In Italy, the new hip-hop stars sing in Arabic

Young men with well-honed bodies sashay about, glowering and flashing heavy gold chains, luxury watches, tattoos, designer clothing and diamonds set into their teeth. They brandish guns, pay cash for hash and coke, and flaunt half-naked women like so many trophies. Every frame of these rap and trap videos (trap is a sub-genre of hip-hop) is like an ode to crime in an atmosphere made unreal by the slow, tense beat and syncopated rhythms of the beat boxes. To the minimalist tunes created by a synthesizer are added impeccable rhymes combining Italian and argot, American slang, Spanish and French words, but above all Arabic.

Belek (watch out), fluss (money), halal (permitted), haram (forbidden), hebs (jail), kho (brother), wallah (I swear): these terms are increasingly frequent in the new wave of Italian hip-hop, since a good many of its exponents are of North African origin. Their titles, at the top of the charts for weeks on end, clock up millions of views on YouTube, and their concerts, almost always sold out, are sometimes shown live on TV.

Some have had a taste of prison or the foster care system; their lyrics tell of a youth marked by exclusion from which drugs and violence seem the only escape. So the display of wealth and prosperity constitutes a symbolic revenge against social exclusion and the class-based oppression of a state which has never taken them as its own and which continues to deny them rights, protection and opportunities.

As “second-generation immigrants”, i.e. born here of foreign parents or having arrived here when still little, these youngsters are indeed regarded by officialdom as second-class citizens although they feel themselves fully Italian by language, culture and geographical ties.

The chief right which is denied them is citizenship. The country is ruled by jus sanguinis (“blood right” in Latin), meaning citizenship is acquired only from the parents irrespective of where the child is born. A hangover from civil legislation prior to the unification of the country, this rule was originally meant to maintain the ties between the vast Italian expatriate population and the mother country. Reaffirmed in the first citizenship law in 1912 and then again in an even stricter law in 1992, the jus sanguinis still prevents foreigners from applying for citizenship until after ten years of uninterrupted residence or until their 18^th birthday. But the procedure is so complex, protracted and costly that few manage to complete it.

Over time there have been many legislative proposals favouring jus soli (a judicial principle according to which a person’s nationality is determined by their place of birth), but they all failed and still today over a million persons are living in Italy without any formal recognition by the state and without any political, linguistic or cultural representation.

The new rappers and trappers, children of the immigration, are trying to give a voice to this marginalised population.

The pioneers became the new trap stars

Born in Morocco and brought up in Bologna in the 1990s, Lama Islam was the first to mix Arabic and Italian in vocals denouncing the acts of heavy racial discrimination he himself suffered. “I’ve had the police ask me to show my residence permit, even though it says on my ID card that I’m an Italian citizen!” he says. “They seem to be doing it on purpose, just to remind you that you’re different. At the bank and public service counters they still ask me if I understand Italian when it’s my language!”

Amir Issa for his part was born in Rome, in the multi-ethnic neighborhood of Tor Pignattara, of an Egyptian father and an Italian mother. After a childhood marked by humiliations and economic problems, he discovered rap, which rapidly became a way for him to tell his own story. He worked with various associations that were active on social issues, led music workshops and creative writing groups in prisons for minors, and organized awareness campaigns against racism. Much of his work is linked to the struggle for recognition of the second generation’s citizenship rights: in 2021, he launched a petition entitled “Dear President” on Change.org along with a video appeal to promote the jus soli, collecting thousands of signatures. Today he is promoting rap as a teaching tool in schools and colleges in Italy and abroad.

However, it is mostly trap, a derivative of rap, which has become fertile soil for the new identity codes : multilingual, multi-ethnic, global. It was Oussama Laanbi, aka Maruego (“the Moroccan”), born in Berrechid in 1992, who introduced it to Italy. Brought up in the Milanese suburbs by his mother (his father was in prison), he experienced exclusion and insecurity. He served an apprenticeship in a butcher’s shop before he made a name for himself with a new sound : an explosive mixture of rap, electro and world music with French-influenced Algerian rai.

Sami Abou El Hassan, aka Sacky, is another significant Milanese trapper, with a Moroccan mother and an Egyptian father. As a teenager, he was convicted several times, and discovered music via a priest he met in a rehabilitation community: Don Claudio Burgio, the same who later helped Zacaria Mouhib, aka Baby Gang, turn the page on crime. The latter was of Moroccan origin and after years of delinquency, his first hits were sometimes recorded under escort. In 2021 Baby Gang brought out Delinquente, his first album, a brutal account of the street life of a neglected generation whose very existence many people would prefer to ignore. Baby Gang became its spokesperson; his words are raw and direct.

