“The NE, the double F, A”. It begins like this, with this presentation, Neffa and the dopa messengersor the highest and never equaled point of Italian hip hop. A certainty that still lasts today, 30 years later.
The purists of Italian hip hop will already be hitting the keyboard hard after this statement, but Italian hip hop, especially that of the 90s, worked exactly like this: a question of faith. It is for this reason, in fact, that, in addition to leaving us with magnificent records like this debut by Neffa, the scene soon imploded on itself, causing even the artists themselves – Neffa first and foremost – to escape from its hypoxia. But ultimately, it's also right, things of the heart touch the most exposed nerves.
Neffa and the dopa messengers It was released on May 14, 1996, converging in itself the most flourishing period of Italian hip hop, also acting as a premonition for rap to come. With the Sangue Misto experience now at an end, Neffa begins his solo career: 15 songs filled with featuring, friends, ideas, references, quotations. Starting from the title which recalls Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers and which wants us to immediately understand that the political darkness of SxM it was replaced here by a more funk and soul approach, more in dialogue with the stylish jazz-rap of A Tribe Called Quest, a great cultural reference for the rapper from Scafati. Or how he raps in the bilingual song You can hear the funk with Dre Love, the New York messenger who passed away last year, “If you don't understand the words / if you can't catch the words / you can still feel the funk / you can feel the funk”.
The beauty of a record like The messengers it is precisely this chorality that, starting from a collective title, opens up in the individual tracks. A mix of different languages and dialects, geographies, backgrounds and ways of conceiving hip hop which are shown here as a plurality of interpretations brought together by the message One Love. A complete work for Italian hip hop: there is the history (funk, soul), the scene (the messengers: Giuliano Palma, Deda, Dre Love, Speaker DeeMo, Phase II, Kaos, DJ Lugi, Esa Elise, Sean, Storyteller, DJ Gruff, FCE, TopCat, Fede, LeftSide, PPT, Speaker Cenzou, Chef Ragoo, Yared, Galante), the omen of a future (experiments linguistics, syllabic dribbles, the construction of a personal but shareable grammar, rap as pop).
But why is this the perfect and best album of Italian hip hop? First of all for the chorality we talked about above. Son of the moment posse, Neffa widens, leaves space (“I'm with my ballot, my ballot is with me, you know what? All seven days of the week and it goes without saying”) and follows one of the principles of the genre: one nation under a groove. Then because it is a record dedicated to culture. “Love rap, study rap, stop dirtying rap, you have to learn to respect rap” Chico raps in the self-explanatory The Proud B-Boys with another of the pioneers of the scene, Kaos. Inside we find homages to the various disciplines, from DJing to writing, with instrumental moments to enhance the art of sampling. “Strictly hip hop, zero crossover,” he reminds us in The balotta.
And, finally, because the funky-groove of Chico Snef is simply irresistible here. Neffa is in his best form and, in addition to his stylish verses, he is able to bring out the first real pop single for the Italian scene: Waiting for the sun. The song is once again a team effort: accompanying the rapper is his friend Deda on production and his trusty Giuliano Palma on the chorus. The song is a success, which immediately becomes evergreen, and which immortalizes in 5 minutes the story of a movement that had finally found its most mature form (and which will soon, however, go out like a candle, regressing without end). After all, how he raps himself The Messengers Pt. 2“If you buy this record you send a chico to the hit parade.” Or as he reiterated to us in our digital cover story dedicated to him last year: «When I wrote Waiting for the sun I wanted to go on the radio. I always wanted to be mainstream, meaning to be known by everyone. I didn't do Sangue Misto to be shit on by 20 people.”
The scene, the culture, the rhymes, the refrains. There is no Italian rap album that manages to keep itself in balance like Neffa and the dopa messengers. Listening to it again today, after 30 years, it's still fresh. Neffa gives history an evergreen record. It immediately became a cult. we start again: “It's the return of the heel on the track”.
