Italy Playlist

Italian rap is running the country right now, and it isn't subtle about it. Sfera Ebbasta's "Lontano" has held No. 1 on the FIMI singles chart for a second straight week, and rap fills the top 50 of Spotify's Italian chart. The sound is moving into clubs. Dubrazil's "Dio con me" puts a baile funk groove under a club kick, and Tokyo's debut album MARIA, out on Guè's Oyster Music, lives in the same world. At Ferrara's Infernal Stage, a crowd of 16 to 25-year-olds sings along to rap, trap and DJ sets, and Sounder's mashups of trap and pop are built to be shared. In Milan, SUPERBE at The Club Milano on Sunday 25 October runs from 23:30 to 05:30 with hip hop, trap and reggaeton.

This month the WorldWidePop playlist added two videos: Tokyo's "MALA" and ayo ally's "ABRACADABRA". A reorganisation also expanded the playlist, which now holds 15 videos. Both new picks are fast, hook-first tracks, the kind that works in a room before it works on a phone. Tokyo's pick sits next to a Milan rap scene that is selling out arenas, and ally's sits in the newer, looser end of the same wave.

Listeners writing in on the playlist are mostly in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. Keep an eye on Kid Yugi, who sold out Milan's Unipol Forum on 8 October on his first arena tour in Italy. "Suoni dal Futuro" runs its autumn leg through late November, bringing emerging projects to clubs in eight cities, and its organisers say new scenes start in clubs, not stadiums. Sfera Ebbasta's album *Purosangue* is due 11 December.