Marracash responds to accusations of having “bowed” before the boss Nazzareno Calajò
In recent days the news of an alleged friendship between Marra and Guè and Nazzareno Calajò, who was arrested in July on charges of drug trafficking and was placed under house arrest in September, has been circulating forcefully. In particular, everything arose from Il Fatto Quotidiano, which in its story underlines that Guè would have said “free Nazza” during his concert at the SNAI La Maura Hippodrome last July and that Marra would have publicly greeted “the great uncle Mazza” complete with a bow.
The news went around the web and, although neither Marra nor Guè are formally accused of anything, the intention was to put the spotlight on yet another ad hoc case of the rap = crime saga.
Il Fatto Quotidiano also spoke about the video of ♾️ Love, underlining that it contained criminals and that Marra would have been forced to wear a t-shirt with the words “Truth for Nazza”.
Not only that, there was also talk of Young Rame and the fact that the song Il Tipo di Guè would have been written for Nazzareno Calajò.
Marracash responded to all these accusations and inferences in his Instagram stories, where he wrote:
“I am responding to a grotesque and defamatory article this morning by @ilfattoquotidianoit, copied/pasted from @open_giornaleonline and other newspapers:
1) I have never been and will never be of anyone’s service.
2) It is not the first time that I talk about these facts and these people, in fact I have been doing so for more or less 20 years in songs and interviews, but it is the first time that this thing has been used in this new climate of denunciation of our musical genre.
3) I have never praised the liberation of criminals, never said “free nazza” from the stage, I greeted a person I have known, as a man, since I was a boy.
4) Growing up in my neighborhood brought me into contact with criminal realities, because they exist, but it never stopped me from being a good person or from not knowing how to distinguish good from evil. It only made my vision of reality more complete and the story of its facets more realistic.
5) The video for Infinite Love is not at all a display of wealth and violence, but the exact opposite.
Several criminals appear in the video and the aim is to promote unity and brotherhood between neighborhoods precisely to put an end to rivalries and describe the discomfort of those who remain trapped in a certain life.
6) I have never been forced to wear any shirt and in fact I haven’t worn one. The article claims the opposite but does not publish the photo, precisely because it does not exist.
7) The 10% mentioned in the article is the percentage that
Young Rame pays to his management, just like all artists do.
Furthermore, Mattia is a good guy, he works and has no issues with the state.
8) I have never paid percentages except to the people who work on my music with me.
Summing up…
It is truly mortifying to realize that at this moment the most popular and youngest musical genre in Italy really seems to be under strategic attack by a certain type of institutions and journalism; generic attacks on the lyrics of the so-called “trappers”, decontextualized and stripped of the music to the point of making them indefensible, then the parties in the square that are abandoned due to a biased and ignorant rereading of interpretations of dramatic realities that unfortunately exist and which simply find voice and denunciation in rap . They would be an opportunity to open debate and discussion with the authors, but instead they are criminalized and discarded like rubbish. Further missed opportunities for this country of many bellies and few heads.
I hope that the various newspapers will immediately want to change the titles and the articles themselves. In any case, I reserve the right to take legal action against any type of defamation against me.”
The press talks about statements coming from the prison police, but I believe it is just another chapter in the eternal witch hunt against a musical genre and its exponents. Marra and Guè have always talked about the streets, the underworld and the good life in their songs. Furthermore, Marracash is from Barona, the same neighborhood as Calajò, it goes without saying that, having not grown up in luxury and in the center of Milan, but in a neighborhood where everyone knows everyone, he knows this Nazza. Guè has always said in his songs that he has friends at the top and others, let’s say, “make do”. It honestly escapes me how knowing someone who committed a crime makes you a criminal or even an affiliate.
I find these stories and news grotesque. Now I expect that some lyrics by Marra and Guè will be brought up and analysed, taken at random and decontextualised, just to support the cause of rap = crime, drugs, violence and as we have recently seen also a hymn to femicide.
