Rkomi: “In Sanremo it’s hard without training”

“If you tell me, let’s go climbing in the mountains, I’m coming, why not?”. Yeah, why not. Especially said by someone who trains two hours a day and swears he will suffer if he can’t do it. It looks like the portrait of a mystic of sports fatigue, instead he is a 28 year old from Calvairate, eastern Milan, who has known the fatigue doing the dishwasher and the waiter, waiting to become the third most listened to Italian artist on Spotify and sign, with Taxi Driver, the best-selling album of 2021 according to Fimi / Gfk. But behind Rkomi, eighth in the first evening of Sanremo with Insuperabile, there is also the management of one’s emotions learned by practicing Thai boxing.

How did the prime time go?

“Adrenaline. Exciting. Strange”.

“You have a song, you have little time to express yourself, it’s not like an hour and a half concert in which you arrive, you speak with your eyes, with the audience: here you have a few minutes to get into the flow. But I feel I have made it” .

Why does a love song like yours talk about loneliness several times?

“Solitude, in the text, serves to explain how much one can arrive at the consideration of one’s own love by being alone. The great ‘docks’ arise from the union of two energies. It is difficult, however, for me to tell something that I have not experienced. “.

You seem to continually escape from the labels that categorize an artist within a musical genre.

“The public tends to label and there is: I come from rap and from listening to the historical Italian songwriter, I’m not ashamed to approach pop, I started studying piano, I love electronics. I’m not pigeonholed into a genre, I can change continuously. The result is that in the studio there are always different paths “.

Your other way seems to lead to the gym.

“I approached Thai boxing at 18, in a moment of confusion, attracted by the psychological and spiritual aspect of Thai sport and culture in general. Thai teaches the control of strength and violence, of one’s body and one’s own. energies but also to live in the present. Any sport, in reality, does it. I really like the idea of ​​breathlessness “.

In what sense, the breathlessness?

“It is a quest for adrenaline and mental cleansing at the same time. It is a way to face things with a determination much more aware of your stamina and your resources. In fact, I suffer from not being able to train, here in Sanremo” .

You opened, with some friends, a social gym in Milan, Sit Hanuman Sport and Culture: what do you do?

“Courses of thai, yoga, tai chi, women’s boxing. It’s a journey that started for about a year: we didn’t think things were going so well, the place is smaller than necessary. Five of us take care of it. The goal is to charge enrollment based on income, to give young people in the area a point of reference: the costs are affordable, the idea is not to become rich but to be together “.

Is the purpose of helping the neighborhood?

“It depends on who wants to get a hand. I would have needed a hand of this type. As far as I’m concerned, growing up in an area like Calvairate has given me an edge.”

“For the shortcomings. For the sense of family”.

Is Sanremo a race, in the end? Do medals count?

“No, it is a way to make myself known and to test myself”.