Neapolitan rapper Luca Caiazzo aka Lucariello keeps faith with the music’s function as social commentary, eschewing the getting paid/getting laid clichés that have come to dominate much American rap.

His latest, “Cappotto di Legno,” is a collaboration with Roberto Saviano, and it’s about the journalist’s murder. Or rather, it gets inside the head of a young gangster who’d like to kill the Gomorra author.

Saviano actually initiated the partnership with the rapper, who also records and performs with the band Almamegretta.  Saviano, a fan of Lucariello’s album, “Quiet,” contacted Lucariello and suggested they create a piece. (The music is by pianist and bandleader Ezio Bosso, from Torino.) The title, “Cappotto di Legno” (Wooden Overcoat), was chosen by Saviano. Lucariello told La Repubblica that “the idea to describe his murder was mine and he accepted it. Roberto provided necessary input, in terms of images and information, a role I’d say was ‘journalistic,’ and his supervision and approval of what came out was fundamental. He liked the emotional impact of the song.”

The track’s main character is a young camorrista who rides around on his motorbike searching for his victim. He parrots the slurs against Saviano made by Nicola Schiavone, the father of the imprisoned mob boss Francesco “Sandokan” Schiavone, who called the author a “clown.”

Though most of the words reflect the hoodlum's perspective,"Cappotto di Legno" begins and ends with commentary about Casal di Principe, the camorra-dominated town on the outskirts of Naples whose horrific criminal violence Saviano exposes in Gomorra. Interestingly, Casal di Principe is described in the song as a place that gay people enter at their own risk.

The success of the Lucariello-Saviano collaboration on “Cappotto di Legno” has led the rapper and the writer to consider working together again, perhaps on an entire album.

 Lucariello’s website: http://www.lucariello.net/