Piccolo: “I’m not going back to Sanremo, I won the World Championship with bnkr44”
A boy with a star-shaped mask, in a limbo suspended between dream and memory. It looks like this Small on his first solo album, “Stellar boy”, which is both disco and graphic novelsjust like “Orbit orbit” by Caparezza, curiously released at the same time; a coincidence, because the idea has distant roots, from the last years of touring with i bnkr44the indie urban collective of which he is a founding member and with which he made his debut at the Sanremo Festival in 2024.
Music and comics. Why this choice?
The choice was born three years ago, when I was on tour with my bnkr brothers. To keep my head busy and my hand trained, I drew. I had in mind to make a comic, one graphic novels mute. I was there drawing and little by little I thought I would also like to make a soundtrack. The instrumental parts became songs and in the end I realized that I had to do a project where I mixed the two things together. These are the two arts that I prefer in general, drawing and music. I discovered Caparezza later, when it came out at the same time as me.
What story did you feel the urge to tell?
The whole comic is a great metaphor for the last three years of my life. Stellar is both a alter ego be a reflection of what some people in my life are for me, who have that for me mood there. He is a wandering character, a bit clumsy and doesn’t speak. There’s this contrast between him being so funny and the Venetian mask. The message I wanted to send is in the lyrics of the record. Then the graphic novels it served me more to find the new universe of words to face, it served more to communicate with myself, while the album is more to communicate with others. In the graphic novels There are inside joke mine or things that only I understand, while people can more take inspiration. Or maybe join the journey and make their own journey. Instead, there are personal messages on the record that I needed to address. I had to say things to someone that I can’t say out loud.
On the cover there is a crying star.
When I’m happy I stay with my friends, I go to play soccer, go shopping, cook. When I’m sad, when I’m angry, I usually draw. I write when it’s a bad day. Painting is my way of not spitting the poison I have inside at people, of making it become something positive. The comet is intended to be a symbol, a seal, which represents the entire graphic concept. The yellow around came later, halfway through, because the graphic novels I started it in black and white: I didn’t know what the new color of my record was. Usually if I think of a record I think of a color. And when I was doing this, at that moment I felt a little black, black and white, because I had a lot of sins to expel. Then to a certain girl my father told me that in his opinion yellow was a color that communicated rebirth. Next is the year of wheat, so I’m a little influenced by this. In the end I understood that I actually felt that color: I didn’t want to make a black record, I wanted to make it yellow because it had to be a message of rebirth.
What rebirth are you looking for or have you already found?
I already found it. The moment I let all these things out, I killed my demons.
If you had to summarize “Stellar boy” in three words, which would you choose?
One is travel. One is personal. Let’s do: personal intimate journey.
Do you plan to bring the comics live, in addition to the music?
In the past I have held exhibitions to sell paintings. I did it three or four times, to pay my rent. Then it’s something I stopped doing because I got involved with music and painting remained a personal passion. I’ve been doing it twice as long as music and I don’t want it to become a job; it always remains my way of expressing what I would like or communicating with myself. But for example, on February 12th I will do a concert for the carnival in Marghera (Venice): I will bring the comic there and we will show it physically to people for the first time. There will be the first hundreds of copies. In the future I would like to have an exhibition with the paintings I made with lighthouses and churches: I would love to take it out of my house one day, perhaps selling the paintings at auction. I like that the painting reaches someone, because it is an object that represents you and that someone probably keeps in their home forever. Your indelible mark on someone’s life. Even the gesture of detaching oneself from the work is a great gesture of maturity which I suffered a little at the beginning, but then I realized that it is actually very important, because if you do things and then keep them to yourself, they are only half useful; if you share them with others, they are good for you and for others too.
You enter people’s lives.
“Stellar boy” is already spinning by himself and walking by himself. Every day I receive photos of boys and girls drawing Stellar, while they are at school or at home or at work. And I think it’s already accompanying a lot of people in their lives.
What is it like to tell a private story for you who are used to working in a group?
There are a lot of different things. Surely the people I worked with were the same, because in any case I made the album with Caph, Erin, JxN and Fed Nance (which was a new group). I needed an adult mentor to help me find sounds that I couldn’t find on my own. What is different from bnkr records is the writing method. Those records are more family moments, with my brothers, where we have fun, experiment and where the point is really to come together to create something that doesn’t have a label and that makes as many people as possible jump. This in my opinion is more music therapy, or art therapy, because I made this record out of a visceral need to expel my sins. There wasn’t much fun, I was trying to understand what the problem was with myself and what the positive message was to get out.
How would you describe the evolution of your role in bnkr44 from the beginning to today?
I couldn’t even say what my real role in bnkr is. My role has always been artistic direction, giving some artistic ideas. The evolution compared to the beginning has been more personal: I have changed in my way of writing, of communicating, while within the bnkr project I would say that I always cover the same role. I don’t feel like I’ve changed too much in my contribution to that project. It’s always me, with my refrains. If there is a discussion about which cover to give the album, let’s all decide together. It’s more complex to make decisions because there are many of us and there are various compromises to make in the middle. Instead, for my own things, I have to decide with myself, it’s easier.
Sanremo was an important chapter in your history. Today the Festival is very different from how you left it. Do you like it? Would you go back?
Sanremo changes more every year. It seems to me that it is not just a matter of artistic direction, whether there is Carlo Conti or Amadeus: it is a reflection of the year we have had and what we are about to go through. I’ve seen that there are a lot of “emerging” artists, or at least, there aren’t that many big names. Personally I see it as a very positive thing because at least there is a refresh. However, there are a lot of very strong artists. As for going back, right now, no, it’s not something that interests me. I’ve been there, I’ve been there with the others, it was beautiful, the cover with Pino (D’Angiò)… all things so beautiful, so incredible that at this moment I no longer feel the need to go back to that place. I keep the memory. As if Del Piero had decided to retire after 2006: win the World Cup and then say enough, there’s no need to return to Serie A.
Ambitions for 2026?
Have a nice tour. And taking my music on the road, playing and improving. I’m taking more theater and singing lessons: I’ve already taken some in the past, but I’m trying to improve myself even more and improve the show side. Then I don’t know, maybe I’ll release something else at the end of 2026, because I have a lot of music to do: it’s on the computer and I’m a bit sorry to leave it there.
