. It is not that I go to the supermarket and I take the cashier slap. They cannot and must not put me limits in music, on what can be said and what cannot be said. I don’t care who says “eh but nobody makes pieces on the family”. I don’t care, these songs are challenges to the public.

“My father” Is it a challenge on the limit you were talking about?
Yes, I hear everyone talk about freedom of speech. Well, let’s see if you really believe in this freedom. I speak of a family because I lived it. The family for me is a symbol that must be destroyed or embraced. In going against the family I also see a form of rebellion against those who tell you to be what you don’t want to be. “Birth programming” creates unhappiness because it forms expectations that are often not confirmed.

So your cry is “rebelled”?
Yes, rebelled against that project that inculcated you a priori, to that family they gave you, to the state that wants you good, silent and in a job. Then you awaken at forty years old who still lives at home with parents because you earn a misery. Rebelled against the fake ideals. Every time I make a piece on the family I return the discomfort of those who grew up with separate parents. But I see further: in these songs there is also a more general rebellion signal that encounters people who feel my own difficulties.

And what can a song do?
Little more than console, but it is important that it does it. Because it is the same thing that the artists I grew up with. Eminem talked about the mother, Mac Miller of her addiction to cocaine that made him an insecure, Tupac talked about the fame and friends who betray you. All the great ones I grew up with me considered me worthy of hearing their cocks, their problems. And I will thank them forever for this, for opening with me. These artists told me very deep things that they haven’t told me even people I have known for a lifetime. And they did it because they probably couldn’t do otherwise. Their songs changed my existence, they comforted me.

This is why, in turn, did you write the song on bullying “Everything will go well”?
When I read the news of girls and boys who commit suicide for having suffered bullying I get so much, so much suffering on me. I said to myself: do I make a song? Yes. I hope that the song will arrive at the provincial boys, to those who live that feeling, to those who undergo harassment at school because they are not quite Macho. If this piece also comes to only one person, it means that it was worth it. Someone will criticize this song saying “It’s sad …”.

Are you interested in criticism?
No.

Is making songs of this kind what holds you up after so many years?
Everyone is focused on numbers, on the rankings, which is what will not remain. The numbers create profit so no one has an interest in questioning them. Profit justifies everything, from the general flattening to the terrible depression of those who chase these numbers. Today everything is worth, just get to the result. In reality, in that run there is nothing if not an endless abyss. Every Friday a bang of records come out, and what remains to the listener? A sense of constant dissatisfaction because you cannot listen to everything you would like. And while everything burns, many are still enriching themselves. Here is the meaning of the title. Instead, I like to think that music has a power, and that to practice it you have to try to always make songs that leave a mark. I try to stay afloat like this.