The Dark Polo Gang, daughter of the she-wolf of that Rome that mistakes immobility for eternity and decadence for myth, is the Crime novel of Italian trap, a work of fiction inspired by true stories.
The idea of making a sequel to one of DPG's side projects, the Crack music of Tony and Side in 2016, was therefore in the air and in the record contracts, but the epic of Monti's former kids seems to be short of breath and arrives with a bang at the appointment with the story with a lowercase s. The Freddo and the Lebanese trap – or “Side and Tony like Romolo and Remo / Side and Tony like Totti and Cassano” as they sing in Dark mode – they cook 14 tracks in 30 minutes with ingredients from the pantry, that is, a storytelling of drug dealers and “foils” repeated ad libitum on the cyberdark foundations of Sick Luke.
It's not the déjà-vu effect that leaves us perplexed, but rather the total absence of hype: scrolling through the fans' comments on social media – divided between positive (especially regarding the musical production), perplexed (about the uninspired rhymes) and negative (about the “plastic” effect of the operation) – I notice that almost no one comments on the shaving of Tony's curls. If we start taking them seriously, removing them from the comic that they themselves drew, it's over: of course we can stay here discussing Side's flow which has improved, the timbre of Tony's voice, which is increasingly in focus, but what a drag, right?
We welcomed the Dark Polo Gang ten years ago, first bullying it as a LOL phenomenon, then extolling the punk accelerationism of its language (the first to notice it were the hipsters of ViceRIP) to the point of considering it the philosopher's stone of Italian trap. Okay, we exaggerated, but we don't deserve to start reviewing seriously Crack music II: ok the quotes from The golden boy by Guè and Caneda, ok the sample by Hell on Heart by Mobb Deep, ok the inside jokes and references to the classics like CC2which resumes CC of the Dark Polo, or Punk which sounds like a BritishBut does this really matter? I do not believe.
Perhaps we can save the athletic performance, read this album as a crossfit journey, a weights competition, gym music with Sick Luke as a personal trainer, perhaps bring up Tony's sculpted body which seems to have come out of a novel by Walter Siti, or the one experienced by Side's reckless life, both very tattooed. Or get lost in the flow of “drug-rap” rhymes that from the Rogoredo grove reach the top floor of a vertical forest with gold watches and necklaces instead of plants, look for a metaphor of this crack that is smoking not only the future but also that present of which trap has always been the voice. But here too, everything has already been seen, already heard.
The only new theme, the paternity that unites the duo, is relegated to a couple of bars: Side in 7 days a week he says that “I haven't liked this rap shit for a while / but I have to pay for school, dance lessons”. Tony in Cashmere he raps: “now I want a boy / I'll leave her pregnant again / I hope she's born from Rome and not from the left”. At least here's a bit of trap provocation: we knew that the fictional character Tony Sosa wasn't from the PD, and the bar tastes like a vintage Bello Figo. For the rest we await the verdict of the algorithm, top 10 yes or top 10 no, and we hope – only with regards to the DPG – the separation of careers.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
