ARTICLE 31 > Final Verdict

By FlyCat
AL 43 February 2000

Not a bad debut, eh! Reactions? Criticism? Positive opinions? Fame, success, perhaps these are the first two things that may spring to mind upon just hearing the name ‘Article’ and if we then add ‘31’ to it... I'm fine with that, however, one could also add an infinity of other words in their wake, would you like examples? Consistency, stubbornness, friendship, originality (and here let me point out: both good and bad) and of course a good dose of constancy. I wish I could be able to take¡r you back to the early 90s or why not, late 80s, when even the mention of spitting rhymes in Italian made even the most arduous follower of Street Culture flip over with laughter. This was a healthy chat that I hope will, if nothing else, best expose their new work. Pardon! there is another word that could be added to the above list: Hip Hop. If you were to ask why... xwhy yes.

>I would like to begin by asking you the definition of Hip Hop.
Jad: “It's real life, what you really are not someone else.”
Ax: “I tell you I can't grasp it anymore. Before I could give you the classic definition, the one that says Hip Hop is a way of thinking etc... however as I go on, I tell you that I find it in every aspect of my life, from the way I am with my woman, to food... However it is a total filter of my reality, maybe a dogma, it is something that goes beyond religion. How your way of thinking and looking at things settles you into a state and therefore any stimulus is filtered through a set of values. They are different for everyone and at the same time identical, and I think it is the most indefinable thing that exists right now and at the same time the greatest reality in that it is the one that unites different people toward one thing... Which religion for example, or politics, on the other hand, has failed to do...”

>Don't you think Hip Hop is undervalued?
Ax: “It took me years to assimilate it in this way and now it remains so positive to me that I am even willing to wait for people to gain maturity. I, like you and Jad, was a jerk at 16, hypercritical and unconstructive because that was part of growing up. You also need that destructive, more than constructive anger, and then in my opinion you need to not lose those things, combine it all with the maturity of now to make things that will stay and that someone will hear, see or read.”

>What do you say to those who say that Article 31 is not Hip Hop?
Ax: “We respond by saying that they also said that to Run DMC or groups like the Fugees. And then in Italy no one has the authority to say whether we are Hip Hop or not.” [restrict paid=”true”]

>Is there a difference between rap music and Hip Hop? Do you use the two different terms?
Ax: “I think it's easier for those who are into it to distinguish, for a normal person it's difficult fbecause they can't grasp the differences that are in the elaboration of a piece, in the metrics, the study behind it and that's because the education is not there. And then what we got wrong is the attitude, in the sense of attitude which is also kind of what makes the difference between rap and Hip Hop. But now there is the mass music education phase. I think cultural education is consequential to musical education. Why do they resent Article 31? Because for me this has occurred: because we are so much more famous than others, we are the ones that popular, normal people identify with Hip Hop, but we cannot represent Hip Hop, but neither can we represent the most underground group, because Hip Hop is so vast that it has to be represented like in America, with a panorama made up of many characters the west genre, the east genre, etc... And this should happen in Italy too, but it is not there and that is what makes the underground angry. But the underground doesn't understand that each style of music should have its own hit in order to carry the genre forward. Wu-Tang made hits that took the underground everywhere and high. We try, as we have not espoused any genre, but all of them. We created the Spaghetti Funk genre, which also includes Italian melody, and we have our own style. If you have your own, you don't get your style criticized by mine, but you have to carry on your own.’

>I think however this depends a lot on what the record companies come and ask for. They came to me and said I should do the more Article 31 style things. That's where you get the urge to do your underground stuff.
Ax: “But we also live in an underground reality, because the record companies don't understand shit. Now they say rap is not going anymore, maybe, like you, a while ago they told you that you had to sound more like the Articles, now they tell you that you have to sound more like Alex Britti. The fact is that we started at a time when they were also telling us to be like Jovanotti, but we started with records, we took them to the radio stations, they liked our music and put it on. We were independent and self-produced. That we then sold and made contracts with majors for our monetary benefit, that's another thing. So that they don't pick on the Articles, because you've already made a mistake in the beginning when you pitch your stuff to the record company; or you have the luck to find a person, like Franco Godi, who has outside contacts, but total artistic independence is key. If you listen to the discographers, you will hardly find your way; you have to try to make your own stuff by trying to find a system to attack the media. We will never be able to change people's musical mentality from the outside, at least in a short time. I try to make songs that fit into those channels, but at the same time elevate the taste.”

