Nitro – Interview with Rido

 -Nitro in Aelle Magazine. 

- Beautiful, beautiful.

 - It is a pleasure to have you here.
Thank you.

- Also because, one, we are in your neighborhood.

Yes.

 -Which is Bicocca, Milan. How long have you been here?

It is now five years. Let's say I've always been in the Nolo part. At first, when I came to Milan, I was in Pasteur, those areas there. Then I went to Adriano district, which is back here more or less, and now I'm here in Bicocca. - Always in north Milan. - Always in North Milan.

 - And are you comfortable with that?

I know we are also here because this is the place that began to represent you.

 - There is a place where you go out, where you catch yourself for guys.

Yes, yes, I find it to be one of the last neighborhoods in Milan that is very livable. The atmosphere is always both city but also a little bit country. To me it makes me feel at home for a moment. So I prefer these environments here, which are a little quieter, with young kids, that there is the university back here. There's also a school of musicians here, so I'm always around musicians talking about music or academics talking about interesting things. So basically yes, I like being here.

 -It's a good stimulus. I remember a talk we had about ten years ago that you were telling me about going to school listening to Italian rap in your headphones. And I can imagine that a little bit that search for exchange is very strong for people who come from the province to the city. Which also happened to me now years ago.It's interesting that though, isn't it?What do you look for from the city? Are you looking for that kind of exchange and interaction with people?

Absolutely. In my opinion you also try to go to a place where the pace fits a little bit more with what you would like to go to and that maybe the context you come from doesn't fit that pace, let's say. The first time I came here to Milan I was amazed at how much people were producing things, doing things quickly, and I started going at that pace. Now I have to go to New York because I want to see even more, let's say, not speed because I don't like things done in a hurry, however efficiency. I mean, just getting stuck on one thing and until it's done stay there, dedication, let's say.

- And there's also a discourse that's also related to your type of rap, which is very adrenaline-driven, right? And so you need to be in a stimulating environment.

Milan is intellectually stimulating, you said it, university neighborhoods, great exchanges, bars where you don't just go to have a beer at the end of the day, but where you go to talk to people, urban sports, skateboarding, everything else, so also adrenaline in the conflicts of decimenus.

 - Of course, there is also the skate park nearby. That thing is still important. And it's an imagery that has built the history of hip hop in a fundamental way, I would say.

Absolutely.

 - Is there still for you, too, in the things you're doing now, this quest toward something fast, adrenaline-pumping, done with exchanges?

Well, yes. Let's say I try in every way to find new ways to distract my head and always give it new stimuli, new activities. So now and then I go to the skate park, I ride roller skates, now and then I go kayaking on the lake and paddle. Let's say I really like the adrenaline sport, the thing that's a little bit more extreme, let's say, because it keeps my head -- it takes my head off, let's say, the obsessive thoughts or the things that I have to do, it gives me time to breathe for a moment and to reorganize them better later, when I stop doing the physical activity, in this case. But, there, yes, it is difficult. Adrenaline is really, let's say, my biggest addiction, because just from the time I'm a kid I'm used to doing adrenaline things, I'm one of those kids who grew up on the bicycle, always on the road, and so here it is ... the boredom was so much, you have to somehow anesthetize, let's say, this boredom, this emptiness.

 - There's also a little bit of the dynamic of travel, right? You described all the movement sports, you don't distract us, you don't play tennis.

No, no, I played, but I didn't ...

 - Things that make you move, air in your face all the time.

Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. Skiing, swimming, kayaking, rollerblading, anything that includes movement and speed anyway, except motors. Motors is just something that I don't care about, the car, the motorcycle, just, I really don't care about that. But they're worlds where you have to push yourself, because it's the force that puts us, it's just that physics of yours that puts you to become done, that's important here.

- All to make a parallel always with rap, right? Because at the bottom of these things you have.

It very much reflects how I am, the kind of music I make very much reflects how I actually am, actually. Now that you point out these parallels.

- That's something that I feel very much in line with as well, I've always conceived of it that way. It's a search really for a stimulus that comes from outside, that you internalize, that you give back to the outside with energy, with adrenaline and with a lot of strength. Because then it's the best of both worlds. The best that life in the province gives you that is more attached to nature, and the best that the city gives you that is more attached to social relations, to the possibility of catching people you wouldn't otherwise see.

