DESTINATION > COR POISON

By David Nerattini

AL 37 June 1999

This 1999 is certainly the year of Rome.

The successes of Piotta, Flaminio Maphia and Colle, I assure you, are just the tip of the iceberg. The Capitoline scene after years of incubation in this late century is finally ready to prove its strength and express its original and multifaceted vision of this thing called Hip Hop.

Next to explode are two guys who have been chewing, living and studying the double h for years: Primo Brown and Cielo B. aka Cor Veleno. Their first ep is called “Under Siege” and is released on the newly formed Envy label, evidence of an expressive maturity that comes from afar. I went to meet them in Robba Coatta's stubborn new studio where they were mixing the latest track in the company of Detor (to whom many of the bases are owed) and under the direction of the good Squarta.

-You as a group have existed for a long time although only now have you decided to put out a record product, so I would start with your history: how did you approach Hip Hop?

First, “It all started as a joke, I was listening to Jovanotti who was the first to send rap on radio and television. Being the middle-class person that I am, my first approach was this.’

Sky: “Then in Rome there was Magic Tv that played rap, I remember the program that Charlie Jay did. By the way, Carlotta what happened to you? Whatever...among the first videos we got into when we started was K-Solo's “The Fugitive.””

First: “We were into De La Soul, Run Dmc, Public Enemy, LL Cool J; basically what America was producing at that time, late 1980s, early 1990s. Then we had a falling in love with the sound of the Soul Assassins tour, a sound that we still in a way carry with us. Then clearly the Italian stuff, which is what pushed us to write our own stuff. Frankie's “Fight The Faida” was a song that I knew by heart, and Frankie knows it well, who I used to go and bug the crap out of when I met him...”

Sky: “Even the Island Posse, Dee Mo’ is a reference point for everyone who started to rap in Italian at that time.”

-When did you start doing things more seriously?

Primo: “It was a gradual thing, it's not like we woke up one morning and decided to be more serious. Slowly, slowly the desire to concretize rose up in us and among the first people we contacted to make us some bases was Deda from Sangue Misto. We met around the time of ’SXM,“ and having always thought that Bologna's was a very advanced scene, it was natural for us to approach them. Then unfortunately it faded, you know a little bit the distance, a little bit the objective difficulties both ours and his to work.”

-So the first attempt to make a record was in 1994, in these five years what have you done?

Sky: “So many concerts in the most diverse situations, both inside the Hip Hop scene and outside. One thing that really helped us a lot. You know at home you can write all the mejo rhymes in the world, but it's the confrontation with people that then makes you understand. Getting on a stage and communicating with the audience in front of you is definitely the most important thing. The fact then that we haven't published anything until now also gave us a chance to think well about what we had to say, we had time to look inside ourselves and mature.”

First, “We might as well have come out earlier, slamming the first thing we had done on record, but that was not the way we wanted to come out. We would have released stuff that we weren't 100 percent satisfied with, and that also contributed to so much time passing.”

-After a thousand contacts with record companies you have now decided on self-publishing.

Sky: “It was simply time to make a record and this was the best way among those we had in front of us. Ours is the first product of this new label called Envy, run by two guys who threw themselves into this venture helped also by Squarta and Piotta.” 

First, “This is the first time we feel comfortable working on a record, when you start you feel a whole series of conditioning and impediments that are absolutely not there in this situation.’

-You started with an ep, what about the album?

First, “The album is our main project, we are working on it. Actually there is one already ready but it is now too old to represent what we are now.”

-It's a good time for Rome this, considering that until a few years ago on the map of Hip Hop in Italy, the capital city was underrepresented.

Sky: “I think, as in our specific case, it was kind of time. There are a lot of people in Rome who do Hip Hop and have insisted on doing it all these years. What's coming out now is just the fruit of years of insistence on doing things a certain way.’

First, “At first there were no outlets to go out in Rome, now by insisting on outlets we created them for ourselves, so here we are...”

-I was reflecting on the fact that in Italy the most vital scenes are those started by people who have been doing this stuff practically forever: in Turin there is Next One, in Bologna Dee Mo’ and in Rome Ice One...

Sky: “Those you mentioned are all people who have managed to pass on a tradition to a lot of people. A person like Ice One in Rome is a real landmark for all of us, an active witness to a very important era on the basis of which everything has grown a little bit.’

Primo: “And it's thanks to those people that younger people find the impetus to go on and know Hip Hop for what it really is, people like Sebbi or Crash Kid have done so much for the Roman scene. We are all links in a chain that they started, each one continues it in their own way, but we all start from there.”

-Your style has evolved over time, I guess also thanks to the music of others. What stuff have you been listening to recently?

Sky: “Actually everything.”

First: “A lot of different stuff, although I couldn't tell you anyone in particular that I listened to or studied. The influences are more of an unconscious stuff, in the beginning maybe I took net cues from some mc's, but as time went on I think we found our own way. Now for example it's a period that I listen to a lot of surf music, my father's records that have been in my house for as long as I can remember and that gives me a chance to broaden my horizons. Hip Hop cannot be nurtured only by Hip Hop.”

Sky: “America in this sense teaches, their strength is to draw on an immense musical heritage. The stereotype of the ignorant b-boy who only hears Hip Hop is false, even if you don't want to in New York you are exposed to a lot of different cultures and music. I for one have been listening to a lot of jazz and soul in the last few years, because at the end of the day there is only one music. There's a beautiful quote by Tom Waits that I've always liked where he says that music is geography, you just have to choose where you go.”

“Under Siege” EP

UNDER ASSASSED.

Primo: “It's the title track and it appears in two versions, one with Squarta's base and a remix with Detor's base. ’Sky: ”An afternoon and an anti-morning version of a song dedicated to our audience: tigers.“

DO NOT STEP ON THE LAWN

Sky: “It's our ecological piece... ’Primo: ”The base is by Squarta and there is a refrain sung by a very good friend of ours named Flavia Martinelli.“

21 TYSON

Primo: “The base is Detor's that had already come out on “La Banda Del Trucido,” Squarta helped us make it sound as good as it should. Compared to that version there is a new third verse. We decided to give this piece a second life because it's what gave us the impetus to make the record, and then to give it a place since it was only on two compiles.”