Inoki

Italian rapper and producer Fabiano Ballarin (October 2, 1979), better known as Inoki or Inoki Ness, fell in love with hip-hop culture from a very early age. Though born in Rome, Ballarin relocated to Bologna with his mother during his teenage years and started out as a graffiti artist before picking up the mic under the pseudonym Enok. Inspired by seminal Italian group Assalti Frontali, he soon joined the city’s booming hip-hop scene as part of the rap trio Porzione Massiccia Crew alongside Gianni KG and Paniko, releasing three albums between 1998 and 2002. He was also part of the short-lived collective Flick Flack Mobb and rose to notoriety through a series of features on Fritz da Cat’s Novecinquanta (1999) and Joe Cassano’s posthumous album, Dio Iodato (1999), before kicking off his solo career with the self-produced 5º Dan (2001) and Fabiano detto Inoki (2005). While these albums served as an introduction to the Bolognese MC’s work, it was Nobiltà di strada (2007), his first release for Warner Music, that exposed him to a larger audience through its lead single “Sentimento reciproco,” whose accompanying video got heavy rotation on MTV Italy. Following a series of highly-publicized confrontations with rappers Vacca and Gue Pequeno, Ballarin returned with the mixtapes Pugni in faccia (2010) and Flusso di coscienza (2011), both released through his Rap Pirata imprint. L’antidoto, his fourth full-length, arrived in 2014 and was followed by the mixtape Basso profilo in 2016. Almost five years later, the MC struck a deal with Milanese indie label Asian Fake and dropped Medioego (2021), which peaked at Number 2 on the Italian Albums Chart largely thanks to the singles “Nomade,” “ispirazione,” and “Wildpirata,” featuring Genovese rapper Tedua.

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