Absolutely yes, absolutely yes. I would say that Milan in this thing anyway is still kind of the capital of Italy in terms of creativity. I mean here you can make things possible, you can have a meeting every day concerning a certain kind of project. Anyway, people come here because they want to do. Already the fact that they are here, you've taken away three quarters of the people who don't feel like doing, you know? Or who anyway don't have the opportunity for example to be here, that that is unfair. But anyway, now whatever, it's another time. When I came here it was still a little bit more possible maybe for a guy to think about having little money in his pocket and trying somehow to make ends meet every time with rent, with tenants, overcrowded situations.

 - We've all been through this a little bit I think. You've been in Milan for almost a decade now?

12. Since 2012, yes.

- The league has changed from 2012 to now. That is, the top is still that, the top of the pyramid is still that, however, more and more people are trying to reach it, more and more rappers are trying to reach it.

Sure, sure.

- We are aware that there is also this difficulty, right? Of doing things, which does not make them impossible because actually the city is not even the only existing form, existing place to be able to do the era.

No, no, fortunately not. But in Milan, unlike the other cities in Italy, right now he has been lucky enough to bring to him so many people who make music and from different places in Italy and Europe and the world.

- So there is an exchange even on that terrain of making music more and more, more and more, isn't there?

At least for me, for what my interests are, I mean I come from a place where, now of course it will be there too, a little bit like here, but when I was growing up in Veneto there was a rap night a month and you would go to a rap night a month, here there is always an event concerning more or less what you like, if there is no rap there is other music, there are clubs, there are small clubs, there are big clubs, there is the palazzetto, there is the airport nearby which is one of the most connected in Europe, for me it was the biggest advantage of being in Milan because I always say to my mother ’I'm great here because I'm an hour from all over Europe“ and it is in my opinion the thing, at least that to me, stimulates the most. Also because even there you do sessions, things, you hear from the producer in Amsterdam, you go to Amsterdam, you stay three days, you come back, there are things that wouldn't be possible to do, I mean you add those 3-4 hours of driving to Milan to take the plane, not because it's not possible, but simply because you don't get, I mean like this thing I might feel like doing it today and I do it tomorrow, got it, whereas if I'm somewhere else I have to organize, take a week and a half before, a month before, do all these things, got it, and for me, especially music, which is the most full of contingencies job maybe in entertainment or anyway be one of the most, you always have to be ready to say ”eh I'm going that way, I'm going that way.“ I since I saw, what's it called, the documentary on Jimmy Yovine, there's him saying they call him on Easter, he was at dinner, lunch with his parents on Easter, they tell him, ”come, come, come in,“ and there's John Lennon recording. That's a good lesson, I mean at least for me it was a good lesson, to just say ”gee, every time there's an opportunity it doesn't matter where I am, I have to drop everything and go and do that,“ because that's what then brings all the rest of the good opportunities.

 - Of course, and it is a matter of opportunity at 100%.

And then Milan became populated with nice studios, good producers, nice situations to compare and many of the rappers and musicians in Italy are making music from here.

- Is it easy to get caught in this historical period? Between whom do you understand each other at the very least?

So these things here are always answers that are hyper subjective for each person and especially for the stage they are going through, in my opinion. So I don't know if it was a little bit easier before because there was a lot less and so we were all friends because, I mean in the sense we all had a little bit and we were all together as a team. Whereas now I see a lot of watertight compartments, closed circles where you have a hard time screwing with each other's circle. I sincerely dislike it because it's just the consequence of how much business enters the art long before the game, and in my opinion it's wrong for the business to start right away because if not you just work, you never have fun. Music is fundamental, having fun to make good music, in my opinion. So that's it, some things I don't understand, on the other hand I also say that when I was 19-20 years old I was never at home, I was always out and about, always on a subway, always on a wagon, always in some square, so maybe it's also me becoming a little more bearish and staying inside the house. I find it a little bit more difficult, both because anyway production has increased, in the sense that when I was a kid there was a record coming out every two years, every three years and now instead on average there's more or less one project coming out a year but still people are really standing still, so physically you have to spend a lot more time in the studio as far as I'm concerned. I mean when I was also a kid I liked to go on tour, gather a lot of emotions, even force myself not to write for long periods of time, so that then when I went to the studio I was all compressed, let's say, by these months that I had made sack, as they say, and I would get to the studio and explode, instead now I'm living a life where I'm always doing everything together, in the sense that tomorrow I'm planning a live show, I go to the live show, the next day I go to the studio, the next day I have three days off, I take a plane, I go three days to London to make music, to read things, I come back, I study again with New York, in the sense always doing everything together, living each day as if it were a possible business opportunity or a possible vacation. Of course everything is on my responsibility because in the sense it's my ass that pays.

