When the list of Sanremo 2026 finalists was released, Sayf’s name was unknown to most. To everyone but the young people who follow the rap scene, where he was already a much loved artist. We went to meet him in person as part of a limited meeting with journalists. TO1st century Adam Viacava, born in 1999, born in Genoa to a Tunisian mother and an Italian father, apart from the very long dreadlocks, he has the clean mark of a good guy, kind and genuine. Nothing to do with the provocative and exhibitionist attitudes of some slightly damned artists. We know about him that he didn’t finish high school, that he started working at 16 and that he has always been making music, that the trumpet sounds and who after years of apprenticeship began to establish himself on the Genoese scene, until he left the Ligurian borders. In 2025 he released his first EP, If God Willsand gives life to the Santissima Fest at Porto Antico. Live performances become his trademark, characterized by the very high quality brought to the stage together with his band. Participates with a special live performance at JAZZMI, with jazz arrangements of his songs created specifically for the occasion and last summer he was involved together with Rkomi in Marco Mengoni’s single I’m happy at the seaside and then in November come out with a new single, Money (feat. Artie 5ive, Guè). Of course, with Sanremo everything is changing even faster and in the meantime he is already announcing the release of his first album after Ariston.
At today’s meeting he began by shaking hands with everyone present and asked questions, even the most difficult ones, with ease but also sincerity. Starting from the Sanremo song I like you a lot: «It’s a spontaneous song, as I hope all the songs I do in general are. There is current affairs, there is society, politics, love, the verses are very consistent with what I usually do. The only “Sanremo” precaution was to give a little more space to the chorus too, so that it favored a more immediate type of listening, which could be understood immediately. I then do at least 1,200 experiments, for me music is all beautiful.” Regarding his musical training, Sayf remembers how he grew up listening to De André (and tells us that his favorite Faber song is I saw Nina fly) but also Celentano, just as he loves jazz but also samba and bossa nova, and obviously also Simba La Rue’s rap. THEMy hope by going to Sanremo is to arouse the curiosity of those who have prejudices about rap music, just as my songs, which create bridges to the past, both in the history of the country and in its music, can perhaps arouse the curiosity of younger people to broaden their horizons. Noin the Sanremo song there is a reference to Luigi Tenco, the Genoese singer-songwriter who took his own life during the festival, at just 28 years old. «In the song I say I’m afraid of “not being understood in this stage of training with Tenco who died nearby”, it’s the exaggeration of a state of mind, making fun of a dramatic fact to explain how the pressure of a machine like the one in Sanremo can crush you, also due to a lack of empathy. Art is a very personal, empathetic thing, while selling it has nothing empathic or emotional about it. This race for profit leads to leaving the development of the arts behind, of culture which are fundamental because otherwise we are reduced to thinking that the best is the one who makes the most money, but this way speculation wins, the cultural level lowers, we express ourselves worse and by mastering fewer words we can express fewer concepts and we become less free”.
By bringing political themes like those contained in his song to the Sanremo stage there is the risk of being exploited, of entering the game of controversy: «Controversy doesn’t scare me because I am open to dialogue, I don’t have to defend a specific position, a party, an ideology. When I wrote this song there were demonstrations for Palestine which made me associate other events, such as workers’ struggles. For a series of elements they compare me to Ghali, an artist I know and respect. I was in front of the TV screen when he brought the Italian as a duet song to Sanremo, and I was moved. But I am something else, not Ghali 2.0.”
For the cover evening he will duet with Alex Britti and Mario Biondi with a reinterpretation of Hit the Road Jack by Ray Charles. «They are two slightly exotic artists compared to my style, but we had already decided on the song and when I saw the two of them in a video of them singing or together they seemed like the perfect match for me too». We cannot help but ask a young man who is called the first man according to both Christian and Muslim tradition, who included God in the title of one of his first EPs, what relationship religion has: «I have a spiritual life, I pray, but since the relationship with Faith is always a very personal thing, I prefer not to confine myself to a label and consider myself a sinner for both religions. Then, having grown up mainly with my mother, I observe some precepts of Islam, I don’t eat pork, I do Ramadan.”
In the end he explains what he, Adam, likes so much, what saves him from the ugliness of the world, the one to which he remains anchored: his mother, friends, music, the sea (“I’m not leaving Rapallo to move to Milan like many musicians do, I feel good here”), and the dream of one day starting a family of his own. In addition to his face, he also seems to have the heart of a good guy.
