All hail Ciccio Sentenza, underground hero and private legend.

We knew this moment would come someday. Or rather, we hoped. And finally, here we are.

Directly from the deepest archives of Jay Trivella, after years of “latitanza”, the original version of the first unobtainable demo of the legendary Calabrian emcee Ciccio Sentenza, Pala, Picu e Flow, comes out.

Some believe the masters of the opera were lost in a fire; others claim they were simply cancelled. Well-informed sources favour the second hypothesis, but an aura of mystery still surrounds the solo debut of one of the most original Italian ceremonial masters, as well as a historical component of the infamous crew known as PalmiPugnietteProgiect.

For the occasion, we stole a few words from our pal Jay Trivella, with ultra-gangsta graphics celebrating the exclusive upload for StrettoBlaster, the re-launch of our website, and the legacy of our crew.

We leave you to the juice of a night chat that evokes and reveals background and details never heard before on the project in question.

Underground roughneck, that’s the move.

Tell us about the production; how did it all start?
The backing tracks are all mine; we finished recording everything that day, September 11, 2001. We left Marco’s grandmother’s house, and the Twin Towers collapsed.

We saw the event on TV shortly afterwards in Gioia Tauro, we had gone with Raffaele to a friend of his who had a laundry and was dealing with rigged Tele+ cards; that’s where we realised.

Sentenza had several mystical crises; he said things like “Think of Premier running away with records in his arms…“, and laughed…

So, could you say the two of you were producing—you and L-Mare?
Back then, Marco (L-Mare, ed.) and I were deep into an occult trip; there are secret vocal overdubs on a couple of tracks where Marco is saying all sorts of things. We even recorded passages from Mein Kampf in German for the demo, and Marco kidnapped Antonino—a Swiss guy living in Palmi—and forced him to read into the mic. Plus, at the end of the tracks, there are often these crazy skits featuring a couple of local characters spouting nonsense.

The German recordings were lost almost immediately; the file turned into an unlistenable glitch—impossible to save. We also made a track with Aldo Smith, Sentenza, Marco, Mr. Freccia, Kajar, and Ramtzu over one of my beats, but it never came out and got lost. As for the first track, Il primo pezzo, we actually cut it from the final demo.

Any other anecdotes? More legends?
To record, Sentenza would travel from San Martino to Palmi—though the exact methods were never quite clear. In fact, there’s a legend about him walking the whole way… Marco and I decided to start this project after meeting Sentenza at a jam session. He was obsessed with Tormento, but we traumatised him with heavy doses of Company Flow and David Axelrod.

When he wrote the first track, we decided he needed to make a demo. We coached him; Marco would wear him out with freestyle battles that eventually turned into contests of guttural verses emulating the Cannibal Ox flow. We wanted to create something darker than what we usually did with the Palmi Pugnette Project.

Was this demo ever pressed?
The initial release was limited—maybe 70 copies, or 40, I don’t remember. Numbered covers. Later, Sentenza made some random bootlegs. People even asked us for autographs at school. In 2017, HEEL reissued a limited-edition tape—along with other material—but nothing followed after that.

With raw rhymes and solid beats, the sound of a corner of the world that no longer exists remains intact, lost amidst the diaspora of the artists themselves. A small yet significant piece of the nation’s hip-hop history.

DOWNLOAD: Cicciu Sentenza – Pala, Picu e Flow (Demotape – Original Tracklist – 2001)