Ghemon/Gianluca’s “POV”: “I’m not looking for a reunion with myself”

Gianluca runs. When we talk on Zoom, he is in Chicago, taking part in one of the most important marathons. Ghemon also never sits still: he has been on the road for a year and a half with “Una cosetta cos”, a show between music and stand-up comedy which arrives at the Arcimboldi in Milan on Friday 8 November, after starting from small clubs.
Tomorrow, Friday 25 October, Ghemon releases “POV”, the song that closes the show: it’s rap, it’s an unfiltered self-analysis of his point of view and his story (here’s a preview on social media). Although, he explains, it is not a return: he simply uses different languages ​​to tell and tell about himself. There is no return and there is no reunion with the “old” Ghemon, the one who started from hip-hop, to evolve with nu-soul and arrive at stand-up comedy, his passion, after a Sanremo (2021) went so-so. There is the desire to move forward by surprising the public, because even at 40 you can be a novelty, even in a youthful environment such as pop music.
In this conversation without filters, Gianluca/Ghemon run together to tell why music and jokes are two languages ​​that integrate but which must be managed differently – the reason why “A little thing like that” cannot be told, must be seen, without spoilers and putting phones away. He announces that new music is coming and talks about how good it was for him to take a step aside from the mechanisms of the industry, as in a post from a few months ago which – rightly – had caused a stir.

First impression: you went back to music and you went back to rap.

Jokingly, I say that a reunion with myself should not be expected. I understand the historical moment, the profitability of this kind of operation, also the fact that some fans miss moments of their career and want to experience them: I would probably go to see a Beatles reunion concert, if they were all alive. But I don’t like living in the past, I prefer to carry forward pieces of all the things I like.
If when I was a kid they had told me that one day I would do a show in the theater where I explained to adults what rap had meant to me when I was 15… This new song expresses a sense of circularity, it was really right to close the show with a piece of that kind there.

A song that reconstructs your path. Your “POV”, in fact.

For me rap is a means to get from point A to point B, to express myself and say the thing I want with a medium I know. You know when on Google Maps you see the preview of the place you’re leaving from towards the place you’re going and it says “bike 20 minutes, car 5 minutes”? I see it like this: I wanted to get to this possibility of being able to express myself, of choosing the means of transport. to move with. When I want to say a certain thing maybe I use rap, when I want to say it jokingly I use another language.

So no return?

I don’t feel like I’ve returned: it’s a bit of a rumor that I stopped rapping, because in my records in the end there has always been something totally rapped, set together with the other things.

“A Little Thing Like This” started out as a show stand-up comedy with some covers. The version that reaches the finale at the Arcimboldi on November 8 contains several new songs. Were they written “on the road”?

No, when I started writing the show I already had I don’t know how many ideas and drafts. After my last Sanremo I felt that I had to learn other things with music: one of the things that was told to me, which I will not forget and which I will always try to disprove with my career, is that I could no longer be something new.
And instead my answer: it’s with the dick.

“I still have one trick up my sleeve,” as you sing in the song…

The musical path beyond stand-up comedy was already going its own way: if you don’t also internalize new ways of saying things, then you have to chase either the wave of the moment or you simply have to have one or more younger co-authors of you helping you get out of your bubble.
So no, music and entertainment went on two separate tracks. Then Carmine del Grosso, one stand-up comedian who wrote the show with me, suggested that I take into consideration the idea of ​​using music inside because this is my formula anyway. He was right, I thank him publicly.
What I like most in art in general and in entertainment are versatile artists, I’ve always said that. Now with age and experience I’m starting to go from confused to complete. I say this because if someone does too many things, there is confusion, but now I’m starting to hear “but he’s a complete artist”.

At the beginning you yourself struggled to define this show: it’s not a concert, it’s not theatre, it’s “A little thing like that”. Is it still?

There is a bad term, which is “hybrid”, because “hybrid” sounds cold. It’s something no one has done, that’s it. It is partly a comedy show, there is music and there is also a theater part, because there is still a part of serious reflection in a couple of points. I go in depth, I open up, I talk about very difficult things, without making fun of them. For me it was a cathartic act, it was an act of therapy that made me rediscover people.

