The 99 Posse is a raggamuffin / dub group born in Poggioreale, a neighborhood of Naples, Campania, originally composed by Luca "O Zulù" Persico, Marco "Kaya selecter" Messina, Massimo "JRM" Jovine and by Giampiero "Papa J" Da Dalto, who leaves the group the year before the debut album.
In 1993, these guys, all in their early twenties at the time, released an album that was meant to be hip-hop. Oh, man, it tries hard to be hip-hop. But it's not hip-hop. There's some rap at times, but it's poor. The production is credited to 99 Posse, RadioGladio and Sergio Messina, the disc is recorded by Johnny Ox & Soul FInger at the social center, thanks to a mobile studio provided by RadioGladio, and is mixed by 99 Posse, RadioGladio and Soul Finger. There are several live instrumentalists, while the guests are Bisca, Daniele Sepe, Spiker Cenzou, Leleprox, Suoni Mudù, RadioGladio, Mariano Caiano, Maurizio Capone and Riccardo Veno.
Consisting of thirteen tracks, five skits and forty-three minutes of listening, the tape is distributed by Esodo Autoproduzioni and becomes one of the best known projects at the time, ending up in the soundtrack of the film "Sud" and winning some local awards. As a hip-hop record, musically, it's one of the worst projects of the year, perhaps, it's acceptable as a ragga album: the choice of samples, drums and rhythms is very poor, very cheap, weak, and the live instruments sound synthetic, it's as if they weren't there.
Lyrically, the tracks revolve around militant, political and anti-fascist topics: the lead singer 'O Zulù and the other performers deliver most of the texts in spoken-word or with a very slow pseudo-rap style, close to spoken-word and in Neapolitan dialect. Of all the dialects present in Italy, Neapolitan is the one that best suits the style of delivery in rapping, much better than Italian, because many words contain and end with consonants. But these singers never exploit the potential of their own language. The lyrics are there: the dudes can't write, they have no idea what metrics or poetry are, they have no concept that allows them to write words in a row that sound decently and, above all, they can't rap. They just don't know how to do it, they hardly know how to speak. Slowly. The result is that these militant / political tracks sound dull, effortless, without energy, wasted. Also, they can't put together a decent hook, they're one worse than the other and in the hooks lies one of the many weaknesses of this group. They go well with the ragga, yes, I don't care.
In Italy, hip-hop is still a parody, a joke, in this period. This album is too. It mimics some of the major US hip-hop acts, perhaps even unwittingly. These dudes think they're doing hip-hop by doing rap: like KRS said, «rap is something you do, hip-hop is something you live.»
Rating: 3/10.
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