Marcio world: “On the album there is my mother’s voice: God is female”

“I believe” of the Marcio Mondo, released on April 25, will be presented live on May 10 at the Fabrique in Milan, it is an inspired album that tries to tell something, not to go unnoticed as many projects today. For the Milanese rapper, who contributed almost twenty years ago to bring rap to the mainstream, it is a three -year return from “Magic”. And it represents a planting on the ground, as if to say: “The years pass, but they are still here”, as the rapper himself points out towards the end of the interview.

Is this a personal and collective disc? The cover, with the belly of a pregnant woman, seems to suggest: we are all children of the same universe.
It is a very conceptual album and is linked to our existence. He talks about life, our experience on planet Earth. And it’s not an easy experience. Also because people grow for trauma, that’s how you learn, that we learn. The cover suggests that “we all come from the same source”. We should not be foreign to this zero moment that binds us all. To answer the question: yes, on the disc, I certainly talk about me, but also of people.

It is a theme dear to you.
I have always tried to tell stories of men and women, not to limit my gaze. His hands on the cover are deliberately wanting to remember the symbol of the eurobor, symbolic animal in the shape of a snake that bites or swallowed his tail, creating the figure of a circle. This is because the disc also speaks of death and rebirth, of personal and spiritual growth.

Represent you?
Certainly. I think I have matured a lot in these years. Many things happened to me, who also forced me to mature, to be reborn and to start again. The album, as has also been evident for a long time as “I think”, is totally autobiographical.

To start again, in “without voice”, try to suffocate the ego. But without ego a rapper survives?
All the fuck that I shoot in the piece want to symbolize a tabula rasa. Then it is clear that we are not Of this world, but in This world. Either you go to be a holy man on the mountain, or if you live in this western society, a little ego is undoubtedly preserved. “Without voice” reminds me that the ego must be dosed, it is necessary to understand when to turn it on and when to turn it off. An example: if I went on stage without ego, the concert would be a shit (laughs, editor’s note).

Dosare the ego does not only concern those who make music, but everyone.
Certainly, today there is a lot of polarization. There is little desire to meet. Many people live inside bubbles, self-built worlds as it happens in Rick and Morty. It puts like the articles that give us reason, the algorithm feeds us with elements and content that agree with us. This creates fences.

In “I think” you say “don’t ask me if I won or lost”. Is the disc a reckoning with yourself?
In that step I speak with myself. Over the years I don’t think I have followed the trends, but I certainly chased myself. I lived in the lack of something, I always wanted to overcome me. When I say “don’t ask me if I won or lost” I turn to my part constantly hungry. It’s as if I told me: “Be happy about what you have”.

There are three feat: past, present and future. They are three voices of strangers. Who am I?
The voice of the present, in “without voice”, is my mother. Women, in particular their mother, are the closest thing to God that there may be. Because they give life. Femininity is divine. God is female. The voice of my mother is linked to the final piece, “Lanzarote”: the song closes the disc, but in reality everything reopens because you feel the cry of a child. It is the representation of a continuous cycle. The other voices are functional for traces, for albums. “Milan cries” tells my story, the past precisely, “the last time” instead photographs ambition, is the gaze to tomorrow, the future.

“With fire in the eyes” is one of the most successful songs, “Big City Life” Tributes by Luude and Mattafix. How was it born?
In these two years of work I have played a lot with the producers and with the authors with whom I collaborated. I was lucky to work with a quality team. We did research together. Specifically of the piece: I wanted to make the madness of rapping on the original song. I made two rubbers. And then we rebuilt the base. The piece was born like this, playing. Giving vent to my baby part for me was really significant, when you do a creative job it is important to let her run free.

Was these twelve songs the result of a selection?
In two years with my team we made about 200 songs. Not trying, but finished songs. Do not mix, but finished. We made a super selection. We didn’t want Filler. I didn’t want a background record, but that said something. In the end it is as if it were a concept album, which can be heard from any point. In short, it is a “concept album, if you want it”.

In “No Wave” you say that you care about streams. How rap is saying, but then …?
But then go, when you are alone, to check them? (Ride, ed). In my case the facts speak, starting with this album. But also the choices I made in my career prove it. An example: in 2016, when the trap exploded, I was among the few to throw myself into this genre-sottogenere. Stream interest me, but I’m not obsessed with it.

Always in the same song you say: “I don’t dress as a woman like Achille Lauro”.
It seems to me a paraculato. You can believe it or not, I am not the spokesperson for a minority, but more than a gay friend of mine told me that it has annoyed him to see one who is not gay, but that he acts from. You are not representing anyone if you do this, you just be attracting attention. I have nothing personal against Lauro, it is simply an observation on a way of doing entertainment that I don’t like. If you touch certain themes you must have lived something very close to those themes or live them firsthand. Now that there is a more inclusive mentality, it seems to me a way to get my hands. My ex era was and is bisexual, in the 90s the women were led if it was known that they were lesbians….

Let me understand: more than against the person, are you against a trend?
Yes, exactly, today the beautiful part is ride, but the ugly one has not lived. Now it’s easy to take the applause.

There is also a dose of rap-game in making names.
If one wants, he replies, he is a free country.

I go back to “voiceless”: at a certain point you send the hip hop tap. Are you conflicting with the Italian rap environment?
No. But I was. When I went from the underground to be a national-population with “Only a man” from 2006, I went into conflict with a certain environment because nobody expected it, not even me. Some artists began to criticize me and I replied: “Look that we are winning everyone taking certain spaces”. But this reasoning was not understood. If you go to see those who arrived later, they did much more divisive commercial and musical choices….

What did that 2006 represent?
That 2006 was a bit like 2016 by Sfera Ebbasta, a moment of change. But in reality I am very grateful to that period because a piece like “inside the box” has actually moved the sound of those years and this is worth much more than any goal or criticism.