Kid Yugi, from Lindo Ferretti’s quote to the myths: the playlist
«To the soldiers who ask: “How do you distinguish a Cathar from every good Christian?”, Simon of Montfort, commander of the king supplied to the pope for the first crusade, replies: “Kill them all, God recognizes his own”»: Giovanni Lindo Ferretti utters these words at the beginning of “Even heroes die”, Kid Yugi’s new album. All true: the album that marks the return of the Apulian rapper opens with a sampling of the voice of the CCCP frontman. The source of the sampling is not, however, a song by the “Io sto bene” band, but “Occitania”, a song taken from “Litania”, the album recorded by Giovanni Lindo Ferretti in 2004 together with Ambrogio Sparagna. «Giovanni Lindo Ferretti’s speech talks about a particular crusade, which was not a crusade in the Holy Land but a crusade against the Cathars, who were not Muslims but a heretical Christian movement. It’s incredible how bigotry, being radical has always seemed a constant for all the men in history, all the men who have written our history for better or for worse”, said Kid Yugi during the press conference for the presentation of “Even heroes die”. But that of Giovanni Lindo Ferretti is not the only quote from the author, if we want to define it that way, contained in “Even heroes die”: in recounting the genesis of the project the rapper from Massafra quotes Guccini (“I listened to him a lot while I was writing”), the CCCP themselves (“I grew up with their music”), Dostoevsky (“His human anti-heroes changed my life”), the director Shin’ya Tsukamoto. Helping fans enter the very interesting imagination of Kid Yugi is there playlist which you find below, which you can listen to by clicking on “play“.
In “Gilgamesh“looks at one of humanity’s oldest literary works, of which the first known version was written in Akkadian in Babylon in the 19th century BC: the title evokes the mythology of a demigod who defies death. “The conflict with myself, with expectations and with what they think of me, then has its highest point in the final track – he explains – sometimes man feels so crushed that he takes refuge in violence, as I tell in the album, but I certainly don’t want to push people to stay the night of judgement’, I hope that the anger and ferocity are channeled into something beautiful and good, in art”.
“Tristan and Isolde” calls into question the protagonists of the medieval legend set to music and staged by Richard Wagner: «Our love that kills us à la Tristan and Isolde», Kid Yugi raps in a verse of the song, which refers to one of the most poignant myths of Western culture. The two fall madly in love due to a magical filter, but this secret love will cause numerous suffering to the young lovers, who in the end will both die of pain, victims of their own love, unable to live without each other.
The album revolves around a well-defined concept: the heroes are ordinary people, who dictate the plot of their own stories. But like all stories, there is always a beginning and there is an end. «What does it mean to be a hero? “Doing good with all one’s strength” would be answered by most. “Fail miserably in the name of a utopia!” the wicked would thunder. “Prove courage and self-denial in the face of danger and adversity” the academics would intone. Well, all these definitions are wrong, old, obsolete, outdated, suitable for past eras, for a world in which the distinction between good and evil appeared clear and irreducible. Contemporary society, the consumer society that promotes individualism and glorifies selfishness, the society that has sacrificed the values of justice by replacing them with those of merit, has managed to amalgamate the two absolutes. But therefore, if good and evil are similar, if the human being opts for one or the other according to a single criterion, utility, how can we recognize a hero? Or, even worse, is it possible that this world is no longer capable of creating them? Here civilization has overcome these dilemmas in the stupidest and most unfair way: by making us all special. Or at least making us believe so. They taught us that each of us is the hero of our own story, that each of us is predestined, talented, a genius sent to this earth to fulfill a divine task. This is what you believe and this is what I believe too. And now more than ever my mission appears clear to me, as clear as the March sky. I am your Memorandum. And I bring a single message: Even heroes die.”
