A SUMMARY OF THE INTERVIEW IN PODCAST FORMAT
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BY SID
Luca Barcellona, known in the Hip Hop scene as Lord Bean or Bean One, is a versatile artist, writer, rapper, graphic designer, and a leading figure in the international modern calligraphy landscape.
Having trained as a writer and graphic designer in the 90s, he has skillfully blended his experience in the Hip Hop movement and writing with an in-depth study of classical calligraphic styles, creating a unique and innovative artistic language.
Since 2007, he has taught calligraphy with the Italian Calligraphic Association and in leading design schools, holding workshops and conferences worldwide. He has collaborated with major international brands such as Nike, Absolut, Pirelli, Universal, and Mondadori. His works have been exhibited in numerous galleries and are part of prestigious permanent collections.
In 2012, he published his first monograph, “Take Your Pleasure Seriously,” and in 2021, the essay “Anima & Inchiostro” (“Soul & Ink”) for Utet. His second monograph, “Do the Write Thing” was recently released; compared to his first book, this one is more introspective, reflecting the practice not just of a simple calligrapher but of a true artist who uses calligraphy as an expressive medium. In addition to his artistic work, he is also an avid vinyl record collector and co-founder of the Lazy Dog Press publishing house.
Sid: Let’s talk about your new book, the latest one you published.
Luca: It couldn’t be newer… I’m opening the cellophane right now…
Sid: Even from the title, “Do The Write Thing,” your origins are evident. There’s a clear underlying quote.
Luca: Ah, of course. Perhaps it’s one of the few occasions where I don’t have to explain it.
Sid: So, it clearly shows where you come from and, in a sense, your journey.
Luca: Yes, in a way. And I love playing with words. I haven’t just been a calligrapher, but I’ve also done other things where words are used significantly. Some people also know me for that aspect of my work. “Do The Write Thing” was the perfect title. I’d been waiting for it for a long time. I’m not the only one who’s had this idea, but it was perfect for my journey. It truly speaks of my path in writing. So, “do the written thing.” Absolutely, it’s the stylistic hallmark with which I’ve expressed myself best and most extensively.
But that’s not enough, so together with my work as a calligrapher – also an artist, lately much more oriented towards artistic production – I began to use calligraphy, what I learned in this world that is very technical, very mannered, also very artisanal. I use these tools to create something different from the classic calligraphy you imagine. So, an aesthetic treatment with words, starting from the manuscript, from the copyist who filled books with texts, often religious, then of other utility; to the calligrapher who creates his work with the style that suits him best, that best expresses the phrase, for example, at the service of someone, at the service of the text. I started using these tools to express myself. This is a very different use because there you can contaminate ancient techniques with the things you have learned in your life and that are still to be codified, in a sense.
Writing, like Hip Hop, is now fifty years old, but it’s not yet in art history books. Something is starting to enter, street art is beginning to be considered because it’s popular. Writing is always seen as a kid’s thing, but the study of letters – something that calligraphers, type designers, and typographers do – is now done by writers.
In my vision, there is the idea of making such an ancient tradition as calligraphy, which is thousands of years old, dialogue with something relatively new, which is writing. The latter gave me the impetus to do this, that is, “do the written thing.”
Inside this book there are classic things, there are writing sketches, there are some pieces. For me it’s all part of this journey. Then at some point you realize that you are an artist because you have to express yourself somehow. You also make peace with this grandiose word that might evoke huge figures of the past – to be called an artist, I don’t know, like Burri, Fontana – but then you understand that it’s not a swear word, but the right word. And you also have to understand what your best expressive hallmark is.
For sure for me it has been this: being able to write instead of speaking is something that, well, I don’t know, touches my best chords. But that’s not enough, so every now and then I still feel like writing in another sense, that is, recording records.
I’ve made several records, Hip Hop and not. But that’s a passion that I wanted to keep for myself, I didn’t want it to become my job, that’s it. I never professionally rapped, but my approach to writing and the design of a record, of a piece, of a verse has always been that. That is, with that idea: “this is the best I can do at this moment, I could die tomorrow, but I can’t do better.”
I never threw it there too much. If I did, I apologize to myself because I shouldn’t. And at the same time it’s so all-consuming as an expressive hallmark, because you expose yourself with your voice, with your face, with your thoughts, with your fears.
It’s a sort of psychological session where you tell your own business to everyone, and you try to do it in a way that also touches the chords of others: I start from mine, I arrive at yours.
This thing here has always been a bit what guided me. There’s no other way to “scream” certain things, certain expressions of anger, of frustration for me, except as poetry, rap, call it what you want.
I don’t know if it’s completely Hip Hop. Sometimes I call it “dark rap” because really I, when I’m happy, don’t write a rap song; I go out with my daughter to the park, you know?