>So do you think that the judgment of the discographers fully reflects the taste of the potential Hip Hop audience?
Ax: “Not so much the record maker who is now the poorest, since right now the record medium is dying, so I think it's more and more the people making the choice, even through the Internet. It's more and more a judgment of the people.

>But with your knowledge...
Ax: “These are problems that we still have on our albums. However I have my own problems ... however I preclude myself from the cover of this, going on TV Sorrisi e Canzoni because of my attitude and my attitude that anyway has to be true and representative of my generation, of what we are here to say to each other. Basically we would be fake in showing people that we were getting drunk on the street, we would be idiots. I'm a Hip Hop artist, I'm ... we found ourselves to be the ‘passing’ generation, what was there can never be understood by today's kids. If we diss each other, the kids will understand that dissing is a key part of it. There will be no more dissing anyone, and the moment I do it, it will also be directed at myself, as it is in this album.”

>How do you see the Italian music scene in general?
Ax: “We have our own following, a hard core of a lot of people who never give up on us because anyway you know very well that the media are more whores... the moment you are trending you are doing well, but they already have the next month's trend, we've seen it happen with other bands as well. The most is to work by following our own choices... for example releasing singles like “La Rinascita,” our attitude toward the rest of the Italian bigs scene, where they have now put us... we are not part of any (I don't mean mafia) friendship lobby that, you know, it kind of works like that. We don't appreciate people who until recently were spitting at us going to Radio DeeJay and now you're there as well... In my opinion, consistency is key, and so I'm a little wary of the inconsistent parts of this business, such as the media and the various stances.’
Jad: “I never changed flags, this is our 5th album, you know us and those who don't know us amen... I don't think anything has changed.”
Ax: “I believe that perseverance pays off, I hate characters who were party when it was time, then came back underground riding the wave and did it just for money. I know that sounds like heresy coming from me, but I still do things out of passion, and that's the thing I still enjoy the most. I think this business thing, since maybe you have seen us being successful, is wrong now, or rather, it is wrong to start with these concepts in Italian Hip Hop now, right now. In America people started thinking about whores and money later, in the beginning you wanted to have fun, then get rid of violence in the streets, then education ... then they thought about political propaganda and then materialism. This is not the responsibility of kids, but of us artists. If we start off with an album by dissing right away, trying to reach non-spiritual goals, but only money-making goals, it is a rip-off of the American Hip Hop of now that we teach the kids of now, but skipping the transition... Then I don't want to teach anybody anything... but a ‘teaching’ could be given by my behavior, it matters that mistakes in behavior towards other people we have all had, the various personal and non-personal rancors, but I believe that in our generation of rappers, there are people with a lot of talent who I hope represent another side of Hip Hop so that people can have a more ävast view, to decide. Then if people decide that your music is better than mine, okay, Hip Hop has its evolutions...I can be left behind like Just Ice, however, I can move forward like LL Cool J.”

>So you feel part of the Italian scene...
Ax: “I feel my stuff very Hip Hop, I took it out of Italy and people I had it tested say that to me. I still feel part of it, also because in my heart I still have the memory of those days, then at the end even if one on stage disses me, I remember when we were at the lame jams me and this artist here. Then when this artist sells 50/60,000 copies at the end I am also happy, I have to take on the fact that he disses me because he is jealous... however in a way I am also happy when they get results, I mean good people. However we feel part, but I don't care about the opinion, because in my opinion it is not unbiased, it is not objective, because too often those who express an opinion in specialized media or channels, express it because it is reported by closer people. Of course, the media being placed in the underground, this is its closest source. We also severed various relationships with so much of the scene that were later reopened during the last tour.”
Jad: “We are in touch with quite a few people in the scene, and I say there are very good people. A lot of media and radio say that Hip Hop is dead, but no fucking way is it dead. We from the beginning have always struggled, Hip Hop has always been there and we all knew each other. It grew and now for the media it's dead ... bullshit.”

>Why did he die?
Ax: “What I hear going around the radio stations is that they say ‘these rappers have broken my balls.’ It's the attitude that is unprofessional and anyway any person, from the programmer to the speaker when they hear that there is a Hip Hop group, they turn their nose up at it. Plus the fact that the support from the hoof, is not there, because just the fact that an artist sells more than 7,000 copies is considered commercial. So the AL readers who are supposed to be the smart ones, the ones who mess up the most because the people with the passion are the ones who mess up, they're the ones who should be phoning Radio DeeJay all the time asking them to pass the latest artist who is not passed instead.”