Une femme dans un monde d’hommes

But in this male world replete with sexist stereotypes, there are also women trying to introduce a feminist perspective, like Chadia Darmakh Rodriguez. Born in Spain of Moroccan parents, the singer grew up in a suburb of Turin where she had a hard time as a child, including harassment at school, and as a teenager she came up against the law. But in 2018 she became the first female rapper to figure on the cover of a rap playlist on Spotify. Today she is under contract with Sony Music. Fumo bianco, the second track on her debut EP¹, Avere 20 anni (2018), sold 25,000 copies, and her single against body shaming, Bella cosi (2020) won a golden disc. The video clip she made with Federica Carta was shot with 21 women of all ages and was carried on the networks along with videos in which women told of the violence, physical and psychological, inflicted on them.

Gali’s commitment

Ghali Amdouni is Milanese of Tunisian origin. Thirty years old and nearly two meters tall, he impresses with his gentle manners and eccentric and unusual dress, but above all with his strong social commitment. His father in prison, his mother struggling to provide a decent home. After years of hardship, they managed to get a council flat in Baggio, a neighborhood with a lively musical scene, jam sessions and freestyle. He discovered rap in Eminem’s movie 8 Mile and a Tunisian friend played him some tracks by Joe Cassano, a hip-hop idol in Bologna, as well as other Italian rappers. For him, it was a revelation to hear that hard-hitting music in his own language. He began by recording his first demos on CDs which he distributed among his friends in the little park below his apartment. "I fell in love with Italian rap but didn’t feel represented; they weren’t talking specifically about me. And I knew that the children of immigrants were starting to exist in Italy but that no one was telling their story,” he told the New York Times². In the track that made him famous, he became the spokesperson for their malaise: “I love you dear Italy, you are my better half / When they tell me ’Go home’, my answer is I’m already there/ I love you dear Italy”, thus offering a sadly realistic portrayal of the cultural and political state of a country caught in the double grip of populism and violent anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Nina Nanna on the other hand is dedicated to his mother, to whom he is deeply attached and to whom he feels enormous gratitude. For years, alone against the world, they slept on the floor, did their cooking on a camping stove and slept in the same bed until he became a celebrity and they could at last buy themselves a house. There was a memorable concert in 2018 when he had her come up on stage holding the Italian flag, touching the hearts of thousands of fans, including those who were watching the concert live in their homes. Contrary to other trappers, Ghali, whom writer Roberto Salvino considers “one of the greatest poets in the Italian language” is not out to provoke or divide, but to make his audience aware of especially urgent social issues. With In Primis, it was immigration. With Willy Willy, he was debunking stereotypes against foreigners, while in Mamma he tells the story of a young Tunisian who, at night, imagines he is crossing the sea wearing the jersey of the Italian national football team. But his commitment extends beyond the footlights: in 2022, he gave the NGO Mediterranean Saving Humans a zodiac for rescues at sea, a gesture he calls “the most rap thing I could do”. Then he launched a campaign to raise funds to buy another one. The contributors were almost all children of immigrants like himself. And he added : “Do you have to live that thing physically yourself to be able to see it ?” After his performance in 2024 at the Sanremo Festival, the most important TV event devoted to Italian popular songs, Ghali shouted “Stop the genocide!”, to the indignation of some politicians and representatives of the Jewish community³.

Towards a new Italy?

After the Paris Olympic Games, which showed the world the face of a multi-ethnic country, a signature campaign was launched calling for a binding referendum aimed at reducing by half the length of residence required of non-European adults seeking Italian citizenship. In just a few weeks, 637,487 signatures were collected and at the end of January, the Constitutional Court deemed the proposal admissible. The question, along with four others dealing with workers’ rights, was put to the vote on the 8^th and 9^th of June, but the huge rate of abstention, shamefully encouraged by the far-right government, kept the vote far below the required quorum (50 % of the electorate plus one). Those empty ballot-boxes are the symbol of a democracy in deep trouble and which may well collapse under the onslaught of an increasingly aggressive and unscrupulous populist rhetoric. “You dream of America, I dream of Italy. The new Italy”, Ghali sings in Bayna. And we dream with him.