But Tenco also said this: “why write sad songs? When I’m happy I go out.” You can see that that’s your way of exorcising or visualizing your darker parts, that’s it.
I always kept that to myself, but in the end I always worked with words 360 degrees and, nothing, that’s the meaning of this book. It’s a collection, a diary of what I’ve done in the last 12 years.
The previous one has a beautiful title: “Take Your Pleasure Seriously,” as if to say “beware of the things you like.”
It’s a phrase by Charles Eames, whom I admire very much, it struck me, because this was my first book that told what had happened to me, which was a story of pleasure, of passion. We all started writing for passion, not saying “one day I’ll be a writer.” There was no possibility; now you can do it. There are people who make a living as writers, they live off of it, with difficulty.
And so I really liked the concept. There’s another phrase I wrote on a print, a silkscreen, which says “Protect me from what I want,” which in turn was taken from other sources. You have to be careful of what you like because it can also harm you in some way. You become a victim of what you like, what you like becomes your job, what people distinguish you by, identify you with. So then, if you get tired of it, you can’t stop doing it anymore and you’re a slave to this thing that you liked and that must continue to please you.
So the first book talked more about preserving passion, that is, saying “how do I make myself enjoy something that I wanted to do before and now I have to do?” Very different, right?
So rap, for example, will always remain a hobby for me. That is, I don’t do it because someone asks me to, I do it when it comes to me, so at my own pace. In this sense, it seems to me that I owe nothing to anyone; if anything, I have given something. Instead, in my work, I am interested above all in being able to tell my story from my point of view. This is very different from being narcissistic, egocentric. The fact is that if you don’t tell your story, someone else tells it and so it may not be completely true or accurate, or no one tells it.
I have a publishing house, Lazy Dog, founded by me and Riccardo Bello, who worked as a photolithographic designer all his life and then at some point said “I want to have a publishing house” and decided to start with my book. We asked ourselves: “but how do we publish it?” and we decided to found a publishing house!
We have published many books, we have also made a calligraphy manual that contained examples of well-written writing. There are so many manuals; in my opinion, many are not made as they should be. But I’ve never been there to say “ah, that manual is ugly, that book is ugly.” I’ve always thought “okay, what can I do to make a better one?” I produce one, not without difficulty.
You don’t earn money from these things. You earn, perhaps, in prestige, you meet people, yes. But you don’t get rich, but you are free. You are free to do things your way and, if you do them well, to see them distributed in a widespread manner. You know very well what that means. You started by making a small fanzine, then you found yourself in newsstands and there begin the pains and joys.
Sid: This is very Hip Hop. That thing where, if there’s something you don’t like, you do it yourself and try to do it the way you want it to be, right? The fact that you founded Lazy Dog, with whom you published many other beautiful, very well-crafted books, goes in this direction. Like the fact that you do, as you said, what you want with your freedom of expression.
Luca: Yes, in my case in particular, in the things I do, which are books that tell my experiences. So, in this case, the latest book is a collection of 12 years of work. In these 12 years I have worked constantly and also hard. I have done things that I could no longer do: always travel for months to teach calligraphy, to paint. I worked a lot in advertising, so I understood the mechanisms, but it’s something that takes a lot of energy, also physically and in terms of relationships. I gave up dozens of friendships I would have liked to cultivate because I was focused on my work.
The moment my daughter arrived, I focused more on her, I slowed down a bit on work, so I no longer live that life. Covid also changed the teaching system. For example, there are many more online courses. I used to go to Japan to teach 25 people; now I connect and there are 200 Japanese on the other side of the screen. It’s different. But going to Japan is something else, you know.
Sid: Yes, of course, however, this type of life requires sacrifices.
Luca: People who think you’re rich doing these things, so they look at you differently. What am I supposed to tell you that it’s not like that? You’ll never believe me if you’ve made up your mind, you know? Because then those who do things themselves are also seen a bit as “who knows what connections they have, who knows who they know.” You know the people you need to know: the good ones who do their part. In a publishing house there will be an editor, so there is a good printer, good graphic designers, people who write, and artists whose books to make. I can say it here. I’m happily working on Zero T’s book, we’re just starting now, it will take a while. But, for example, Zero T, who is an incredible writer, but also an incredible artist, sculptor, painter… When I was, I don’t know, 14 years old, I would go into Fiorucci in Milan and there were already t-shirts designed by him, he was already working with writing and it was the early 90s and very few people know his history. He is also, in my opinion, very reserved, shy, he produces a lot, very sensitive. Here, the fact of being able to say “now I will tell his story in a book” implies the fact that I know him, but also that I know him more deeply as a person, not just as an artist, and it is a privilege. But then this privilege is shared through the book that reaches everyone and is a told story.