>I think you are an example of this, because in 2 you have moved thousands and thousands of people. If as you say, there are 7,000 of them, who knows what they can do.
Ax: “My dream is to see a Hip Hop Village two years from now where there are objectively evaluated concerts, where if you don't like the artist, you don't pull the artist on stage because you're a moron. The people who organized Hip Hop Village last year didn't do it anymore for these reasons.”
Jad: “I noticed that in the scene it's like there was a self-destruction, like... a fuse, an explosion.... For some people we're on the outside, while for others we're not, but I'm sorry, Hip Hop doesn't have to die, because it's something I've had in me since I was a kid and I'm going to carry it forward into the future.”
Ax: “Last week I went to AL headquarters for the first time and we can also write it down that I had decided not to talk to AL anymore, but it was beautiful, the editorial office is beautiful, I was also at Vibe and I breathed the same air...obviously in a small way. I was reminded of Sid who at the Third Base concert brought me our photocopied interview and I was reminded of the cold, the money I had to scrape together to go to the concert and, how long has it been? 7/8 years, I realized that steps have been taken. And why destroy this?”

>AL suffers the same criticism...
Ax: “And why? It's not fair! But why, why destroy what has been done? Then you have to change targets, you have to change people, go to new people if these people don't understand! You meet all 7,000 of them and talk to them, because in my opinion it's a problem of getting to know each other. I wanted to do it, but it's that I can't contractually, but I wanted to give this record to AL readers, because I want them to hear all the words. If a person like you tells me they liked it, they can't criticize it or they should listen to it anyway, as well as records by others they don't listen to. There are positive things in it. It's not all ‘I fuck off,’ ‘I'm the best,’ although there's this fad that I don't understand, because then in the end ‘I'm this, I'm that,’ but in the end let me understand it, give me a stylistic rhyme or a metaphor... you know? On the radio, a whirlwind of things have come out but all ‘I'm cool and you're not’.”

>I think you have to build your past before you get to a record.
Jad: “Automatically, when you decide to make a record, or your cassette tape, automatically you are already selling yourself, you become commercial, you trade.”
Ax: “Right now, however, the level is important, for them to be in step with the times and because people are not yet able to distinguish, so we have this paradoxical situation, basically we have the qualities and techniques to make Hip Hop at world levels, however the people, the normal people do not “have all the background that American people have. We have to find the system of getting this music to them who however do not have the background without destroying the values of our culture... and this will come naturally by putting in our essence, it will be like Cypress Hill with Hispanic music...”
Jad: “It seems that people want to keep Hip Hop closed, to themselves. I give the example of a painter who paints in his basement ... it's a need he has rto make his art known on the street.”
Ax: “In my opinion you also have to be more open in these talks, because anyway I can have few things to believe in and when you have one, you don't always want to share it with those you think are less deserving. You also took a long time to get in and we know it on our skin, because it was more difficult to find records, clothes... I remember the slamming you did to get the books where the pieces were in order to have a comparison...”

>Now you are on your 5th album, did you ever think you would get to where you are now, together? Did you manage to combine friendship and work...
Ax: Ú “I think what made the relationship between Jad and I work is that we think alike, but we live and understand life differently. Usually where I overdo it on one side, he does it on the other side. I'm a squanderer, while he's thrifty and that balances the two, I experiment more, while he's more anchored in black music...It's all about balance that also spills over into character and it's also fun and challenging, day to day...and that's been the key thing. Our records work because there has been an affinity that is not easy to find. That is also where the success of a project comes from, from the affinity with other people you work with, from assimilating a concept together... Spaghetti Funk is not together because of a name, but because of an idea. It is these people who have assimilated this idea. Jad and I assimilated the idea of Article 31 and we understood it without anyone explaining it to us and we moved on.”

>And what's the idea?
Ax: “The idea of Spaghetti Funk is the ‘keep it real,’ doing our own thing and being real, never aping, being able to take any ‘yo’ out of our songs. Spaghetti Funk is a very ambitious project, it's there and it's a genre, maybe take it abroad as well. Spaghetti Funk should include not only rap, but also other genres of music, but always included in Spaghetti Funk.”