- Clear, clear.

And it's also a nice metabolism this of being able to phagocytize something but having time to metabolize it right, without necessarily having to have a delivery.

 - You made an album last year in 23.

Yes.

- And are you working on new things now?

Yes, yes, yes. I'm already making another record, there's already the concept, there's already the title, the tracks are well underway, so basically I don't say we're there but almost there.

 - Okay, not as a matter of superstition but I don't care about the title and the concept though, but you've already answered the question I wanted to ask you because there is a concept behind the music. Even in this whole period of metabolism, of going and writing and figuring it out, is there a concept behind something that can still be called an album? Why is this not more obvious?

But also this thing is a question that sees me in a position that is not really clear, well stable, in the sense that sometimes I envy a little bit the people who manage not to make concept albums because maybe it would allow me to have more thematic freedom, to range more, to do what I want more, I don't know. On the other hand, I grew up with these kinds of albums and these are the albums that changed my life, that is, albums that more than a concept had a strand behind them, a narrative strand enough, also because in my opinion, I don't know how to say, quite coherent, just in the thought of the album as well, you know? I mean in the sense sometimes I think, if I hear people saying ’eh but he still says these things here“ eh sure, for one it hasn't changed shit since I started saying them, second I still think that way, what am I supposed to say, the opposite to sound more diverse? No, I mean thinking evolves, sometimes it totally changes, sometimes it sharpens like a blade, it gets sharper still and you say the same thing but in a much sharper way too. In fact in my opinion it's nice, for example, I don't know, even about the poets, you always talk about their main themes, in the sense imagine if Leopardi was told ”oh but minchia you're always sad, you're always talking about sad stuff“ and I'm not happy, what should I tell you?

- It is nice this comparison first of all because it is very high and low and so it always works and on the other hand because there is a concept of poetics even in the contemporary, there is a concept of poetic identity, I am made that way as a human being, I am inclined to think these things, no matter how much time may change me, improve me or move me, there are cornerstones in me that are part of my person that will remain that way, there is no going to distort it.

Then the audience often demands consistency because they want to hear the same things over and over again, it means “Nitro is like this, you've been inboxed” and on the other side with us though you never change, so there is a demand from the outside that is definitely too varied sometimes. No, but there is a demand from the outside that the artist shouldn't care about, at least I really like to de-emphasize, sometimes I think that it's not even me writing my pieces but that they are a vehicle for something else, for an inspiration of greater for an energy that has above me and that I can't control, so I'm almost thinking about de-empowering myself from my music because I've been trying also lately to do the pieces without writing them down, just in my head, because then it helps me even more to be a vehicle for this force or energy that I think is higher than me. Aside from that, it's just this varied, wrong and extreme set of demands, because, what do I know, maybe there's like, what do I know, I remember a time in my life where I was very angry and Eminem's sad songs made me shit, I was like, “madonna, what the heck, every time in the record there's such a whiny song,” then maybe I got older, had a sad moment and wanted to listen to those, and then I think, “minchia, I thought every time I impulsively thought this stuff, commented on it and commented on it.... I mean, I would look like a fool, someone who doesn't have an idea because three years later you change it, still later you change it, still later you change it.” It really would be for everybody to take a big step back, because for me just the whole set of all these demands, even from the audience who often want to be in the shoes of the artist to the point of saying what they should do for them, what works best for them, the part that works best for them than you, this in my opinion is what has created the cultural flattening that there is now, the fact that everybody wants to play it safe, nobody wants to take risks anymore. If you go and look at the music of the early ’90s and early 2000s, rappers in the same era had such different styles that would be called “genres” today. And that's doing “conscious rap,” and that's doing “low fi,” and that's doing -- when I was a kid these were styles, it was still rap, but everybody was doing their own style.

 - Now they are genres basically, waves, wave, right? And why are they wave and not styles?

Because the style used to be one person's, now the waves incorporate many more artists and so they become groups of people making music that is very similar to each other, when in fact it's an excuse because the genre has expanded so much that it's saturated, basically. It's saturated and then everyone aspires, or is coveted by the public, to do something that is very much like pop, right?

- Having that success that is similar to pop.