It’s very different to do marketing, that is, to understand a bit what could work, “a beautiful book on street art, let’s print a beautiful book on street art”… you don’t care, you can see that you don’t care at all, that you just want to sell it. Instead, you can see, on the other hand, when you are passionate… It’s clear that I have DeeMo write a text specifically on Zero T, do I know him? Yes, because we worked together, he wrote the texts of my first book and I’m proud of it. And this is what is created: a synergy of people who share an environment, a history that is that of Italian Hip Hop, which is very different from the American one and which then create something, leave a mark of their passage. So telling one’s story, to close this discussion, is fundamental for me to do in the first person.
It’s fine to have critical texts written for you. This is an exhibition I did, it’s called “Lost Books.” Here there is a text by me and a text by Fabiola Naldi, who is an art critic and not only, she is an expert in this world, she is one of the few who has a say in talking about our things – I can say our things – as writers, not as artists, as graffiti artists included in certain art circuits, no, no, precisely as writers.
But I also wrote, because I can say a few words about my work, and I find this very beautiful, that is, it is perhaps the meaning of everything: doing the things you like, doing them seriously, making them a job – and work is damn serious – and at the same time telling about your passage on this planet which in the end is the only tangible thing we have in hand, that’s all.
Another thing I wanted to talk to you about quickly is that there’s not just Lazy Dog stuff. “Anima e inchiostro” (Soul and Ink) is a book I did for UTET, so a publishing house, a division of De Agostini, very important to me because on UTET I read incredible things by incredible authors. The book talks about the philosophy that for me is behind writing, but not just calligraphy, writing in general. Writing is something that evolves and has to do with technology. So you used to write with a cut reed pen, then you start writing with nibs, increasingly sophisticated tools, then in the 60s pens arrive, all types of pencils, all the stationery industry and these things. But now this thing has become a bit, I don’t say for insiders, but it has become a bit more with an aesthetic purpose. So there are people who write, draw because they feel the need for physicality. There are people who write for work from an aesthetic perspective like us calligraphers, and there are people who instead, if they have to communicate, do it in other more practical ways. This is because having a notebook with a pen, a pencil and writing a note is much more laborious than dictating something to a phone that is then automatically written and that even recognizes your way of speaking, your language, your voice. Let’s not kid ourselves, if you then want to be nostalgic, you say “ah, but writing…”.
This will change, and therefore aesthetics, those who maintain, who preserve this discipline in its more artistic way, precisely, will be even more important because we will become the last Ronin. And don’t believe it, it only takes a couple of generations.
Sid: Your work is very much based on physicality. The tools, the inks, the paper, the canvas. And in a world where we are moving towards artificial intelligence that does everything – it even does calligraphy for you if you ask it to – but it does it and you just give it the “prompt” and when you have the result it almost seems like you did it yourself, but in reality it’s not like that.
How do you see yourself in this world where there is less and less physicality and everything is increasingly digital, everything is taken at a superficial level, because it is done effortlessly?
Luca: Ah, how do I see myself? I see myself a bit in the middle of the two things, between backwardness and modernity. I am not a backward person; I simply grew up that way, like you. And I went to a graphic design school where every Monday I would do a layout based on the front page of the Corriere della Sera, and I would do acrylic fills, flat, because they had to be perfect.
This is my activity, that is, I came out of there until the 90s when people started using computers. I would come to you and you would say “bring me these photos, save them in JPEG at this resolution.” I didn’t know what you were talking about; I had the photographs and then I learned. But there I said “okay, I’m caught between two fires.”
One is what I liked to do, which is graphic design, painting, and designing by hand, and the other is the technology that is arriving and that will replace all of this.
So I took this middle road that I struggled to find. But I am not really a product of my times, I am not so married to technology, I delay more and more the moment I buy a new phone, a new computer. And at the same time I have also learned not to surround myself with too many physical tools; I have many, but in the end you use those 3-4 pens that you like, that are your favorites and that are your voice. Your tone of voice is made by the style and the tools you use. And they have different tones. If I write a word in English cursive or in Gothic or with an expressive calligraphy tool full of splashes, like this, the word has a different effect, a different tone of voice, exactly like people who speak, because there is soul within. And this cannot be completely replaced, as far as I’m concerned, with digital tools. So, for example, I tried Procreate, iPad, it happens every now and then. I delivered one of the sketches the other day, and this person said to me “ah yes, these are a bit clean, did you do them with Procreate?” I said to him “no, I did them by hand, but they are on layout paper with a new tool, they were clean.” But they don’t even imagine anymore that there is someone who writes on them, you know? And this thing amuses me a bit, because I say “look, they mistook them for a computer.” Or sometimes it has happened that I sent letterings to people I don’t know and they ask me, they commission me things. I had done a very precise one, done cleanly, as it should have been done. And this person writes to me “ah, you’re pulling my leg, this is a font!” And so on… but I had to send the video that I was doing it. And there I understood that, for example, doing a dirtier writing makes more sense now, because it makes it almost more evident that it was done by hand. This is because being precise, like when book covers were drawn by hand, they are almost like printed ones.