>If someone were to quote you as a ‘generÈ...Hip Hop genre, g-funk genre, and Spaghetti Funk genre and its rhymes, how would you take that?
Ax: “I would see the Hip Hop genre, then lots of darts underneath with a very small one that says Spaghetti Funk. In my opinion, Dj Max's style also deserves a different classification, as does Rza who is not only underground, but an experimenter.”
Jad: “Like Premiere, like all producers who have their own identity ... just as there are DJs who inventedT techniques that were then evolved. I think I was one of the first to sample Italian stuff.”
Ax: “And in this regard I'll explain why Hip Hop is a genre that people don't like. The self-celebratory lyrics, the ego trippin’, in America are going strong, because the American is self-celebratory by culture, whereas we, being a moment more cultured and having a ‘classical’ education, ask questions about ourselves ... we are a moment more spiritual thank God. It makes me laugh to hear an 18-year-old kid say he's banging 40 pussies, unless he's telling me ironically. See for example Benigni. He, who also rocks in America, has gotten where he is with satire.”

>Jad, have you ever thought of doing your own project?
Jad: “Yes, however, I really like waiting and being one of the first to open doors. It is true that there are people who send me home, however, I look at myself. Think that in New York I found myself with DJs who did not send me home, more, however, they shook my hand understand? and this is the most important thing. The real diploma is that of the life street, because you paint, he sings, I make music ... express yourself with this thing and you should never try to do another thing. ”i

>If you were to go back, would you retrace the same path with the same crew, or would you change something?’ Do you ever listen back to your first album?
Ax: “Yes, I get stylistic rhymes, but the style was really Jurassic, but I hope I redeemed myself well. Count that I was small, starting from scratch, and there was no line to cross.”

>Did your age difference affect it?
Ax: “Well let's say that through Jad I was introduced. I was on my own and plus I lived in a suburban reality, not middle-class b-boys. I am now a rich man, although in fact if a record goes bad for me, I'm left penniless. I'm well-off, m*i make a living with a business -- I feel like a craftsman with a well-established business, not a bourgeois. Although what we have we actually reinvest, that's how it works.”
Jad: “I would like to give an example I often give. A farmer hoes the soil, puts in the seed, grows the plant and eats with it. More plants grow, he sells his product, feeds people by giving work, first of all, and he buys machines to cultivate his land better, however, he always remains connected to the land, to what is your passion and your life. Good or bad, lifelong friends have been projected into the star system. We have seen fake people and real people, but this thing you also find on the street. But even when I was a factory worker it was the same thing.”
Ax: “In the piece with Strano I say “I don't live where you live, I was born there,” it's absurd when an artist who has made five albums and they've all done well says he lives in the same situation as you. That would be false. But I also say, “I try to keep what I promised when I started,” meaning anyway what I wanted to do with the first record I'm still doing and it's bringing a different point of view. Making records that sell a lot, making them well, making Hip Hop is a beautiful thing basically. You give a voice to a total of people, who may even be the ones who spit at you, but still you gave them a voice, a voice that always comes from the bottom anyway. Even Puff Daddy has taken voices that came from the bottom, because he stirs up controversy, however while they say Puff Daddy is an asshole, they bring forward other values and enrich the culture--and they did it because of Puff Daddy. It is an ongoing nonsense that exists, however. I still say that the underground wouldn't exist if there weren't bands that sell so many records, just as there wouldn't be quōs bands without the underground. However, these two realities in America go more together, because you see KRS One with Puff Daddy, because there is business in both sides.”

>Do you think you have achieved a role, a step in this world that is Hip Hop from where no one will ever remove you, not even the most hardcore of b-boys?
Ax: “I invite you to say this, I live my life the way I feel closest to me, my heart tells me to do this, then if I make a mistake ... I will be someone who has been wrong all my life, however, my need, when I wake up, is to think about what I have to write. I'm up to 27 years old and sometimes I can't sleep because I'm thinking about how to string words together, so I think if this happens to me, a minimum of passion, heart and energy I've put into it.”

