Baltimore And Cioffi they were guests together of SPOT – The Podcastthe program of Michele Monina And Massimiliano Longo recorded live at the Spot Music Fest in Bareggio, in front of the audience of the young artists of the festival. In this episode the hosting is entrusted to Monina alone, and the thread that holds the two guests together is one: two opposite paths to arrive at the same idea, that only sincerity works in music.
“This song disgusts me”: Baltimore and the X Factor
The episode opens with a memory of Baltimore: a song that inside himself he considered ugly and that he didn't want to release, only to then have fun like never before singing it on stage. From there the focus of his relationship with X Factorwho also won: he doesn't deny anything, because without that passage he wouldn't be where he is now, but he has a lucid reading of that experience.
In there, he explains, you find yourself in a point where you are not actually: the audience is not yours, but that of a format, and the show is not yours, but that of a television channel. A conscious fiction, which he went through knowing what it was.
From producer in Ancona to surprise victory
The choice to go to X Factorhe says, it was almost accidental. Baltimore was a producer, he had a studio in Ancona, his city, where he still works, and he built beats for the rappers in his neighborhood. He had his own songs in his drawer, but he had never thought he could be a professional artist, because in Ancona, he says, they look at you strangely if you say you want to make your own music: a historian is missing.
He entered Live without the slightest perception of being able to win, with the typical distrust of those who came from an independent path and saw talent as a shortcut. Then the surprise victory, which came in a photo finish over his main opponent, Gianmaria.
The major and the choice to step aside
After the victory the recording contract starts automatically with Sony. But the problem is precisely the automation, he explains Baltimore: you find yourself working with a team that may be very far from your musical idea, and it doesn't mean that you're on both sides. The ideas were different, so he chose to put the Baltimore project aside and take some time, moving to Milan to understand how the system really works.
The name stolen from a song
The history of the stage name is curious. Most people think he named one of his songs after himself, but it's the opposite: he stole the title of a song to make it his name. It was the only piece he had published on SoundCloudreleased on his twentieth birthday, and it all started from there. That another one already existed Baltimoreonly found out towards the end of X Factor.
Cioffi, from bedroom concerts to PR on the beaches
The path of Cioffi it's opposite. From Salento, he began by opening concerts for more established artists, but before that he was a PR man in nightclubs. He had been playing the guitar in his bedroom since he was fourteen, and his first concerts were in the bathroom, kitchen or living room, depending on where the family was, with his aunt coming down from upstairs to watch.
Out of economic necessity, to pay for singing lessons and buy instruments, he started working as a PR man in the summer on the beaches of Gallipoli, Otranto and Santa Caterina, always with the dream of being on the other side, that of the singers he watched on YouTube.
Advice for those starting out
In closing, the theme on which the two really converge. For Baltimore the only thing that matters is sincerity: you have to bring yourself, because everyone has their own truth and people want it. And it adds a balance, said above all to the self of the past: keeping together listening to others and listening to oneself, without going one hundred percent one's own way but without even rejecting any advice.
Cioffi comes to the same point from another angle: an artist cannot make fun of those who listen to him, because people are intelligent and will trick you. You can also have a vehicle that shifts attention, but if you don't do something you really like, you don't reach people.
The episode is also available on Spotify, along with all the other episodes of SPOT – The Podcast.