I see the imperfections, I sometimes see the nuances of the ink, certain details. But the tendency was to do what a computer does now, computer graphics.
Nobody does calligraphy anymore.
Before it was a subject for fixing one’s thoughts in an orderly manner, at least, if not beautifully, because calligraphy means that, beautiful writing. People say “I have beautiful handwriting or ugly handwriting,” which is a contradiction.
But the word has replaced the word “grafia” (writing), because calligraphy no longer exists as a subject. So it becomes something for experts, for people who practice it, and you can’t even say “a professional is better.”
It’s a mess. I wrote about it in the new book and I didn’t write alone, I had to ask 6 or 7 other important calligraphers what they thought.
What does it mean to be a calligrapher when no qualification is needed? I wake up and say “I’m a calligrapher” and Forrest Gump would tell you “calligrapher is who a calligrapher does!” Meaning, if you do this every day and make a living from it, you will be a calligrapher. But there is no one who says “okay, you can do it,” while in all other professions there are exams.
So, if we have opened this Pandora’s box, everything has come out. The discussion has been going on for decades: that you can’t… that an old gentleman who did traditional calligraphy judges a writer, a tattoo artist who does random calligraphy, how does he do it?
There are too many different things together and above all this aspect has also emerged: a young calligrapher who works in lettering, who does covers, writings for logos, tattoos, whatever you want… but if he is twenty years old he will have twenty years of experience and a retired hobbyist who may have done it all his life will be better than him, but he doesn’t work. So who is the best?
It is much more complex than that. The internet in general, social media like that, require simplification. That’s why I don’t explain things there, not too much; I get bored reading because it’s really about speed, short texts, short images, things that happen.
Sid: However, the internet has helped a bit with the rebirth, in quotation marks, of calligraphy. It is always said that social media are now a greater amplification than before.
Luca: Yes, you could say the same thing about writing, right? Once, remember, right? Maybe I had heard that in Prague they did a certain type of very strange graffiti taken in turn from influences from Berlin, and I would go to Prague to see them. Now you get on the computer, phone and look at them from here, and so everyone can do everything. Before, influences came to Europe through Interrail, right? People had this possibility to travel, meet other writers, take other styles and then bring them back. And then there were low-cost flights and they allowed you to go to other places easily for a long period. These are influences that didn’t exist before.
But returning to social media, here, what is missing is depth.
So writing your thoughts in a book is almost scary, eh, because I’ve said it a few times: this thing about “scripta manent” (what is written remains) is not a joke. There’s an anecdote I’ve told a few times: someone once wrote a so-so review of my book, I think this one, it was a bit insidious and I didn’t like it. Not because it was reviewed badly per se, but because it was compared to another book.
I said “okay, I’ll write to him,” but this… I’m not saying… he was one person, he had also done it in good faith. But I wrote to him, and he got annoyed because evidently I wasn’t the only one who had pointed it out to him, and he said “now I’ll delete it from the blog, I’ll delete the review.” And yes, but when you print, you can’t delete this.
That is, if you wrote something stupid here, it remains, and this stuff is heavy and it’s still like that. Only it remains for those who go to read it, for those who are willing to take this journey. And it is a deeper level of communication because, for example, it does not have that dynamic of the immediate, impulsive response that is the cesspool that are social media comments. Every now and then there is a precise, meticulous one, and a hundred make you want to go to another planet because you say “humanity is terrible.” No, it’s that all the impulsive and superficial humanity goes there and fortunately it’s all collected on social media. We should be happy about this, because then the people we hang out with don’t talk like that, they don’t say these terrible things. It’s also like that: sovereignists, sunglasses, horrendous thoughts. Then they come home and they are good family fathers; there they unload all their terrible part.
Here, this thing on books, on printed paper, does not happen.
Obviously there are also excellent places on the internet. Il Post seems to be a bubble of intelligent, deeper, more educated people, it can be done.
It’s just that the other side makes more noise.
