THE COSANG DYNASTY: A MATURE COMEBACK THAT DEFIES NOSTALGIA

By Damir Ivic

It is curious that someone was disappointed by “Dynasty,” the return of the Cosang company - Luchè and Ntò united again, a few years ago it really seemed impossible - to the scenes, with new material. Curious, yes. Because the question that would come up is: but, what exactly did you expect? Really: what?

If we were expecting a new “Chi more pe’ mme” or a revived “Vita bona,” well, let the math answer for us: nineteen and fifteen years have passed since these albums, respectively. Nineteen, and fifteen. You who read: what people were you, twenty years ago? What tastes did you have? What listening styles did you have? What did your daily life look like? What were your priorities?

...here. We think this is a very useful exercise to really understand and, even more so, to appreciate in a broad and accomplished sense this album. A work that is, first of all, honest. It may be to minimize their efforts, it may be because it came to them that way, it may be because they are too adult and mature to play twenty-somethings out of their prime, it may be what it may be, but the fact remains that Luchè and Ntò have not worked with wax to pretend they are still the ill-tempered people of yesteryear imbued with cockiness and a rough, rough sense of urgency. No. Consistent with the passage of time, and also consistent with the fact that rap in Italy is now a music that is no longer carbonaceous but rather firmly embedded in the mainstream numbers (thanks in part to them, primarily Luché), “Dynastia” is a serenely adult and pacified record, in its being urban and streetwise.

The flow of the two always makes a good impression (after all, with the people who have been around in the last few years it's pretty hard not to make a good impression,no?, if you come from a tough school like the early 2000s). The arguments and reasoning are more introspective, articulate, reflective, certainly losing that stinging ability to photograph with words the edges, the nastiness and the shadows but still gaining in depth. Clear: this way it's all less incisive, all less cinematic, all more living room or live where you care more about getting a good shot with your cell phone of people singing than launching into a mosh pit with (s)knowns. But that's life.

It is much worse to be Mr. Burns dressed as a skater, thinking that you can thus fool someone and profit maximally on people's nostalgia effect. Those who wanted the Cosangs of 2005 or 2009, or wanted at least a credible simulacrum of them remade almost on a 1:1 scale, were and are more attached to their own memories gone than to the music and the ethical-artistic identity of the Cosangs themselves. “Dynasty” is a record without peaks, without wonders, without abrasions that will remain in history; but it is packaged very well. The collaborations all work (honorable mention for Dogo sounding like Marracash and Marracash sounding like Dogo, as well as for the elegant track with Liberato that could have been a sweetish disaster instead it is style and elegance), the delivery of the two owners of the reunited firm is precisely impeccable and admirable (...even more “in control” and aware than the works that revealed them to the world as Cosang), the musical ideas are there (some excellent, such as “It's never fernut: What a style) and are generally never hurried or cheesy.

What more could you want? In the end, it is the same comeback that Dogo have and have given us: enjoyable, appropriate, mature. Cosang's only misfortune is that in the meantime Geolier has arrived to take the role of standard-bearer, a role that no one in Milan has contended for Gué, Jake, and Joe (Sfera too busy making money, Emis Killa too much for everyone, Ernia too good, Rkomi has self-eliminated, preferring to be a Vasco 2.0 rather than a rapper). Therein lies the difference. But that, honestly, is nobody's fault. And the Cosangs can always say, with good reason, that in the “Dynasty” they come first. When it was far harder to imagine that a popular and profitable dynasty could really be there.

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