What do you get when you mix hip-hop, funk, and soul with Cadillacs, Armani suits, and Italian mandolins? Rapper and entrepreneur Carvelli is what. Slip his latest single, Hooah, into the CD player, and prepare for a double whammy: an electric night cruising Times Square in your XLR convertible and a steamy afternoon, kicking your feet through the sand of the Amalfi Coast. Like most of Carvelli’s material, it’s a mid-tempo powerhouse, repository of Made-Man attitude. And the song is infectious: you can’t get it out of your head.
Carvelli, North America’s only Italian underworld rapper, has come a long way since ambling at his pa’s heels under the poker table at The Club, yet he credits his backroom exposure to giving him a strong sense of adventure. “What an environment,” he says after long reflection. “There’s no way a kid should be in there, the smoke, the cards, the money. But there I was. It was four, five nights a week, and the guys were always cool, showing me the ropes. I guess it’s because of that that I always had the feeling it was cool to be where people said you shouldn’t go.” They spoke Italian, and conversation drifted to the Old Country; The radio was always playing songs like La Partenza and C’avanti ce nu hiavura d’ammuscatu. And no matter which way across the table the cash went, there was always respect. That was under everything, he says. Honour, loyalty, respect. Even then, he was tapping his hands, tossing out rhymes, humming C’avanti. His interests crystallized. As he grew up, the rhyming and humming turned into rapping, and Carvelli’s never looked back.