Yeah, but if you're going to do it with pop you're playing other people's game for me, in the sense that ... I mean, the cool thing about when rap was cracking all the charts four to five years ago is that it was rap, is that it was doing the numbers of pop, but it was rap, it was trap, it was still a culture precisely of that kind, I mean in the sense, well framed in that certain kind of social dynamic, that's it. Now it's a little bit more of a national popular, a little bit of everybody's, which has its advantages, which definitely has its disadvantages as well, however...

- One thing I've always been interested in and liked about your character Nitro, is that you have a very well-followed Instagram profile, good interaction from the audience, but you've never steered it toward anything other than your music. In the sense, it's very clear that you do rap.

Eh, yes.

In the sense, I think it's one of the few things that I do well, so I don't -- I mean -- but, then, then this is a need that I don't feel, because I don't know how to say, I already put everything in my music. I mean, if you listen to my music, you know what my flaws are, you know what my anxieties are, you know what my good things are, you know what I'm ashamed of, you know everything about me. But why should I put in my Instagram profile my opinion But then, do so many people really care about my opinion, if it is not put in rhyme and said “Well, sung well”?I mean, in the sense, to say one's opinion everyone is capable, it is now the right of really ... Even the dumbest of all has to say his or her opinion and shout it out loud, it's nice there. However, in the sense, my speech is not only that, there is also an artistic effort, an effort to turn my opinion into something catchy, musically understandable and above all to simplify it, because maybe even those who don't get it are against my thinking. When he notices that I put that effort there, even to put it in rhyme, to explain it well, to give you my point of view, maybe still disagree, however with respect to my point of view, for me, I don't know how ... that is, it would seem redundant to fill social media with my opinions, since my songs already have my opinions, basically.

 - It's nice, huh, because you've used the same language of confrontation with, let's say, a little bit more virtual audience, that of Instagram and online, which is similar to what we described earlier catching people at the bar.

Yes.

It's really a dialogue, something that goes back and forth with you, right? And to define then your rap instead as a synthesis of what's around us, that you are the filter of that and you bring it to others, I think that's a pretty complete and complex musical feeling, how nice that there is in Italian rap of the day to date.

Thank you.

 - Kind of closing the loop on that. But speaking instead of the more purely musical side, who do you like to work with as producers right now, regardless of whether you then materialize actual songs?

I really like to work with Low-Kid all the time, because anyway he and I have listened to so much music together, the exact same music, so when I talk about something we already know disc year, title track, pure track number, in the sense so for me it's very important this thing and we have a relationship that is 12 years, 10 years that we have been making music together, so it's like that now.

I really like to work with Mr. Monkey, with Kriposki, they're two very strong guys, I really like to work with Mike Defunto, with Big Joe, I just worked with him, very nice, but here's basically I always like to work with producers who have their own very distinctive sound in the meantime and most of all who want to interact with the artist, who are willing to suggest melodies, choruses, ways to take their beat, because they know it from the inside and so they can help me to grapple with it better, I like to go to the studio without having anything, not even a written stuff and try to find the solution with them, more spontaneous.

 - You're talking so much about the way rap writing has changed generationally, you used to always think of the Duke of Rhyme, Penelope Ed, a world of intimate writing that you do at home, listening to the beat or a type beat and then just working on it, instead now you have people who go into the studio and, as you were telling me now, they don't exactly have an idea of what they're going to write on the piece, so they retrieve it something they already have in their mind or if not they write it maybe bar by bar directly to the microphone, have you ever tried these different methodologies of interacting with writing?

No, yes, I still ... but by now we are a 50/50, meaning 50 of the times I don't write and 50 of the times I write, because sometimes I want to fix a concept well, other times I want to focus on instinct and spontaneity, and it always depends on what you're looking for from a song, if a song has to have a fairly complex theme, or even just a technical factor, a song you have to use an extra beat, hard that you do it without writing, if not or you say some stuff, self-celebration, the usual live motives of this music anyway, but basically lately in the emotional stuff, especially on the 90 bpm stuff, I really like not writing, there's just doing bar by bar, quatrain by quatrain, say what's coming to me now, I do that, I saw Lil Wayne do that in a session, and from that day there I started doing that too, I don't consider it more superficial work than the verse I'm writing, absolutely, because when I learned how this medium worked, I looked in the mirror and I said, anyway you've been listening to rap since you were 8 years old, now you're 31, so you've been listening to rap for more than 20 years, you've been thinking in rap, every day every fucking word you see in the signs you think in metrics, how it goes that way, how it goes this way, don't get hurt or think that a stuff is bad or done superficially because you did it in 10 minutes, you studied 20 years to do that stuff in 10 minutes, and that's the secret behind it, making things that are hard seem easy, because your brain is so used to that kind of reasoning that by now even when I talk I have a rhythm, life is stronger than me, so why stand there and think, to think that many times that's what fucks you up, and so I decided sometimes to take myself a little less seriously and say go for it, anyway at the limit tomorrow that bar sucks, I'll change it, however don't deprive yourself of the moment, the momentum more than the moment, the inertia of when you feel like doing something.

