Marracash: I’ve been to hell. And I’m back

This article is published in number 14 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until April 6, 2021

On June 1, 2019, as the world unwittingly began to experience what would have been its last carefree summer, Fabio Bartolo Rizzo, aka Marracash, closed himself at home.
Although he did not know how to give a precise name to that choice – the word lockdown still didn’t tell us anything – he sensed that in order to stem the pandemic of which he was the zero patient and also the only one, an evil of living in which it had become impossible not to stumble, he needed to deal with it himself.

In those three months of self-imposed isolation (and while we were dancing outside Margarita, the dance song that had the merit of introducing him to Elodie, who would become his partner) was born Person, it is no coincidence that the best-selling album of 2020, the year in which everyone, then, found ourselves confined to the house, to deal with the same fears and questions that bounce in that rap record that broke the registry boundaries , social, cultural, reaching an audience that before then had not had any familiarity with the genre. And perhaps no sympathy.
The first sentence of the whole album (track Teeth) says: “I have to roll out the cellophane first,” implying that the matter will not be exactly clean, as it inevitably is when dealing with pain. But the refrain of the last song (Greta Thunberg, sung with Cosmo) repeats: «I can do it». Not a healing record, says Marra, but “it starts in the dark and then, song after song, you see a light at the end of the tunnel.” When we meet for this interview that gallery seems very far away and he, almost blatantly, a happy man.

Humanity will remember 2020 as the worst year in recent history. But maybe she doesn’t.
«I postponed the biggest and most important tour of my career, I did it for what, at the beginning, seemed like a cosmic and very specific bad luck against me. But then I realized that it wasn’t me who missed the train: that train had simply never left for anyone. We are in a bubble where everything is suspended, postponed. I took the pandemic – mine, and also the one that involved us all – like this: as an opportunity to change. I have re-appropriated the people and things that I really like, and that were there, under the dreams not mine that I dreamed simply because everyone dreams them. I wrote Person like it was my first album, thinking that I had been so far from the scene – 4 years in rap felt like a geological era – and that I had been so bad that no one would expect anything from me. While I was writing it I felt that there was a complete coincidence between my borders, Fabio’s, and those of Marracash. One day I was in the car, I listened to the first 3 tracks and I cried because I felt that feeling which translated into words is: I have it ».

What?
«The situation in hand, but also the flicker, the talent. I am always afraid of losing it, the talent. Then, however, a verse comes into my head and I say: ok, it’s still here, thank goodness. Or I look at the face of someone to whom I read what I wrote and that face lights up, and then I light up too. If I’m alone, something I know how to do and that happens to me quite often, I tend to think that everything I do sucks. In the midst of the others I feel not only better, but also better: I know it’s bad to say, but the comparison between myself and other people leads me to be more forgiving with my defects which, suddenly, no longer seem so terrible ” .

On the record he sings “it’s my rebellion they want to sell.” At 41, do you still have any rebellion?
“My rebellion is to be who I am, and to reclaim it. In rap we all sang the epic of what was successful from scratch, and frankly it also broke my balls. Now I am no longer interested in telling the road I came from, but what effect that road has had on me, what wounds it has left. So yes, I rebel on my own. Also because rebellion as a collective dimension doesn’t even exist anymore, today’s kids, who are much better than us because they are open, not bullies, fluid, they don’t want to subvert anything. Maybe because they don’t believe in anything ».

Instead, what did you believe in?
«In many things, some certainly also wrong. We believed that by demonstrating we could change the system, that something could be found in drugs, that traveling was an important way to get to know yourself and the world. I was looking at Salvatores’ films, which now seem a bit naive fairy tale, and I was thinking about what they tell about the dreams of my generation. I still believe in the power of travel: when I put together the pieces of myself that I had forgotten, I remembered that as a child I had a passion for swords and samurai, so I went to Japan to see how they are made. I’ve been happy”.

The boys, however, are mobilizing for the environment.
“It’s true. Climate change is one of the issues of the moment, even if the hottest one, the real revolution, is what women’s rights are doing. As an almost boomer I think that we can do very little about the environment as individuals, which is a social issue. I do my nice separate collection, I try to reduce my impact on the planet, but if things do not change upstream, if decisions are not taken by governments, it does not go far. People work, get their asses like that, pay taxes: it seems to me a miracle that they also want to separate the wet from the dry. Now, everywhere, we are called to do things that someone else should do. Even at the supermarket: you say ah how cool the automatic cash desk. But they didn’t do it for you, they did it to save a salary and you have to scan your products. ‘

As Marilyn Monroe said, you can take the girl out of the province, but not the province out of the girl. How much of the Barona (not the province but the periphery, again we are talking about roots) has remained inside?
“I still live in the Barona, and my mother always lives there too. It is the place where I grew up and where I believe that people respect me and also love me because I have not changed. Some things are not said there, but you understand them from the gestures. Some greet me with an imperceptible nod of the head Fight Club. A good sign ».

Did you feel different from the guys around you?
«On the cover of my first album there are antelopes and, behind them, public houses. And I think I felt like them: a rare species in there. I had done elementary school in via Bramante: a public house with the bathroom outside, but at school if you knew something you could raise your hand and say it, and it was also a good thing. When I arrived in Barona, the school, the world, were the other way around: if you knew things you had to shut up, if you read books you couldn’t tell anyone, if you felt emotions it was better not to show them, otherwise you seemed weak. For a long time I have had to keep parts of myself hidden; then I realized that I could regain possession of my diversity. And also to transform that “Moroccan” name by which they called me with contempt and use it as a strength. Marracash, in fact ».

When a boy from the Barona meets a girl from the Quartaccio, what happens?
«Elodie and I recognized ourselves in our normality. This is the first time I’ve been with someone like me. I have always avoided celebrities, my girlfriends barely knew who I was when we met. She and I do the same job, but she loves me, not Marracash. And I love Elodie, the Elodie person ».

How did you manage to save this normality?
“Both you and I have had a fundamental lesson: defeat, failure. I learned this lesson well because I was successful at 28, before I had time to do everything, to swallow shit, to feel invisible. It wasn’t easy for her either. Defeat is an experience that changes your life ».

He told with great naturalness and before “mental health” became the theme of celebrities, of the ups and downs of his bipolar syndrome. Talking about it serves to clear the issue or is it also good for those who do it?
«For me, things are dealt with by talking, and in fact my analyst always says that I am the perfect patient. It did me good to be able to say that I was sick and I think it did good to those who listened to me too: my accounts have been transformed for weeks into a kind of mail of the heart, in which everyone talked to me about their problems. I’ve written to someone, but the only real way I know to try to give answers is through songs ».

He looks like a happy man. It is?
“Work is fine, my private life is very good – I feel loved, welcomed, encouraged and supported – and this is good for everything else. I feel like I have all the strength in the world to be able to do what I want. I brought out Fabio, and Fabio likes it. It is a very nice thing to feel accepted ».

PHOTO ALVISE GUADAGNINO

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