Sid: In your analog path, you said okay, since everyone is on social media, I’m going to make a fanzine again…
Luca: I like fanzines. Here you are at the origins. I do things in parallel like many, but I don’t make many precise plans. That is, today you told me “I’ll come at 10,” I said “well, come at 11,” no, you arrived exactly at 10. I can’t be that precise, so at some point I feel like saying “okay, I want to release the book in December,” but if it’s not ready, never mind, it will come out in February, but that it comes out as it should. Nobody is in that much of a hurry. In the end the fanzine and the book came out together, because they were being worked on together. This one, obviously, with a much shorter production time. There is this reality called “Tazi Zine” by Fabrizio Falcone and his other partners. He was my student since he was, I think, 15-16 years old, I gave him graffiti lessons and then he was my student with the Italian Calligraphic Association. Then at some point I said to him “listen, come here and work in the studio.” And now he is a typographer, a type designer, he has also found his path which is more on type design. But he also has this excessive passion for graffiti and, like many writers who look at writing, obviously they also look at recent history. So, for him I am the passage before what is the next generation or subsequent generations. And so I saw that he was doing some fanzines on other writers and on Milan in general. At some point I said to him “look, I have piles of sketches this high. Some are from the years up to 2000 something, 2002-2003, and others are all recent. Do we want to do something, make them public?” I don’t know, some are very funny because they are really brainstorming, as it’s called now, “doodling,” where you sit down and draw and the equivalent of freestyle comes out, what comes out of your head. And so they are funny because I remember when I did them, where I was, there are a lot of stupid things. We printed 150 with the cover written by hand, tagged. I was doped at the end because I never did 150 writings with this paint here, you know?
Sid: These are all done by hand?
Luca: Yes, one at a time. But this is actual paint, you know?
Sid: Silver markers?
Luca: You know the smell? But you’ve smelled it from a few tags? Do 150 of them together and it becomes like a drug.
Sid: Beautiful, you should have worn a mask like when you use spray paint, otherwise you’d die.
Luca: No, no, instead I willingly breathed them in. And so, nothing, in the end this excessive passion for sketching, for free writing comes out. Until 2003 I hadn’t completely started doing my job, I worked part-time in a shop, I hadn’t made the leap. While the last ones are all sketches done mostly at night. I have nothing for writing at home, almost nothing, very few books, very few tools, the bare minimum because I might need to make a change, a job, so I have to have something to write with, but very little, I try to do other things precisely to keep the passion healthy. But I was saying “damn, then for pleasure when do I write?” It’s rare that I sit here and do something for myself now. So I started doing sketches at night, which was perfect when you have time to listen to a record. I put on the record and draw and the hand starts. Sometimes you’ve smoked, sometimes you’re sleepy, then the sleepiness passes. That strange moment when it seems like a new day has already begun, but ideas come out that you don’t have during the day because your body, your brain is like an engine anyway. It’s an engine and so it starts cold in the morning, then at the end of the day we are a bit programmed to turn off this engine and let it rest. But if the engine stays on, then strange things happen that no longer fit into this flow of everyday life. Bruce Mau said “work at night, interesting things happen” and I said “no way, at night I go out and do what I like to do, certainly not work!”
Well, but you make the leap sometimes, ideas come to you because your mind is not completely lucid, but it’s not even completely focused on what are the normal dynamics. It’s almost scary, eh, because ideas come to you that you say “oh damn, this is a good idea, now I have to realize it.” Now I’ve seen it, I can’t pretend not to be sure. This is because there is this thing that in my opinion should be taught in schools: that if you discover you have some talent, you should be made responsible for using it. And I say this even against myself, because I might have others that I use, dabble in, but I don’t use them professionally and precisely because I’m afraid. Because then it transforms into something you might not like anymore or might be very, very different from how you knew it.
That is, now I also like to cook, but it’s one thing to make your guests happy and have all the time to do it and be judged up to a certain point. It’s another thing to do it professionally every day with the dynamics we know. And so no thank you, I’ll keep it to myself.
Sid: Okay, listen, let’s also talk about your musical side. So you were telling me you have ready reprints, new things also about you as an MC, besides we know your passion for jazz and all the rest that…
Luca: As a rapper, I would say, because I’ve always wanted to distinguish this a bit. Some time ago I was at the Polytechnic with Tormento and Baro doing a kind of conference and I always want to emphasize it, I did it that time too. One thing is an MC, a Master of Ceremony, a figure that perhaps doesn’t even exist that much anymore. Let’s say it’s an old school term that, coming from there as I do, often makes me want to use it. But it’s right, but it’s also someone who first of all an MC, in my opinion, does live shows. He is present live and not only says his piece, but he also makes others say theirs. That is, he acts a bit, at a certain point, as the Master of Ceremonies, so he holds the stage also for the enjoyment of everyone present. And he is an important figure in Hip Hop and was very much so in the past. If you think about the old MCs, they really hold court, they know everyone, “now you come in, you go out.” Esa is an MC, he is an MC and a few others.
I am a rapper, that is, I write things, I “vomit” them onto a beat, I don’t even do choruses anymore, but I feel the need to do that thing. I have been working for a long time, or if you can call it work, on new things, but I really write. I even spend years listening to a song until I’m convinced, I’m not in any hurry and I really do it for myself. Indeed, I almost hesitate to share it, because then that song is no longer yours.
I know this has happened: my daughter is 9 years old and of course listens to contemporary music, also some Hip Hop – she doesn’t like Italian Hip Hop that much, but she knows a little something, she has her tastes – but she also knows my things, some yes, some even by heart. So one day she said to me “but I was trying to play one of your songs on Spotify and I couldn’t find it!” I said “yes, you can’t find them, they are found elsewhere.” And she was silent for a moment, then she said “but what a shame when there’s a beautiful song and you can’t listen to it!” And that was really a shot and I said “I have to fix some things.”
