A rapper’s image plays a very important role in their success: how they look, what they wear, and who they’re friends with are all factors that make an artist into an icon. What if they had none of that and never showed their face in public, did shows, music videos, or interviews, we wouldn’t even know what they looked like. How would they get money or get publicity? Ask 18-year-old Davide Mattei, also known as Italy’s hit-boy, Tha Supreme, who had the most-streamed Italian rap album in 24 hours in history, without ever showing his face. Before we tell you what makes this artist’s resumé even wilder, recline that chair of yours, make sure your drink is cold, and let’s get right to it.
Davide, A.K.A Tha Supreme, is an Italian producer turned rapper who went #1 despite having an online presence limited to the cartoon character he uses to represent himself in music videos and pictures. Even crazier, we know his name but have no real personal information or pictures. All the public knows is his date of birth, birthplace, and his sister since she’s a famous singer. Tha Supreme started off as a producer at a very young age. By 16 he produced the hit Scusami for “Italy’s Drake,” Salmo. Salmo is the biggest artist in Italy so that project put Tha Supreme on the map as a producer, just as he started buzzing as a rapper. His hit, Blun7 a swishland put him on the map as a rapper, accumulating 86 million streams in a country with 60 Million people.
Tha Supreme really relates to the youth, talking about topics like drugs, anxiety, and the struggles of being a teenager as he’s only 18. He serves as a voice for the youth in the same way that Juice Wrld or XXX Tentacion did in the States. What makes Tha Supreme really interesting is the abnormality of the way he goes about being rich and famous. He has never done a live show, video, or post, he uses a cartoon character to represent himself. He also uses numbers in his song titles, every one has at least one number that’s meant to represent a letter, exchanging “A” for 4, “T” for 7 and “g” for 9, it is his signature. Tha Supreme’s debut album was titled 23 6451, spelling “Le Basi,” which means “The Basics” in Italian. Not to mention he’s even hard for Italians to understand because he uses words from different languages and dialects, but it’s mostly Italian. However, that makes his voice a powerful instrument as he uses different words to keep his flow wavy.
Tha Supreme is famous for 5 very important reasons:
- He uses his voice as an instrument
- His producing roots make all his songs well mixed and with unreplicable beats
- THE MYSTERY
- Voice for the Youth
- Collaborations with other big-name artists.
The wrap it up: he’s every teenager’s idol, he’s a mystery, and his music is amazing. Question is, what do you think about this marketing technique? Is it worth being anonymous but not being able to do shows? Regardless, Tha Supreme has just started, the best is yet to come. So far he’s having a great run, but at The Bridge Magazine we’re very interested to see how long he can keep it going. We’d be surprised to see if any other rapper could replicate this “publicity” method.