Catania and Palermo's new rap scene, in the island's own language.
Walk through San Cristoforo, one of Catania's oldest working-class neighbourhoods, and you'll hear more Catanese than Italian. So it makes sense that one of the city's sharpest young rappers writes in it. Enzo Benz, born in 1999 and raised in the district, released an EP called Via Piombai in January 2024. His "San Cristoforo Freestyle 2" is in Catanese from the first bar to the last. A local paper put it neatly: he is carrying Catanese dialect into Italy's national rap scene.
He isn't alone, and he isn't the first.
A language, not an accent
Sicilian isn't Italian with a twang. It has its own words, its own grammar, and layers left by Greeks, Arabs, Normans and Spaniards. For most of the last century, school and television taught young Sicilians that it was the language of grandparents and fish markets, not of ambition. Rap turned that around. A genre built on telling the truth about where you're from works better in the language you actually speak there.
The pioneers were bands, not rappers. Tinturia, from Agrigento, have toured since the mid-1990s mixing rap, ska, reggae and folk, with a Sicilian band name to match. Their song "92100", Agrigento's postal code, became a local anthem. On the other side of the island, Shakalab, from Torretta Granitola near Mazara del Vallo, built a reggae and dancehall sound in Sicilian, Italian and English. They released "Giganti" in 2021 with the Sicilian-born reggae star Alborosie.
The new crews
In Palermo the scene is less about solo stars and more about crews. Villa Muerte is a collective of ten rappers aged 19 to 30, many of them writing in Sicilian. Its founder, Dante LSD, points to Naples as proof of what a dialect can do. Gorilla Sauce, founded in 2017 by Turi Moncada, says it often uses dialect to protect the island's cultural heritage. "Our rap is closely tied to cultural identity," Moncada told Palermo's Balarm magazine.
In Catania, alongside Enzo Benz, there's L'Elfo, who has rapped in Catanese for years. Back in Palermo there's Picciotto, whose 2022 album Rap siculo holds five tracks written entirely in Sicilian. One reviewer called it an act of love for Sicily.
The Naples effect
Why now? Look north. In February 2024 the Neapolitan rapper Geolier came second at Sanremo, Italy's biggest song contest, with a song entirely in Neapolitan. The online abuse about his dialect was loud. So were the streams: by 2025 he was among the most-streamed Italian artists on Spotify. Swiss broadcaster RSI summed it up in January 2026: dialect is no longer a limit.
The shift reached beyond rap. In 2025 Carmen Consoli, Catania's most famous songwriter, released Amuri luci, an album largely in Sicilian. Marco Castello from Siracusa sings "Beddu" entirely in Sicilian over jazz-funk. He has said openly that he uses pop, memes and TikTok to save Sicilian roots, and that the island lacks a music identity movement like the one Campania has.
That gap is the opportunity. Naples has a scene the whole country recognises. Sicily has the language, the stories and the artists, but it’s still building a consistent presence in the scene, one that keeps showing up release after release.
What to listen to
Enzo Benz, "San Cristoforo Freestyle": Catanese, unfiltered.
Shakalab feat. Alborosie, "Giganti": two islands, one riddim.
Tinturia, "Rap intelligente": where it started.
Marco Castello, "Beddu": a Siracusa cantautore’s jazz-funk, all in Sicilian.
Carmen Consoli feat. Mahmood, "La terra di Hamdis": a song named after Ibn Hamdis, the Arab-Sicilian poet of the 1100s.
All of them are on Scruscio Vol. 1, our playlist of Sicilian music in Sicilian, from rappers to cantautori. Want stories like this every other Tuesday? Get Caffè Stretto.
Sources: QdS, BlogSicilia, Rockit, Balarm, L'Espresso, LaPresse, RSI, Money.it, Fanpage, Sorrisi.