The album “Lingua Ferita” (Wounded Tongue), was released for free download in 2005 and was really a kind of outburst. All the rappers were coming out for the majors and I said “okay, I’ll do my thing my way” and I did it in a week, you can hear that there is really the need. But I did it on instrumental beats, it was like that for a long time. Then I did a small vinyl pressing, but now this album is turning 20 years old.
So I asked my producer friends, who are actually few and in this case I had to narrow down, let’s say, the possible list of candidates to those I frequented at that time, whom I frequent, with whom I often talk and with whom I have affinity, who are Fritz and Craim, with whom we have done many beautiful things and other very beautiful things, as Kaos One would say.
And for example, Craim had already helped me in this project we have with our group called “Pink Freud,” acid and analysis are involved. And this was a soundtrack for my exhibition in which Craim made the music looking at my paintings. I also made this box set called “Lost in Strokes” which contains the album, the catalog, and also posters of the exhibition. In short, as if to say, it is part of that discourse of historicizing, historicizing well. These things here are a bloodbath, you never earn anything, but then you look at them and say “how cool we did that.” And in the end I think it’s all there.
Then, well, over time I had done an old demo that had then also come out on vinyl, but really here I have almost a child’s voice, I was 18 years old. Mind you, the advertisement came out on Aelle I think in ’98. And there they put me with my business of making well-printed cassettes. The CD hadn’t arrived yet and we had pretty much abandoned vinyl. And so yes, I continued to do these things.
In the meantime I made another strange album, which is an album called “The Griptape,” very nice, really very nice… no, for the darkest one I’ve ever made it’s this one, but I can do worse.
And I did it with Clone and BOD in particular, who has already worked on other things of mine. One is called “L’ultima scena” (The Last Scene), there is a video that was on Nice & Kini’s album, which is this 7 inch here. And he did something already absurd there, because he said to me “ah, I would like to make a video for you.” He is my long-time brother, in memory of those who remain a bit in the shadows because they are people from Brianza, like April Trillando, Bastino. They are very good, but they are from the provinces. Only when he heard the song that was full of images – if you listen to “L’ultima scena,” you understand what I’m talking about – he made this video in which every word I say is described by an image, by a frame from a movie. And almost all of them are genre films. It means you have to know all those movies to do it in one night like he did. And there you have to have culture, that is, you must have really ground videotapes like crazy in the 90s. And you see that every single thing I say there is an image.
So I said “okay, do the same thing here on Griptape, let’s make an album of very slow beats.” This is because Clone has very slow beats, based on samples; many of them I gave him, many are his. It’s a work of selection, because out of 100 beats, we pulled out about twenty, maybe thirty. And BOD did the same thing as the video with the audio, so each beat has pieces of audio, of speech, from various films that then build a story that culminates with a song of mine. Griptape is the sandpaper on a skateboard. So what can nice guys like us do but make a sandpaper cover that then ruins other records?
Very nice, very nice! These are the treats we allow ourselves.
So now this “Lingua Ferita” remixed by Fritz and Craim will come out, and they have done an excellent job also because they are a bit different in producing, but they work well together: Craim is much more aggressive, rough, sharp; Fritz is now a composer, that is, you start from the sample, but then everything resonates and he looks a lot at the harmony structures of the songs, something he perhaps did less before, it was all based on the sample.
An interesting thing that happened is that the last song on “Lingua Ferita” is called “Il Caimano” (The Caiman). It came out a year before Nanni Moretti’s “Il Caimano” and talked about Berlusconi. Now, Berlusconi certainly left a trace, a tangible trace of his passage, for better or worse. But it was embarrassing to release a song about Berlusconi now. What happened? At the time I saved all the recording sessions not on a hard disk, but on CDs – I don’t know why, I didn’t have these large hard drives of today – when I found all the masters of “Lingua Ferita,” which was a series of CDs with the separate vocals, the one for “Il Caimano” was no longer there, it couldn’t be found. I said “perfect, it saved me” because I wouldn’t have known how to justify it.
And incidentally, it was a “defiance” of mine because I always knew that I had to write as much as possible not about strict current events. Ever since I started writing as a kid, I saw that the things that remained, like “Sfida il buio” (Challenge the Darkness), did not talk about the historical event itself, they did not give dates, but they talked about a macro history that could also repeat itself. Certainly, the Bologna massacre, but it talks in general about everything that is kept hidden. The darkness was there. Expressing yourself in that way makes the songs universal and long-lasting. If you listen to Deda’s verses, they have very little, if any, current relevance.