>In this period you have lived in different places in the world and also different situations, perhaps worthy of a travel book. Is there any situation you would like to talk about?
Ax: “I take away any part of ego trippin’, there have also been personal events over the years. Who among us was prepared for this? No one. I up to the year before I was with you being a pirate in front of the wall in Bazzini Street, three months later I was in TV Sorrisi e Canzoni; also personally I went through good events, but also bad ones, personal problems with substances of various kinds such as alcohol ... even reaching dead ends, until there is always that thing that saves me and saves us all. You hear rap records and you think ‘fuck but I'm going to kill this guy, I've got a better idea in mind than he does,’ and you get down and get better. It's been a hard fight over the years, when we decided to adopt a different policy, like “The Rebirth,” giving a shit about everything we had done before and totally attacking the media verbally, with singles, etc... And this battle we won and we saw with the “Nobody Summer Tour” that it was the biggest turnout tour of ours, even more than “As It Is.” Now we have great people coming to our concerts, not just young people. This is our biggest victory. Everything that has gone through a hard piece of life, however, has come to this. Count me very lucky, though, because every day I can bring food to the table because of my music.”

>Many people, however, take the things you say as positive. It is possible that some people believe that by drinking like a sponge you become like you, do you want to say something about that?
Ax: “Let's connect to this right away. In the record there is a constant hint or reference to alcohol or soft drugs. However, and I'll tell you this honestly, anyone who tells me not to drink can push me to do it even more. Apart from the fact that no one can tell another what to do and what not to do, apart from the fact that alcoholism and soft drugs are congenital, however, there is never the promotion to alcoholism, but to the evening where you get drunk and do a brothel of damage. The newspapers wrote that we promote alcohol, actually they missed the point as usual. It is the action against that which is promoted, it is not self-destruction that is promoted, otherwise I would not be here.”

>So to those who assert that some rappers promote alcohol use as a positive solution to life by filling kids with lies?
Ax: “It is a criticism of censorship because this falls under the argument of kids throwing rocks off the overpass because they saw it on TV. The problem is not seeing it on TV, the problem is that kids have such a strong value that they don't throw rocks off the overpass. That is art. One in his art is free to say whatever the fuck he wants, everything else is censorship. The problem with emulation is that there are no values. The kid has no values because he has not been taught. It is the family in the first place that is then busy feeding him and then society. That's how this world is set up.”

>Did they succeed in conveying values to you?
Ax: “Hip Hop transmitted them to me, my parents. I've always been respectful of seeing the ass they've made, however, all this has come to me now, over these years. I of the bullshit, the nastiness toward my ‘karma’ I have done. I got there now, thank God.”

>Do you think you could be a good dad?
Ax: “No, not right now, but I want to get there.”

>Are you in love?
Ax: “Yes both of them.”

>What does it mean to be in love at your age and in your position? We basically come out of certain patterns, of the classic beautiful Italian pulled.
Ax: “However people who fall in love with you are people who look at the essence as in my case. However even the fact of accepting yourself and living with shifters, because many Italian b-boys are shifters. Maybe you're at the movies with your girlfriend, you see that someone has covered your tag and you freak out-your girlfriend can never fully understand it. Here's some comical stuff. However, a girlfriend who passes over these things or accepts the fact that I get pissed off because she says it's cute a piece of Mc Hammer is important.”

>How do you see yourself with your girlfriend?
Ax: “I think I have found a partner in crime, someone with whom we can make even more brothels, fuck four times a day, party as long as we feel like it, and live life with amazement, because anyway it gives you new eyes because you see life with her eyes and she with yours ... to see life again, to revise, to improve ... because then true love is to improve.”

>Does your girlfriend look like you?
Ax: “No I would say not.”

>And you?
Jad: “My girlfriend and I are completely different, but in the end love, even for life, is being able to understand that you are different from me. Love is respect and includes so many things. ïIf you are different from me, as well as my girlfriend is, but she understands and accepts my flaws and tries to fight them without breaking your balls and without trying to change you, in my opinion that can be love -- but also with friends. Respect is love, being sincere, being yourself with the person you live with, with your friend and with everyone.”

>Is it not difficult in your situation to have a relationship?
Ax: “In my opinion in this environment the duration of the relationship is much faster. Today with a girl you are with three months, maybe you would have been there three years 20 years ago. You live everything much faster, we are used to not having points of reference, even the life that is imposed by our work is to not stay still in one place. Which we fight, we try to have landmarks both physically and mentally. When they are not cages, even a relationship can be lasting.”

>Let's talk about the record. It seems to me that women play a major role here, although I'm still not quite clear on the relationship you have with the female sex.
Ax: “It's great. I see the relationship with women as better.”
Jad: “I see it as equal, in fact the woman is stronger.”

