Frankie Hi-Nrg MC and the “Live Aid of rap”

“You know how fun it would be to ask a few friends if they want to add their voices to yours?” my producer suggested. So I made a round of phone calls and rounded up a cast from Live Aid. The Live Aid of rap”. This is how Frankie Hi-Nrg MC describes “Voce e drums”, the first studio album in 12 years: it contains songs revisited in an essential key with drummer Donato Stolfi: voice, rhythm, in fact, with the presence of (super) guests: Jovanotti, Elisa, Emma, ​​Tiziano Ferro.
Frankie is one of the fathers of Italian rap, when rap was not the mainstream phenomenon it is today, and this album reconfirms his vision and the relevance of his bars. Thanks to him and the (de)merit of the company: “I thought they represented themes that are still current well: the excessive power of a system that changes face but remains the same, and the stories of people who work, sacrifice themselves, and then are crushed or forgotten”, he explains.
The project was born from some dates in this format, which will now become a more structured tour, starting from Bologna on May 30th, and which will continue until the end of the summer. We start from here, from the origin of the project, but as always with Frankie we end up with broader and deeper considerations on the state of music and the world around us.

The idea behind the project is to bring your songs back to the essentiality of voice and rhythm, that is where hip hop culture comes from.

Yes, exactly. In the beginning, when hip hop was not yet such a well-known culture, rap was described as a kind of spoken singing on a very rhythmic basis. Run-DMC’s early records, by artists like Spoonie G, were basically a drum machine and someone rapping over it. Possibly there was a DJ scratching. Returning to that naked, essential, raw but sufficient atmosphere of early hip hop was very stimulating.

An idea not well received by those who were tied to more traditional ways of making music. “Everything else is all bad music made only with drums”, sang the great Enzo Jannacci in “La Fotografia” in 1991.

I remember Jannacci appreciating my music, and this is the most important thing. Hearing “I like the way you write” from him was a great fortune.
For the rest, every progress that seems to simplify the way of making music is seen by those who were used to the previous complexity as a worsening. It happened with sequencers: “now you no longer need to know how to play the piano”. In reality it is no longer essential, but if you know how to play it you have enormous advantages. It is a discussion that is valid up to artificial intelligence today: every progress is seen by those who are used to doing differently as cheating.

The cover is made with artificial intelligence: the battery that reconstructs your face.

Yes, I did it. I have been experimenting with generative artificial intelligence for a few years. Unlike what many people think, it’s not something done in ten minutes. It’s the fruit of an idea: I thought of it like this and then I got a result that I had to intervene on. We must consider these tools as a semi-finished product: they shorten many steps, but not all.

Are the discussions on the risks of artificial intelligence for music the repetition of those that occur with the arrival of any technology?

There’s a bit of superficiality. Today everything is much more evolved and with more implications: you can audition by writing a text, humming a tune and get an arrangement in any style. It will take away some jobs, just as drum machines have taken away jobs from drummers. But they also allowed many musicians to play without a drummer.
It changed the universe of musicians: it marginalized some, but included many others.

Coming back to the album, why revisit historical songs in this form?

For almost thirty years friends and fans have been telling me: “This song is still relevant, it seems like it was written today”. At a certain point I reread my lyrics, because when you sing them you enter into a sort of automatism. Rereading them I realized that yes, they are current, but not because of me: it is because the company I was referring to has not made great progress.
I understood how important it was to maintain the centrality of the text. I then built a skeleton made of drums and DJ Stile’s interventions. It’s all played by hand: no sequences, no loops. Just drums, records and voices.

Why is “Quelli che benpensano” missing, perhaps your most famous song?

It’s a song that already exists very strongly in the collective imagination. Reworking it would have stolen attention from the others. In this album there are songs like “Faccio la mia cosa”, “Fight the fight”, “Pedala”, but also others less known like “Generazione di monsteri” or “Elefante”, which for me have great value and different origins. It seemed to me that they well represented themes that are still current: the excessive power of a system that changes face but remains the same, and the stories of people who work, sacrifice themselves, and then are crushed or forgotten.

Jovanotti and Fabri Fibra added their own to the songs.

They gave me two beautiful verses. For “Pedala” it was almost natural to think of Lorenzo and his passion for cycling. It was the first phone call. For “Autodafé”, Fibra is perfect: he has made the battle, even an internal one, a stylistic signature. When I heard his verse I was struck by it: it’s pure Fibra, and it fits together perfectly.

Tiziano Ferro, however, appears in “I do my thing”. Since when have you known each other?

He has been following me since even before when he was a backing vocalist with Sottotono, he had a photo of me hanging in his bedroom. When I proposed to him to participate he wrote to me: “But what did I do to deserve such a beautiful thing?”. And I thought: but you are an international star…

Is it still possible to really do “your thing” in today’s musical landscape?

For me yes. I can abstract and concentrate quite easily. “I Do My Thing” is one of the first songs I wrote, the third or fourth. It was born as a reaction to certain criticisms: “Where does this come from, what does it have to do with rap?”. It was a way of saying: let me do what I want, without interference.

But perhaps for those starting today, or at an early stage in their career, it is more difficult, with the pressure and performativity required well beyond music, starting with social media.

Yes, it’s harder. You have to come already with a following, and then you get squeezed out quickly. It’s like factory farming: you produce more in less time, but at the expense of quality and shelf life. And you risk being quickly replaced by a younger, more productive heifer. They are asked a lot more, we had more time to grow.

Is there anyone from the new generation that you would have liked on the album?

Yes, Kid Yugi. He couldn’t attend because he had an album coming out. He was very honest and professional. I like him because he raps and inserts social and political themes, which is not so common today.

Today, going back to revisit the repertoire, to re-record it, is common practice, both for a nostalgic dimension and because it works better in terms of attention from the industry and the public.

Yes, but I always have. In 2005 “Rap©ital” was released, which was the disc version of a show in which I had completely revisited my songs, but in the opposite way to this project: very rich, full of quotes and musicians. I like to give different clothes to my songs. The songs are my children: I have chosen not to have any biological ones, but to have several authorial ones to which I am attached, and every now and then for carnival I like to dress up.

This is also an easier tour to take around. Vocals, drums, you and Donato Stolfi.

Yes, it is light and it is scalable: from the small venue to the stadium, we can adapt and fill the space.

You talk about lightness: once upon a time, saying that music was “light” meant devaluing it. Maybe there’s a bit of lightness missing today? Is there too much music and a “heavy” approach?

Yes, there are too many people who take themselves seriously. And usually the ones who take themselves most seriously are the ones who are least serious.

You’ve published little in recent years. The latest single, “Nuvole”, is from almost six years ago. The last unreleased album of 2014. Are there any new projects?

Look, I’ve learned not to announce anything. When I stumble, it means it’s the right time.