When he had to, when he cited something current – I don’t know Neffa saying “sooner or later Castagna… if Castagna dies you can’t say it anymore, maybe say something else” – I don’t know. But all the things we will do with current events, obviously, age and that was one of the few mistakes. His presence was so strong that I felt I wanted to talk. There weren’t even social media back then.
There are new things in the new album I’m writing. They talk about Trump without mentioning him, but about his previous presidency. Now it is still relevant, unfortunately, and for four years it will still be relevant. But you have to be careful about these things, in my opinion, when you write. That is, write something that goes beyond the moment. It is clear that when you do a freestyle, an instant thing, you naturally mention things from the day, also because they are strong. But then they don’t last beyond that day, that week. So in my opinion it is very important that you try to talk about something using language that goes beyond your small world.
“Lingua Ferita” is an album, for example, that speaks to everyone. When it came out, even people who were not part of the Hip Hop world appreciated it, and I really liked that. Talking to everyone. Why should I use language that closes off the possibility of reaching more people, even though it’s an underground thing? The album also talks about anger and we all have anger.
So if you manage to reach another person with anger contained within an artistic product and that does not turn into harming others, well, the anger arrives: the message, however, is to transform it into something creative, positive, because anger is still energy. If you are driven by anger, then you are exhausted to do good and to have a laugh, because it consumes you, it’s really awful. But anger is part of us, I must say that lately it is also very stimulated, unfortunately.
Sid: You said earlier that in your career there was a moment when you had to make the transition from being an amateur to a professional. For those listening who are perhaps in the phase where they have never thought of making their passion a profession, how did you make this transition?
Luca: I don’t have generic advice to give to everyone because everyone has their own history, their own disposition. So I would gladly give it, I don’t know, to people I know, but then you also have to look at case by case.
So I can tell you from my point of view. This might be useful to someone who recognizes themselves a bit in my story. First of all, I do not come from a virtuous example of entrepreneurship, as some of my other friends have. They were used perhaps to having parents who promote their things, who have a shop, who have a business, who have a company. In some way I had to do this: I was the company and I had to promote myself, my work with my face. It is not a studio, no, it is a person.
When I was about twenty years old, I was very focused on learning the trade well. When from writing I discovered calligraphy, I said “okay, this is serious.” So I only did calligraphy. Someone would say to me “don’t throw away what you learned in writing.” No, but “now I have to learn what it is to use a pen well with classic styles, then maybe it will come naturally.”
And it came naturally. That is, I started doing serious calligraphy with letters that came from graffiti, but I understood that instead this thing made sense, because if you make the two things dialogue… So many people saw in this example something to follow. It is natural that many try to replicate your path, sometimes even copy, normal, we’ve all done it, right? Then you hope that in the more serious phase they understand that “okay, I am my brand,” which is an ugly word, but let’s say “I am my brand, I am what I do.” Sometimes it’s my face. In reality I found an activity that sometimes involves performing live, so in front of people, which is the very thing that made me move away from being a rapper, because the live aspect is the very thing I don’t like, everyone has fun except me. But in calligraphy you can do this thing with your back to the audience, and I think there’s me and a few porn actors who can stand with their backs where everyone is looking at you… I don’t know, few examples come to mind.
And in reality I wanted to be a graphic designer, I was very stimulated by editorial graphic design. Editorial graphic design included typography, I tried a bit of everything: printing with movable type, engraving, I did a lot of workshops. Then at some point people would ask me for logos, lettering for tattoos, lettering for self-produced records, our circle of musicians. Not just these, but these are also businesses.
Casino Royale, Nina Zilli, Giusy Ferreri, Fred de Palma, but also Claver Gold, Phil, Cesare Picco the pianist, DJ Fede. Sometimes I happened to work for friends and that’s what I did back then. And at some point you have to accept this. You want to be a graphic designer, you want to do one thing, but they look for you for the other, for calligraphy. It seems you have to do that. So at some point I waved the white flag, I said “I surrender, I will do this” with a big question mark, a speech bubble above me that, let’s say, “what the hell kind of job is this?”
And yet it’s a job, because it led me to do everything, to grow as a person, because before I was in my bubble, of writing, of Hip Hop which, as you know but perhaps many don’t know, was very circumscribed, it was something for a select few or few, it was a kind of sect. In reality, here, connecting to this discourse, the answer to your question is: the transition must be natural and it must be something you feel.
So if you don’t feel like spending hours writing, especially doing things that are asked of you, so it’s not how good you are at doing Gothic, it’s how good you are at finding the right style for that project and also quickly. This is what is then recognized by designers, by artists, whatever you want, but something else.
So first understand if you are an artist or if you are a designer. Are you willing to be with people very different from you who tell you things that may not be correct, but they pay you? Sometimes yes, you have to, but you try to improve this thing, to get out of it. And to get out of it you have to take responsibility, maybe lose something, lose the client with more money, but you say “I am free there.”