>And this very foul language you have?
Ax: “We have it towards all other categories anyway, it's our attitude of criticism towards everyone, even towards myself. They call me a canteen, a sponge... if you listen to the album and all the dedications toward the female universe, I think in the end the sums that are drawn are not negative at all. Of course with all the contradictions... you can write a song that is a bit misogynistic at the moment when you are angry with your woman got it? It has happened to everyone, just as it has happened to women to write against men. However, it always comes back to the fact of censorship and not getting so heated.’

>Tell me a little bit about how this collaboration with ’The King Of Rap‘ came about, since I'm told you used to buy his records all the time.
Jad: “I used to throw his records all the time as a kid and grew up listening to him. It was because of Kurtis Blow, groups like Sugar Hill, Fonky Four, Grandmaster Flash that Hip Hop spread around the world. Being with him was like we've known each other for so many years, from the day I was throwing his track and then it's a very good thing.”
Ax: “And then it's like a circle coming full circle, the first album was about things and meant Hip Hop of those years...there was an embryo of Spaghetti Funk,which continued in the 2nd album with a search for various genres and anyway an idea of differentiating that was then a hybrid that developed in the 3rd album in its more adolescent aspect, to then take a more introspective and dark turn in “Nobody”. And this is the ultimate album, the collection of all the technique we've acquired over the last few years and it's fitting that one of the ones that started it is present... As Jad said this ‘karma,’ this energy that comes back.”
Jad: “I noticed that there is no spirit anymore. One puts passion, one believes but what does it mean that you are only cool if you are good at rapping? We're talking about human beings here you know? About spirit? I don't care if you are good at painting or making beats, better for you, however keep that to yourself.”

>This fact of giving the title to your album, could it be interpreted as a closing ‘why yes’ and with that we start again?
Ax: “NoV, in my opinion it's a starting point and it's our first real album, the one we dreamed of making, because anyway it includes good technical skill, international worthiness, then I listen to it and I like it, there's nothing I don't like.”

>Seeing your cover, it seems to me that there is a connection between your record cover and the Public Enemy cover in which they were entering the studio... Then I was very struck by the stance against the media, was that what you wanted to get across?
Ax: “Yes, however Hip Hop is always introduced like that on all sides. In the beginning it enters in a conforming way, so to speak, because we were accused of being conforming to the system, but no. Hip Hop never is. It may seem so at first glance, but as you see then later it gags the media, because Hip Hop has to become its own media. ”Y
>In one passage you talk about the ‘root,’ what is this root?
Ax: I think it's that set of memories and experiences and feelings that we had in our childhood Hip Hop years that we talked about earlier, and I think carrying them around with memories of past evenings with people I don't see anymore, may be ??? who are in England now, or people like Chief, Craze, the evenings in front of the ATM, the jams... that's my root, that's my root.”

>To whom are you always attached?
Ax: “Yes... the city street is that, which is not the stabbing street that I was already trying to avoid. Ours is still the bloodletting that we had and we were on the street because that's where we were ... Even in the first album I said I saw a lot of blood, but because I had seen it ... in the demonstrations at school, in the paninarians, in the 80s. So that's the root.‘

>What is decency and what is not?
Ax: “If I were to go on TV and tell you ‘don't drink, don't smoke, be good’ I would be the most indecent thing ever. Everything else, unfortunately, is part of what we look like and maybe it's less decent than others, however, if one expresses them constructively, it's good to improve ourselves.”

>The piece for your fans is very nice ...
Ax: “In the end what we care most about is the opinion of those who buy the record and who have really understood everything and who eventually become attached to us. We know it's a challenge not only for us who make it, but also for those who listen to it.”

>How would you define the life you lead today?
Jad: “Discontent with how ‘this fucking system works, that you always have to go up against all these forms of envy, all these things here. Happy because I have friends, I have family, I have a girlfriend who really show me love and respect.”
Ax: “Happy because I sense a big change, I smell an air similar to what there was in the early 1990s. There will be maybe some years of settling down, but the media will change, the network thing, of not paying for records anymore, the fact that there probably won't be certain media anymore, but other formulas, and I think this, as the power of the media comes down, the stronger people's choices will become. So I'm optimistic and happy because we've seen that very unpleasant things can happen around us either on a personal level, lost friendships or missing people... We're very happy that this album has brought us back to the original spirit. Even the fact that we are doing this interview has a value, we find ourselves here two people from the same background taking stock of life and we see that this stocktaking is positive, despite all the hatred that everyone throws at each other because of the structure of this society.