NOYZ-NARCOS-Funny-Games-album-2025
If Michael Haneke, with his Funny Games, intended to punish the viewer for his voyeurism towards violence, Noyz Narcos with this album does the exact opposite: he invites us to sit on the sofa, binds us and forces us to look not at fiction, but at his stripped reality. And it's not a show for the faint of stomach.
Forget the concept of “return”. The returns are for pop stars who need to reposition themselves on the market. “Funny Games” is a warning for contemporary Italian rap, often too busy polishing its sneakers. The cinematic reference is not an intellectual quirk, but the hermeneutic keystone of the work: a universe where the rewind does not serve to erase the horror, but to reiterate it.
At 45 years old, Emanuele Frasca is not looking for redemption or understanding. In Tears and Smiles, track that serves as an existential statement, the Roman rapper rattles off 45 winters and summers with the gravitas of someone who has walked on hot coals without ever looking at his feet. There is no veteran's self-pity, there is the cold chronicle of a survivor. It's introspection, yes, but done with a scalpel, not with handkerchiefs.
On the sound front, the reunion with Sine is the furthest thing from the nostalgia operation. Sine and Noyz return to their “original method”: an almost industrial approach, where the sound material is raw, obsessive, without that glossy patina that afflicts today's productions. It's a sound that reeks of wet asphalt and metal, perfect for covering lyrics that offer nothing to the casual listener.
The guest list is a list of accomplices. When you call people like Conway The Machine, you're not looking for easy streaming, you're looking for international street validation. Kid Yugi, Nerissima Serpe, Papa V and Shiva are not there to rejuvenate the target, but to demonstrate that Noyz's darkness is transversal, a disease that infects different generations.
Even the most mainstream presences such as Achille Lauro, Guè, Jake La Furia and Madame are bent to the narrative will of the record, forced to abandon their comfort zones to enter this claustrophobic kammerspiel.
“Funny Games” is not a “nice” record in the bourgeois sense of the term. It's an old-fashioned but necessary record for those who still seek that friction in rap, that annoyance that forces you to think.
Noyz Narcos doesn't give discounts to anyone, not even to itself, and in a market saturated with plastic, its reinforced concrete is the only thing that seems destined to remain standing.
SCORE: 7.25
TO LISTEN NOW
SNIPER – TEARS AND SMILES – DIFFERENT ENDING
TO BE SKIPPED IMMEDIATELY
41 minutes of sharp and tight rap. His style. Solid and consolidated!
TRACKLIST
LAST STAND
JOHN BELUSHI
BACK AGAIN
MY FRIEND feat. Kid Yugi
SNIPER feat. Madame
TEARS AND SMILES
DRUGSTORE feat. Gué
BAD DAY
FUNNY GAMES
DIFFERENT ENDING feat. Shiva
CELEBRITY feat. Pope V and Nerissima Serpe
CRAZY IDEA feat. Achille Lauro
BLOODYMARY feat. Jake The Fury and Conway The Machine
KUSH & METH feat. Gast
SAME GOD
THE DISCOGRAPHY
2005 – Don't sleep
2006 – The hot night (with Chicoria)
2007 – Verano zombie
2010 – Guilty
2013 – Monster
2015 – Localz Only (with Fritz da Cat)
2018 – Enemy
2022 – Virus
2023 – CVLT (with Psalm)
