DDM (Drowning Dog & Malatesta) – Black Cat – Best You Can Get!

Glasgow-born and raised, Malatesta DJ grew up in a working-class family before moving to San Francisco, where he immersed himself in antiauthoritarian organizing and anarchist politics. While volunteering for the legendary AK Press publishing collective, he became well-read in radical history, political theory, and liberation struggles. His time at AK Press and Bound Together Books not only deepened his activism in social movements but also connected him with many radical thinkers and organizers. Taking his name from the prominent Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta, he nurtured an equal passion for both underground and mainstream music scenes.

Eventually, he bought a cheap set of DJ equipment and began layering his beats with recordings of speeches by Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill, ex-Black Panthers, and others. During this period, he met Drowning Dog MC, with whom he shared a low-rent building known as The Complex. Together they formed Entartete Kunst (aka EK Records), an anarchist electronica/hip-hop collective and label. Since 1999, Drowning Dog & Malatesta (DDM) have been touring across the United States and Europe, reclaiming hip-hop and electronica as tools of resistance. Inspired by the self-organized venues and social centers they performed in, the duo eventually relocated to Milan, Italy, where Malatesta founded Rap Militante Internazionale, a class-conscious gig collective.

Their latest project under the Milan-based DDM collective is Black Cat – Best You Can Get, a 15-track record of anarchist political rap set over beats that range from minimalist electronica to classic R&B and hip-hop samples. The more electro-driven tracks carry echoes of riot grrrl and queer music scenes, while lyrically DDM remain rooted in anarchist and leftist themes: precarity, class struggle, housing and squatting issues, and critiques of power structures. Staying true to hip-hop tradition, the record also features several collaborations, including Italian antifascist MC Acero Moretti (“Casa occupata”), Paris-based hardcore rapper Première Ligne of the militant Skalpel/La-K Bine crew (“What Is Normal?”), and the wild beats and mixing of French hip-hop visionary Piloophaz (“Grève Générale”).

Black Cat – Best You Can Get was recorded by DDM in Milan, mixed by Tristan Mazire in Paris, often hailed as Europe’s underground hip-hop capital, and mastered in Oakland, California. Be sure to catch Rap Militante Internazionale and The Future Is Still Unwritten tour for more radical hip-hop from the growing network of antiauthoritarian crews and collectives across Europe and beyond.

“By anarchist spirit I mean that deeply human sentiment, which aims at the good of all, freedom and justice for all, solidarity and love among the people; which is not an exclusive characteristic only of self-declared anarchists, but inspires all people who have a generous heart and an open mind.”

—Errico Malatesta for the Italian anarchist newspaper Umanita Nova (April, 1922)