In the imagination of Generation Z rappers the “concept album” is something monolithic, imposing and generative. An urban tool to tell and demonstrate how even the creativity that comes from the streets, from the low end and the margins can be erudite, conceptual, dense, communicative and committed.
Kid Yugi wanted to make this leap, this ambitious lyrical and artistic contortion.
Like Tedua with the “Divine Comedy”, so Kid Yugi with “The Names of the Devil” made a concept album and took inspiration from literature and in particular was inspired by the best-selling work “Lord of the Flies” by the British writer William Golding late sixties.
The despotic reality and social regression told by Golding created suggestions in Kid Yugi who was fascinated by the many similarities with current society and with the various names that have been given to evil in various cultures and popular tradition and how this is manifest in dark, black and Luciferian forms in our society, radically upsetting it.
I wanted to represent how evil affects human beings, both at the individual and collective level, in various forms and measures.
Each track will have a title that refers to the different faces of Evil” – says Kid Yugi.
The fourteen tracks that make up the album by the rapper from Massafra (TA) are the representation of a distorted and lost society that lives in the shadow of the everyday life of evil and its thousand deviations.
Bars and lyrics full of cultured and iconic references, linked to cinematographic and literary culture, but also slang that originates from street life, from the world of video games, drug dealing but also from contemporaneity.
A compendium of the dark that begins with a naked rap track The Antichrist (“in my stories monsters like the Brothers Grimm”) which anticipates the gloomy and dark mood of the album.
There are many collaborations on the album:Three-Headed Goat with Tony Boy, Artie 5ive, Eve with Tedua it is a sweet and almost touching ballad where the two artists rap on a piano base (“in the places where you touched me now I have a rash, for you I walk on fire through the storm”); Service with Papa V and Noyz Narcos it is roughness and pure ardor; Enemy with Ernia he has a text that is a universal reading of being enemies and wars in general (“you are my enemy, my rival, my nemesis, there is no triumph in war, there are no survivors”; Terr1 with Geolier it is a provocative song against prejudice and classism (“southerner, southerner, southerner, southerner, I have friends with long beards who terrify everyone, I shake hands with everyone from the laborer to the councilor”), Money with Simba La Rue enters the full manifestation of evil, while the devil can also take shape with the environment, the moment of social denunciation arrives with Ilvaan enthralling song that contains the sample of “Fume Scure” by Fido Guido, sung in Taranto dialect and with a soul and reggae flavor (“you can see from afar a toxic cloud, a red earth and my people suffocating”).
The journey and Kid’s shouted denunciations end in the final track Lucifer, where Kid Yugi leaves the scene and Francesco Stasi (his real name) returns, who reflects on the journey into the evil of everyday life, on his pain, on his fragility and seeks a path of salvation that perhaps does not arrive in the end.
Even in the cover Kid Yugi wants to pay homage. This time it is inspired by literature with the work of Mikhail Bulgakov, “The Master and Margarita”, referring to the scene of Satan’s ball, in which a procession of dark and damned figures must walk along a staircase to kiss, with reverence, the hand and knee of the Devil.
At the end of listening I’m quite destabilized. I think about what a rotten society we have built, I think about how there is no future, about how much evil there is everywhere.
I’m out of breath…then I think of another boy of his generation, Alpha and I wonder where is the truth of the world?
Perhaps in both worlds, both in Kid’s and in Alfa’s.
Two sides of the same coin. Evil and good, yin and yang, black and white…
TRACK BY TRACK SCORE: Rating 7.00
The Antichrist – Rating 7.00
Three-Headed Goat (feat. Tony Boy, Artie 5ive) – Rating 7.00
Eva (feat. Tedua) – Rating 7.15
Service (feat. Papa V, Noyz Narcos) – Rating 7.00
Lord of the Flies – Rating 6.50
Lilith – Rating 6.00
Enemy (feat. Ernia) – Rating 7.15
Denaro (feat. Simba La Rue) – Rating 7.00
Yung 3p 4 – Rating 6.50
Terr1 (feat. Geolier) – Rating 7.25
Ilva (Fume scure rmx) (feat. Fido Guido) – Rating 7.50
Paganini – Rating 6.50
Ex Angelo – Rating 7.00
Lucifer – Rating 7.25
TO LISTEN NOW
Three-Headed Goat – Eva – Terr1
TO BE SKIPPED IMMEDIATELY
It’s difficult to get to the end in one go. A heavy, dark, black record.
But it’s worth listening to. It’s needed!