Sometimes instead you make compromises. This thing made me reflect and here I connect all the points I have put on the map so far about what I was and what I wanted to be.
So, to make a more profound discourse, I see it a bit from an anthropological point of view: we are made to be in tribes. These tribes should not have more than a certain number of interlocutors. This is why a “shitstorm” on social media makes you “go crazy,” because you cannot manage thousands of people who insult you and whom you do not know. But just as it is not normal to have thousands of compliments from people who praise you and whom you don’t even know. This is part of tribal behavior, in that case the tribe is social media and the small tribes you find with the accounts you follow or that you go to denigrate.
Hip Hop for me was something tribal in some way, that is, there were a lot of people who found themselves at a certain moment with many identities, like the 90s, which then in some way positively ended up under the big umbrella of the hipster of the 2010s, you know, right? The hipster was interested in a bit of everything, but wasn’t a dark, a b-boy, a metalhead. He could do all these things together and this thing wasn’t liked much by the previous generation that had a true identity. Instead, having a true identity was very beautiful even if with negative aspects because it precluded the possibility of exploring other things, other people and other environments and other other types of music, other worlds. So the jams of the 90s are fine where they are, in that closed way, because it was a way for a series of “misfits” to find themselves, that is, people who didn’t adapt well to the fashion of the disco or going to the game on Sunday. They wanted something different and they found it there and they were all together in this world that however didn’t let you go out too much. Contaminations weren’t too well seen, as far as I remember.
So when I started being a calligrapher and working, for example, with big brands, here, you went into areas that were not allowed to you before. And so I saw that in reality everyone was still indoctrinated in some way. You could work for the big sports brand – without mentioning names – because it was cool and it was a multinational just like the fancy clothing brand that however was frowned upon because it wasn’t part of our culture. And there I said “oh my god, how small we think, or they think,” because I had already stopped thinking that way, let me say.
And so I took the consequences of this, that is, people who said, seemed to say “you betrayed our culture.” But betrayed what? That is, in reality I can tell you that that formation there, so counter-current which was being a writer and rapper in the 90s, you’re screwed, that is, you carry it with you all your life.
I know people who cannot get out of this and some have managed to emancipate themselves with difficulty, perhaps to become successful. Some have gone crazy because outside that small world where everything worked, that very defined barrier was broken which was “I am a reference in Hip Hop and this is my magazine, these are the fanzines, these are the records, the right ones, these are wrong, commercial records.”
Fortunately, work has allowed me to enter different environments and to be able to relate to almost all human beings. Then there are those I can’t stand and those I can, but clients last what they last, this is one of the beautiful things about being a freelance. I feel sorry for those who are still closed in those mental schemes because they miss out on things, that is, contamination is inevitable and it is what has made everything evolve since forever.
So you have to be ready to understand that writing, as you knew it, disappears, supplanted by something else, but it can remain in an artistic or artisanal way. And also that the Hip Hop you knew 20 years ago, 30 years ago, is no longer the same. For example, recently there was this celebration of Sangue Misto’s album which turned 30 years old.
I bought it when it came out in ’94, a kid, it shaped me, but I’m not the same as I was 30 years ago, and neither are they. There were people who were surprised because there was the celebration, I was painting, I was doing my celebratory thing on the album with calligraphy and Deda was playing house music. And this is who we are 30 years later, thanks also to that, but we can no longer be what was there 30 years before, and it is right that it is so. If someone doesn’t understand it and thinks they will see the celebration of Sangue Misto with all three playing the album, it cannot happen. But thank goodness, I would say, it would be pathetic, you understand?
Sid: Okay Luca, we’ve had a great chat, we’re at 69 minutes and we’ll put this whole thing on the podcast.
Luca: Now you want to do a Q&A?
Sid: No, well, I’d say you explained your philosophy as a calligrapher very well, and let’s say also your history with Hip Hop. We have practically closed a small circle. You started, you told me the other day, working with the tags I had asked you for Aelle back then.
Luca: Let’s stop for a moment on this: at a certain point I arrive at the Aelle office in De Angeli, right? Yes. You were there, Paola and Silvia, and I say: “Sid, I know you want to do this AL Writing column, I am the right man for you,” can you imagine!
And yet I did it. “I want to do this seriously and it must be done well, I am studying it, in short…”. I leave Aelle with a small contract with “fixed tag design,” “title design,” “design…”. My work as a calligrapher was perhaps the first and I was just over eighteen.
So yes, I started with that, but I’m happy that we are here closing the circles.
Sid: Yes, and now we will also see another of your works for the connected project of “Tag Tales” which we will see later, we will talk about it.
Luca: But we will renew the contract maybe, it’s still in lire!
Sid: Okay Luca, thank you, thank you very much. It was very, very interesting to hear everything and we’ll talk next time.
Luca: Thank you very much.