 - And you feel like doing that thing at that moment.

It's like when you do trick skate, or when you go on a slide, but what dad always told you when you go on a slide, that if you do with the soft leg you destroy yourself, you always have to go hard convinced, that's how it is, that's how it is in music now, too, badly, that is when you have to jump, you have to jump, you can't farm every two minutes to say what do I write, change, change, no by now you jumped and try to stand, then you practice and keep jumping, until the whole thing comes perfect.

 - And then it is a fear of making mistakes that leads to not having an identity, because sometimes even in the mistake itself, when it is strong in character, you find a very beautiful identity.

But absolutely, but then also a lot of mistakes that you see about yourself, just like most of your physical flaws, which you see as huge, maybe people don't even notice, and maybe they notice other flaws that you didn't think you had, so there's in the sense, nice there, we're here, we live, and I don't know how to say, it's easy to get too wrapped up in that stuff. - Which then in art, in music, the cool thing is that that getting hurt sometimes is the opinion of somebody else outside who sees things differently than you do. If you're afraid of that, you're afraid to expose yourself, then so much goes, wouldn't the other people do these. - Absolutely yes, and look, that's something that put me very much at peace with myself, because, okay, with a little bit of snootiness though I said, minchia, anyway three quarters of the people who criticize art, if they knew how to make art they wouldn't criticize it, that's it, because they would be an artist. So in the sense, I still like to do, I don't even like to talk about what I don't like in art. I don't know, it's just going to be that seeing in your own skin, when people cross off in five minutes, what you put your soul into doing, that's something that has taken some of the sensitivity out of it for me. I really feel like I'm wasting my time hating something, though, when it's not an unfair thing, you know? If it's stuff that I don't like, but it doesn't have any kind of unfairness, it doesn't do any harm to anybody, I don't see why it has to make me angry, you know? As long as there's somebody buying it, as long as there's somebody eating it, nice there. -

 - Simply because it's not your dish, it doesn't have to be something bad for everyone.

No, in fact, but I really find it's wasting your time to pollute your head with only bad things, because you start hating things, you start considering only what you hate, eventually you start hating only what you don't like, that is you start noticing, even in your life and in everything, only what you don't like, and you forget about what you like about your life, you know? And it becomes a vicious cycle of negativity that you think you're giving to someone else the moment you tell them, “Your stuff sucks,” but it actually stays with you, because you're always talking like that, and so your brain will also get used to making input like that, if you always make output like that, you know? - Coming from you who have always had a very visceral, loud, screaming, passionate relationship with music, and to talk about positivity and negativity in such a clear way is nice, because often strength and gut gesture is perceived as negativity, you're not screaming negative attitudes.

 -Instead there can be an underlying positivity so strong that it can withstand anger even at times.

Yes, exactly, as I was telling you before, the excuse for me is the artistic gesture, in the sense that if I wrote what I think and wrote the books there, I would be a horrible person as far as I'm concerned, because I put them in rhyme which is the “smooth pass,” however, that's why I say.

- I don't find them situations like say.

Even though my music is very much about anger, hatred, resentment, if that hatred, anger and resentment had manifested, I would not have written a song, I would have done bad things. To me that is already positivity. It's no coincidence that we should talk about this weird axiom for hours, which is the fact that often the musicians who make the baddest music in life are the patsies, then look in R&B and you see things in it that you never want to know. It's weird as a thing though, it's not like those who can let off steam on stage then don't have to let off steam in life and vice versa. Sure, and that balance sometimes from the outside is hard to grasp.

 - Fortunately, we are there to have a chat and explain the things we have done properly. I wish you the best of luck, tell her another one for the record writing, for the delivery. Sure I'll see you later when it is.

Come on, great, thank you.