What kind of reactions have you seen?

The thing I was starting to see with concerts is that the bigger the stages got, the further away you are from people. Many people, even of very different ages, have told me that they can be seen again on a line from a household event, on a passage of my song, on the relationship with their parents. This show has done some very, very important things for me in reconnecting with people.

Is the show at the Arcimboldi a point of arrival, a stage or a restart of this show?

In reality, on paper it should be the grand finale, but who can say? We did seventy performances, that’s a lot. But this show is something that has been deliberately kept in the shadows.

Why the stand-up comedy It works differently than concerts, right?

The first things I saw in the United States I had to put my phone away, it’s always been like that. You shouldn’t spoil the comedians’ material: when you already know a song you sing it, you search for that emotion, when you already know a joke it works less. So I had to defend this idea and I also had to somehow, courageously, defend the fact that I was following another path and I needed like everyone else to do my practice, without burning the material.
And now that things are finally starting to come to light, I can’t even rule out the possibility that afterwards there will be other curious people who say “no sorry, but we didn’t even know he did it, now we’re curious, we want to see it”.

Even the logic of publishing the shows of stand-up comedy it’s different.

Do exactly the opposite. Music is about releasing the record and then you take it around. With stand-up you take it around, then the excerpts start coming out and then it comes out special like video. In America they also do something else, for which there is a category right from the Grammys: the comedy album. Qsomeone has already done it in Italy too, and I will do it. We are deciding how to release the other songs from the show, in what form, but they will come out.
But for me this is a nice evolution, because finally an idea that I’ve had there for two years, and that I knew would culminate like this, finally starts to develop. Someone will understand: “ah, that’s where he was going with this”.

You have created a path for yourself that is outside the classic mold of music and its industry.

Bringing people the next show will probably be easier since there’s this precedent. I feel free. It’s something that also makes me happy, because it’s a freedom that I defended, because I didn’t want to be swallowed up. Today subcultures do not exist, “genres” exist, but they are only a distinction between emerging and pop.
I didn’t want to compete with things that had nothing to do with me.

It obviously cost me, but now I feel free to experiment, because what I wanted to convey in my career was that this is my characteristic: I like to renew myself, add perhaps interesting things, some element of surprise. Now I know I can express myself because all parts of me speak: if I have to make a joke I’m not ashamed to even make it in an interview, I don’t censor myself perhaps if I have to make it in a broadcast. Now I’m definitely more Gianluca than Ghemon.

In the song you talk about being 40, earlier you mentioned that they told you you couldn’t be new anymore. Music has always been a country for young people. But is there also a tendency towards youthism, in your opinion?

In my opinion yes. One ends up doing the average, associating in a featuring with younger authors so that the age of your project is lowered. Having a new, renewed, interesting formula on the sixth or seventh or eighth album is actually not easy. But the stand-up comedy she came to my aid in this: you acquire points of view and depth with age. It’s cool because I can feel both new and more authoritative, even in music. So you can choose the kind of people you’re interested in having among your listeners.

A few months ago one of your posts on the mechanisms of the industry, born after Sangiovanni’s step backwards, was widely commented and shared. Did swerving aside from those mechanisms help you?

Yes, it was good for me: one has to know oneself as time goes by and know what kind of things he wants to do, what other questions maybe he doesn’t want to receive, because maybe they simply aren’t good for you.
Even on the evenings when the show went most wrong I thought “good thing I jumped from the train, good thing I was still able to question myself”.

The musical part at this moment of the show is freed from expectations which in my opinion suffocate.

Do you regret anything?

It’s a pleasure to go to Sanremo every year, to be the center of attention. It also pleases the income statement, but they are not the only reasons why I do what I do. I came to Gaber’s work and the Teatro Song only after I had started the show, and it was a beautiful coincidence: seeing that another artist, too, had taken a step aside and made a courageous choice makes us understand that we really are dwarfs walking on the shoulders of giants.