The rumor goes around, yes, among friends, enthusiasts, supporters: Immense night it's one of Assali Frontali's best albums, it's a work of depth. For some this is simply a reassurance, and the confirmation of a certainty that has never been doubted: because Asslati have long been among the few, very few standard-bearers of a certain type of rap: that of the social centres, that which is politically engaged, that which is to «left / to the left / to the extreme left»; a rap that today is a bit of a panda, a bit of a curious object of modernity, today that rap is instead the cynical, crass and adolescent-national-popular tool to suddenly enter the rooms of the mainstream, take the most visible seats and put one's feet on the table. There is a precise niche for which Frontal Assaults are a dogma, the most sincere and barricadera of habits. But broadening the objective: who is interested in Frontal Assaults in 2024, or rather, now 2025?
Luckily, to even more than a few. Further raising the question: who needs Frontal Assaults in this 2024 which is now 2025? Answer: actually everyone. They are needed, or at least they would be needed, because Luca Mascini alias Militant A is such an intelligent and at the same time human person that he was able to slip quite well from the role of charismatic and incendiary antagonist barricadero of the early '90s with no compromises to today's role of a person capable of criticism and self-criticism, ready to adapt to the times – his own, and those of society – taking them for what they are but without ever selling himself short. Rap in Italy is still a musical and cultural genre that is quite young, immature, not yet fully understood: there is a need for people with depth and experience who know how to describe it, represent it, “breathe” it. That is, give it a wide-ranging historical, social dimension; not just an arrogant and individualistic blink of an eye, however successful, however certified gold or platinum.
At a certain point in our chat with Luca, we touch on the beautiful documentary in our considerations A life under attack by Paolo Fazzini and Francesco Principini, dedicated to the incendiary birth of the Frontal Assaults project and released recently. And it's a nice lock pick. «There is a beautiful passage in which, interviewed by the authors, Ice One says something beautiful about me, for which I still have to thank him – and in the meantime I'll start by doing it here. He says something like “It's incredible to think of Luca's eyes on the steps of the occupied Geology University, while he sings Beat your timewith a truly fiery look”, all this contrasted with the me of today who goes around schools, melts in front of kids, teaches children to rap with so much love… Well, I'm very happy with my evolution. Really. There's no point in having regrets. As a kid I had a bit of a crazy head: true, very true. We felt like we were really making a revolution, you know? I went on stage every time like it was a battle! But the truth is that while I was doing it I was still gripped by a thousand paranoias about what I should do or not do, say or not say; today, however, when I go on stage I am calm. Completely serene. I am happy. And I want everyone to be, quite simply, happy.”
A pause for reflection, then Luca continues: «What does this mean, that I should have had the same head as I do today? No, absolutely not. Or does it perhaps mean that I miss the fire I had then, and that today it has changed, has softened? No, not even. That's all right. I still sing “Up my band!”, but I also do it together with other things, and I really like the atmosphere created at my concerts – which now binds different generations together. It gives me peace of mind.”
A tranquility, and a wisdom, that Militant A brings out even when we bring him – inevitable, given that he now goes around schools a lot and talks a lot with very young kids – to talk about the direction that rap has taken today. A rap, whether trap or not, which compared to the very busy, ascetic and revolutionary early 90s has instead become a hymn to consumerism, to the ostentation of material goods, to political disengagement. Right? «Look, it fits. It's clear that kids today need a bit of this”: this is the accommodating incipit. But the continuation of the discussion is very interesting: «And then, do you know why all rap is like this today? Because the belief has spread that rap can only be done in this way here: in short, talking about certain topics, in a certain way… The industry is fine with this, it doesn't do anything to change things: it's only interested in doing the numbers.”
«The drugs, the car, the dress: if you don't talk about these things, it almost seems like you're boring. Or even that what you do isn't really rap. Today the kids are convinced of this. In reality, rap can be everything, and it is a translation – often not simple – of one's thoughts, of one's individuality. Following only what works and what everyone does is the most comfortable and simple thing to do. And the market, in fact, encourages this laziness. At the moment it's a game for him.” But… «But, things change anyway. They have changed in our times, they will change again. Today if you don't go to Sanremo you don't count for shit; in our times the ones who didn't count for shit in rap were the ones who went to Sanremo. But what can I say? I'm not here to judge. Let everyone play their cards as they prefer. I don't want to impose anything on anyone: I do my part, I bring out the best in me, I try as hard as I can – and look, I'm still here. Our eleventh album has just been released: being there, still being here, moving, happy, it's already really nice.”
