Italian Rap | Artists -- Frankie HI-NRG MC: Ero Un Autarchico

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Frankie HI-NRG MC — Ero Un Autarchico (2003)

1. Prima, with Franca Valeri
2. Rap Lamento
3. Morsi e Rimorsi, with Arnoldo Foa’
4. Gli Accontentabili
5. Cane Inane
6. Voci Di Piazza
7. Generazione Di Mostri
8. Virus, with Antonio Rezza

9. Chiedi Chiedi

10. I Trafficati
11. O Tempora O Mores
12. Anima Nera
13. Le Perdute Ali Dell’olecrano
14. L’inutile, with Paola Cortellesi
15. Zero A Zero, with Antonio Rezza
16. Sana E Robusta
17. Dopo, with Franca Valeri.

Review
by Stefano Solventi
(original Italian review)
English translation by NEMESI, with Joe Sciorra and C-Sal of DLH Posse
Francesco Di Gesù a.k.a. Frankie Hi-NRG MC - to get right to the point - is one of the few people who has been able to follow a dignified path in Italian hip hop, far from the ridicolous (degrading, paltry) "coatte" and commercial drifts.
For more then a decade, also because he was distracted by his passion for "video-art" (he's already the esteemed director for both [the duo] Tiromancino and [singer] Pacifico clips) he granted us the pittance (so to speak) of three albums: the brilliant début Verba Manent (1992), the very gloomy La Morte dei Miracoli (1997) and now at the end of 2003 Ero un Autarchico [I was self-sufficient].
The title - combined with the cover, with our Frabkie's glasses look dismantled like a gun at rest - as well as the Nanni Moretti-like paraphrase - alludes both to a palpable lightening of the atmosphere given the creeping disillusion that pervades everything.
It's not that it lacks combativeness, on the contrary: "Rap Lamento" (take note of the anagram) is enough to makes things clear; the text is an unrelenting and peremptory j'accuse against the "nice" political landscape (no one is exempt) and with citizen-voter serving as the interlocutor, while the music is a spitited funky-phat track based on the "90° Minuto" [a old television soccer program] theme song. Enjoyable and unpredictable, it's the best yardstick of Di Gesù's matured talent to create without any apparent effort crude and ferocious invectives, believable in the music (he can boast a fresh collaboration with Wu-Tang Clan's RZA) as well as with the, lyrics which are - last but not least - well executed. Speaking about that, one hears even the tone (the solemn fit of anger) in "Chiedi Chiedi" or the sharp-edged vivisection of incendiary ab/uses and bad behavior in "I Trafficati" (full of vibrant black music) and the sarcasm of "Gli Accontentabili." What's surprising but not too much after all is the good "soul" excursion of "Animanera," where the piano and strings are the lead instruments, the tangy wah-wah caresses Frankie's verbal foam and its inviting chorus, lead by Pacifico conveyed moderately doesn't make us regret not having [arranger and member of Tiromancino] Riccardo Sinigallia from the celebrated "Quelli Che Benpensano."
That lightness I mentioned above causes a proliferation of the usual interludes "found-voices" between the tracks (the perplexing caption of "O Tempora O Mores," the New Age held up for ridicule with "Le Perdute Ali Dell'Olecrano's" synthetic phantasmagoria, the [1960s-70s actor] Arnoldo Foà-like pro-divorce defense of "Morsi E Rimorsi . . .") alternating between interferences of [comic actor] Antonio Rezza (the grotesque tragicomic of "Virus" and "Zero a Zero:), [1970s comic actress] Franca Valeri (who portrays with invaluable witticism the opening "Prima" and the closing "Dopo") and [comic actress] Paola Cortellesi (in "L'Inutile" where, matter of fact, the satire about the certain sullen discographic opportunism fizzles out in cheap entr'acte).
To conclude, this album probably won't drive Hip Hop fans crazy (who are use to trigger-haired outbursts, tears, stylistic evolutions, and a hardness of a devastating resolution), but perhaps people who normally don't like Hip Hop will like it. I don't it's Francesco's best work (urgency and impulse keeps me preferring his début), but it's possibly the album that achieves an equilibrium between text and music, happily accepting that the first is always a step ahead.
Besides, like in says in "Passaporto Per Resistere" (the track from RZA's The World According To . . . mentioned above): "pen, paper and little else" is enough to get by." And that's sufficient.

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