The trappers who grew up on 2000s troll forums narrate neighborhoods they don't frequent, gangs that don't exist, money they've never seen — alarming the boomers for nothing. From hip hop they took only the autotune and the aesthetic. Only the brand obsession: gone are social conflict, political rage, the real street, cultural hunger.
National indie, meanwhile, feels like the emotional diary of a generation nostalgic for eras it never lived through: lukewarm relationships, prefabricated melancholy, sentimental provincialism sold as depth. No risk, no vision, no real wound.
The intellectuals of electronic music play a couple of sidechain arpeggios, close their eyes, tilt their heads 15 degrees, and simulate spiritual transcendence in front of people who mistake boredom for introspection.
Music criticism is dead. Cultural press too. But above all, the people capable of truly discussing art, politics, and culture have disappeared, without turning every conversation into random opinion-mongering, social media slogans, or functional illiteracy disguised as authenticity. No one delves into anything anymore: people react, root for their team, seethe, pass judgment. Everyone takes offense at the first criticism, without even understanding it.
"When a country loses the ability to critically process its own culture, the very mechanism of artistic progress breaks down."
And when a country loses the ability to critically process its own culture, the very mechanism of artistic progress breaks down. Because art grows through clash, through debate, through research, through fierce criticism and vision. Not through the continuous approval of whatever generates engagement.
Meanwhile the major labels, in full creative decline, hand out ridiculous contracts to artists with no structure and no professional or political awareness, who celebrate their own deal on Instagram like medieval serfs invited to the lord's table.
And so Italy is flooded with irrelevant music: songs written by people who want to become famous before they even have something to say.
The real tragedy is that new generations are growing up without alternatives. Without rebels. Without mentors. Without real subcultures. Only personas, engagement, and simulations of success.
«Only personas, engagement, and simulations of success.»