Being there, and with a record that is also very convincing. We say it: to be honest, Luca is more convincing than the previous ones. «Actually the last albums were a bit more, let's say, pedagogical… This one is much freer. How come? I don't know, maybe my kids are older now. Or perhaps quite simply I felt a great need to return to talking about the great historical events that are surrounding us and this gave me a different attitude, gave me a different strength, it freed me. Take Palestine, for example: an issue that calls into question a whole series of certainties on which we Westerners had settled. We, who felt we were the great beacon of democracy and human rights.”
Furthermore, speaking in more depth with Militant A about marches, mobilizations and so on, it turns out that a demonstration for the Palestinian cause was a sort of stimulus-in-contrast to launch itself into creating Immense night: «One day I was going to a demonstration to support the Palestinian cause and, when I got there, I found few people. Very, very little. At first glance I am very disappointed, and I am about to decide to leave it alone, not to even join in on the matter, and go back home. Just when I started to walk away, something inside me clicked, which made me say: no, you have to go back there, you have to get busy… I got into the truck at the head of the procession, I took the microphone, I started rapping, putting down the focus on the rhymes, which is the title of the song that gave the initial spark to Immense night. This and nothing else, at first. The focus on rhymes. I immediately felt good. I really felt in my own world. From there, we all started getting involved in the procession, and it was beautiful. As soon as the procession itself finished I ran into the studio to tell my partners what had happened: the work on the album began like this.”
As to why that demonstration was so poorly attended, Militant A does not hold back: «It was poorly attended, well, for many reasons. A little tired; the fact that today the movement is very fragmented. Today, it is true, it is more difficult to all come together, there is no push to recompose the various souls and various ideas. However, I am convinced that under the ashes lies a very, very widespread feeling, which affects everyone to some extent: the fact, as I was telling you, that we are once again coming to terms with history, with the great world history, as never before in recent years. . They try to make us believe that we can't do anything about it, but I remember well what that incredible character, Georges Lapassade, a French anthropologist, told us: society is the result of the meeting between an instituting force that comes from below, which is of its own free nature, and the status quo of power which is instead descended from above. The stronger the push from below, the freer the society we live in will be.”
And if we stick to history, in the small (but not so small now) history of Italian rap, Asslati Frontali are there, Militant A claims this. With calm tones, but with strength. «You can say what you like, but history is always made up of symbolic events and a symbolic event in the history of Italian rap was the release of Beat your time. For what it was, for what it represented, for the energies it released. And there we were. It was us.”
To reinforce the concept, we willingly add: if Beat your time it was the first rap song in Italian released on record, and it was, the first album it was No man's landor when Onda Rossa Posse was remodulated into Frontal Assaults. «If you tell the story of rap in Italian, if you have a minimum of intellectual honesty, we must be there. I'm not saying this to boast, I'm not saying this to claim anything, although obviously we are very proud of having resisted over the years, always maintaining a certain type of coherence, without ever giving up. But the point is that yes, we are perfectly aware that today perhaps there are people who are much stronger than us, who make numbers much higher than ours, but we are still history: and this is something that no one can take away from us anymore. . Naturally we look ahead, we think about the future, we like to think that even better things will come. But in the meantime we are here, we have left an important trace that no one can ignore. And we are still here. Intact. Consistent.”
There are you, but there are no longer Sangue Misto, speaking of fundamental and founding moments for rap music in Italy. There's been a lot of talk about the thirtieth anniversary of SxMand the reissue of the album recently done by Warner has also reached interesting, perhaps surprising, numbers. At the time, almost a contrast had been created between Assaulti Frontali and Sangue Misto: on the one hand you Assaulti, the knights of the rap of the posse, politically committed and aligned, closely linked with the social centres; on the other, Sangue Misto, the pure hip hop expressiveness, the detachment from the politicized DNA… «Actually, we Asslati SxM when it came out they liked it very much, and we even told the Sangue Misto so: they know it. But you see, that is actually a very, very, very political record, contrary to what was said around when it was compared to what we did. It's a record with incredible style, but also with lots and lots of content. And I mean political content. If you listen to it well, for example take a track like The strangerthe climate of the early 90s can be felt a lot: that of occupied social centers, of a certain type of messages, of requests, of sensitivity… SxM it's a perfect album. Then in my opinion they changed direction, because they wanted to emancipate themselves first of all from themselves and from what they had done, losing themselves a little: they somehow repudiated SxMyes, but because they wanted to repudiate themselves from the start.”
At the time, however, the rivalry was felt a little, or rather, more than a little. Militant A smiles: «It's always right to have a bit of competition, if it's healthy competition. It wasn't even a competition between people in reality, but between scenes, between cities: there was Rome, there was Bologna, but there was also Turin, Milan, Salento, everyone was rightly proud of what they did. But the original humus was the same. And when someone from the rap scene came to Rome to do concerts, they always ended the evening at Forte Prenestino, with us, to feel good. To be happy together.”
