Campione dei Novanta [English translation]

In middle school, I was introvert

Mummy on the outside, Narnia on the inside

Every teacher was sure

That I was the locker 1

I thought I could do anything, yes, except this

Except being in an arena

"Put your hands up", even if there's no gun behind you

It's all fault of a clip I saw

It hit me like the tilt of a pinball

Three guys from Queens, Black Beatles 2

Unexpected like being in the green on the bank account

A roar so loud they heard it at Chernobyl

I was asking for a stage, not for pussies and cash

I only found a series of censors (heck!) 3

Shut away, with an Amiga and a four track recorder

Not with a friend, snorting four lines 4

In one morning, four reams

Obsessed with my travel, Ulysses

Rhymes without order, yesterday's voice 5

Keith Haring's face

Before the posses

Before rap was

On Lenin's trail (привет) 6

Castrocaro Festival

It went well, not very much

Piss off, my dear

It went well to Di Cataldo 7

RTI called me 8

Then Sony, then MTV

But anyway they booted me

Better sign for Amityville's house 9

My aim was becoming champion of the Nineties

But I lost like that Dutch champion 10

Kicked out from Egoland's station

They used to back up and run over my name

They said that guy is a zero, zero

At the mic

Far from zero, zero

Of the binoculars

Reborn like Zero 11

God bless the Zero years

Stress and zeal

Champion of the Nineties...

Producers used to say "you've got to write a song about this and that

Write songs that help the audience put stuff in their carts"

And I went to Sanremo

When rapping in Sanremo

Had the effects of a sacrilege 12

I was not the main guest

But the loser who was with the major

And anyway

I've never fought to defend my choices 13

I liked caves and bunkers best

But I followed the stream (extension cables) 14

My colleagues were evolving, they were monsters, Godzilla 15

I was eating bones with Wilma 16

Famous in France like bottles of red wine

At the Moulin Rouge in a big shell

Well, those were clumsy attempts

I was beaten up like a wrestler

My collapse was clear

It went from Cornell to Chester 17

And after the dark, the Ulysses

I arrived in Itaca stronger (gyms)

Bushy hair and sideburns

But the stage still hadn't recognised me, Laertes 18

Add my old me in the Club 27 19

Reborn in 2000 and it seems clear to me

That fortune had been my ruin

I listen to new stuff, it's a pretty good stuff

The emptiness of continuous hits

Compared to those, Mikimix is Bob Dylan 20

My aim was becoming champion of the Nineties

But I lost like that Dutch champion

Kicked out from Egoland's station

They used to back up and run over my name

They said that guy is a zero, zero

At the mic

Far from zero, zero

Of the binoculars

Reborn like Zero

God bless the Zero years

Stress and zeal

Champion of the Nineties...

You know, sometimes you start with a misstep before reaching the goal

You take a route different from someone else's

You go from a thumbs down to a pardon in one year 21

From a thumb down to a pardon in one year

Champion

Call me, call me

Champion of the Nineties

Call me, call me "Champion" [etc.]

1. i.e. "I was so quiet and silent, they thought I was the school locker".2. reference to Run-DMC, a hip hop group from New York, founded in 1983.3. the author mocks the censorship, using an outdated interjection which is not considered to be a profanity.4. double pun: "Amiga" (a PC first built in the 1980s) / "amico" ("friend") and "pista", which both means "track" and "line (of cocaine)".5. the author is reflecting on his youth, when he used to write differently than now.6. "privet", "hello" in Russian. A reference to rap's politicization7. Massimo Di Cataldo, one of the many singer who managed to become famous thanks to the music festival held in the city of Castrocaro (Italy). Caparezza took part to it too, in the early 90s (with the stage name of "Mikimix"), but his song didn't had much success.8. RTI is the name of the TV company owned by Silvio Berlusconi.9. pun on "house" and "publishing house". Amityville is a reference to the mass murder happened in Long Island (New York) in 1974 and its influence in pop culture (books, movies etc. - cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_DeFeo_Jr.)10. pun on "persi" ("I lost" in Italian) and the surname of the Dutch football player Robin Van Persie, who lost the World Cup final in 2010.11. reference to an Italian singer, whose stage name is Renato Zero. "Renato" literally means "reborn".12. Sanremo is the most important Italian song festival, but it is usually criticised for the unoriginal style of most of its song.13. the author, during the time he was known as Mikimix, followed his label's suggestion about what songs he should write and what song contest he should join, a behaviour he now disowns.14. pun on "corrente", which both means "stream" and "electricity".15. "monster", in Italian, also has a positive meaning, like "prodigy".16. a reference to one of the character from the 1960s American cartoon "The Flintstones". It takes place in an imaginary Stone Age with friendly and domesticated dinosaurs, rather different than the aggressive Godzilla-style image they usually have.17. despite an unexpected success in France, the author had a crisis and abandoned his first stage name (Mikimix). His crisis is here compared to those of Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington, who committed suicide.18. the author came back to the stages with his current name, "Caparezza". In the Apulia dialect (the region he's from), "capa rezza" means "curly head", which reflects the hairstyle he's been sporting since then (when he was called Mikimix, he used to shave his hair off).19. the 27 Club is a group of famous musicians and actors all dead at the age of 27. Mikimix too "died" when the author was 27.20. compared to the hits popular nowadays, the author is starting to think that his old self was not so bad.21. reference to the "thumbs down - thumbs up" as sign of condemn or pardon supposedly used by Roman emperors.

• Artist:Caparezza
• Album:Exuvia