It should have been an epochal album, given the names at stake and the exceptional nature of the event itself. It ends instead that Santana Money Gangthe joint album that for the first time unites Sfera Ebbasta and Shiva, that is, the two maximum weights of the trap of our country and of Italian music, given the streams, the certification and in general the cultural influence had in recent years, well, it ends that it is rather a rouquel to the trap itself. Without turning too much around: the impression, listening to these twelve tracks, is that there is nothing more to say, to do, to innovate. Nothing nothing.

The end of a revolution

Obviously, who thinks that the trap has been only Autoun and desire to appear, with zero content is wrong. Since 2016, the year of the turning point, Sfera Ebbasta was the most influential artist we had, like the Calcutta alone, who, however, put his head out in the same period. Calcutta, here, rekindled the current of songwriters and large stadium concerts, renewing it. Sfera Ebbasta, on the other hand, has imported a genre from the United States, the trap precisely, and made it an essential listening for the new generation, establishing its aesthetic coordinates (a little working class Hero and a little beautiful life) and sound, with frozen rollars, the melodies at the forefront and the rest, in a turning point even at the beginning of the hip hop lovers. A revolution of style, method, imaginary. And Shiva, who for reasons of age came later (is from 1999, Sfera Ebbasta is from 1992), it was the designated heir, with a long series of collaborations between the two, now blossomed right on this album.

However, here too, you are wrong to think that this is just a wrong album, or badly. It is rather a symptomatic work of the state of a genre that has lost the push to renew itself, which lives on income. And that has lost, above all, the authenticity, that dirt that made it rebellious. Ok, it is deliberately a collection of songs made “quickly”, almost a mixtape, something that in rap, especially the American one from which they fish, is allowed: apart from that this is not known how true this narration is and how much it is, if anything, a shield used to protect itself from any criticisms, the problem is that this approach, let’s say, wild should be justified From a spontaneous result, without filters, which is the true added value of everything; Instead, most of the time, here, you have the impression of being in front of a disc made with little care, cooked and eaten. You are losta tribute to the Dogo clubs, is a colorless passage if compared to another tribute to Guè and members such as Pure sinaloawith among other Rkomi, from 2020.

Everything is already felt enough, everything has already been said enough. There are no great hooks with topicality – perhaps only a quote to “Fabri Corona”, evidently a transgenerational theme – nor those signs of growth and introspection that Ebbasta had also mentioned in the last solo album, X2vr (2023). There are also references to the judicial troubles of Shiva, just sentenced to 4 years and 7 months for attempted murder and illegal possession of weapons. When Vasco Rossi was arrested, in 1984, he opened his first album following the return in freedom, What happens in the city (1985), as follows: “Of course you are a nice phenomenon too, to make you take like this …”. Here the situation is different, it is clear, but at least to expect a change, that in short, these pieces do not play as if three, five or ten years ago had come out, that they do not play in short as any of the already many feats. Between the two, well, it was lawful. Instead, it’s all the usual cliché.

A genre overcome

For heaven’s sake, it will be a success. Indeed, it is already: ten million listening only in the first 24 hours, without considering the ascendant that Sfera Ebbasta and Shiva continue to have on the very young. The point, however, is to have renounced several artistic ambitions, having folded up on oneself. And, even here, nothing too strange: it happens to many, in all genres; Of course, if it happens to the two symbols of the trap, some doubts about the destinies of that scene as a whole comes. Also because in the meantime the elderly essays of hip hop do not give up the blow – from Marracash to Guè, up to Fabri Fibra and Salmo, of which we expect album in 2025 – and the new generations have still references: Artie 5ives has a more parties style, needless to say how on the ferocity side There is always a more fierce than you (Simba La Rue, but also the same Pope V and very black snake), and Kid Yugi, perhaps the most talented of the group, skipped the trap at the foot to reconnect to a rap more tied to storytelling. What will remain, apart from the numbers and memories? To Sfera Ebbasta and Shiva, despite everything, make us change their mind.