Fedez

Rozzano, a €500 budget and a run of number ones

Federico Leonardo Lucia was born in Milan on 15 October 1989 and grew up between Buccinasco, Corsico and Rozzano, on the southern edge of the city. His first record, Penisola che non c'è, arrived in 2011, self-produced on a budget of about €500 and given away as a free download, built around political and social material rather than the party rap then dominating Italian hip-hop. Later the same year he signed to Tanta Roba, the label founded by Guè Pequeno and DJ Harsh, and put out Il mio primo disco da venduto — again free, again digital.

The move to a major came in January 2013 with the Sony single "Si scrive schiavitù si legge libertà". Two months later Sig. Brainwash - L'arte di accontentare entered the Italian albums chart at number one and went on to triple platinum, with "Cigno nero", his duet with Francesca Michielin, reaching the top ten. Pop-Hoolista followed in September 2014 and also opened at number one, certified gold on release. That autumn he joined the judging panel of X Factor for its eighth season alongside Mika and Morgan, which pulled him out of the rap audience and into prime-time television — a crossing he has never really reversed.

The catalogue underneath the noise

By September 2024 the ledger stood at five number-one albums, 32 top-ten singles — twelve of them at number one — and more than 50 platinum certifications. The most durable of those is "Mille", the 1960s-pastiche summer single with Achille Lauro and Orietta Berti released in June 2021, which went to number one in Italy and has become the song an Italian crowd will sing back without prompting.

The last full studio album is Disumano, released on 26 November 2021, another number one and four times platinum. Since then he has worked in singles rather than albums: "Sexy shop" with Emis Killa reached number three in 2024 and went double platinum, "Di Caprio" with Niky Savage reached number five, and "Allucinazione collettiva" peaked at number twelve. In 2025 came "Battito" (number two, platinum), "Scelte stupide" with Clara (number thirteen, gold) and "Bella stronza", the Marco Masini reworking, at number twenty-four. That absence of a new album is the odd gap in an otherwise relentless release schedule, and it means the live show currently draws on a decade-plus back catalogue rather than a record to promote.

Sanremo, three times, with the results getting better

Sanremo has done more for his standing in the past five years than any album. In 2021 he and Francesca Michielin took "Chiamami per nome" to second place. At Sanremo 2025 he competed alone with "Battito", a song about depression and medication, and finished fourth; his cover-night duet with Marco Masini on Masini's own "Bella stronza" finished third and started a partnership that has outlasted the week.

That partnership produced the 2026 entry. Fedez and Masini were announced for Sanremo 2026 on 30 November 2025 and competed at the festival between 24 and 28 February with "Male necessario", released on 25 February through Warner Music Italy. It placed fifth and took the prize for best lyric — the first time a Fedez Sanremo song has been rewarded specifically for its writing. The single went to number one on the FIMI chart, number three on Italian airplay and forty-six in Switzerland, and was certified gold. It sits on Masini's thirteenth album, Perfetto imperfetto, rather than on a Fedez release, which tells its own story about where his output is currently housed.

The return to the stage: Assago, September 2025

Fedez had not played a proper headline show in six years when he booked two nights at the Unipol Forum in Assago, the first on 19 September 2025, ten years after his first concert in the same building. Reviewing the opening night for Rolling Stone Italia, Claudio Todesco described a performer who has settled into being a national-popular entertainer rather than a provocateur: twenty-four songs in roughly two hours, no interval and no encore, running from the early "Bimbi per strada" to "Senza pagare" at the close.

The staging was a long central platform laid diagonally across the floor, with a suspended rectangular structure above it acting as a screen for song-by-song graphics — a set-up the review judged more legible from the tiers than from the floor, and scaled for a full tour rather than a two-night stand. Guests came on through the night: Emis Killa, Marco Masini, Francesca Michielin, and Orietta Berti, whose entrance for "Mille" drew the loudest reaction of the evening. He dedicated "Allucinazione collettiva" to his ex-wife and spoke about their children, and gave over a section of the show to an apology for a line in "Tutto il contrario" about Jannik Sinner, telling the room that when a rhyme is misunderstood the fault lies with the writer.

The criticisms were specific rather than general: it was unclear who was playing what, guest vocals leaned heavily on recorded tracks, the visuals stayed generic where the material invited commentary, and a performer known for confrontation kept the politics light. The audience reaction, by every account of the night, was not in doubt — "Vorrei ma non posto" and "Senza pagare" were sung back wholesale.

Casa 360°, and the stop

The Forum nights worked well enough that a single, larger Milan date was announced in December 2025: Casa 360°, at the Unipol Forum on Friday 25 September 2026, built around a central stage and billed as an immersive show rather than a conventional end-on arena gig. Tickets went on general sale on 4 December 2025 through TicketOne. Around it sat a run of nine DJ sets across Italy in August and September.

None of it happened. Fedez was admitted to the Fatebenefratelli hospital in Milan in late July 2026 with internal bleeding and needed blood transfusions; he was discharged on 24 July. On 27 July his promoter, Vivo Concerti, announced the suspension of all live activity for August and September on the grounds that the artist's health required a period of treatment and recovery, cancelling the August DJ sets and the Casa 360° show outright. Refunds for online TicketOne purchases were processed automatically to the original payment method; physical tickets could be refunded within thirty days of 27 July.

His own statement the same day was unusually plain for an artist who has spent a decade managing his public image. He wrote about waiting for a last transfusion and feeling his time was ending, about the fear of not being able to hold his children, and finished: his body had raised its hand once again and told him to stop, the doctors were now saying the same thing, and that is what he would do. He also said he intended to redo everything he had been forced to suspend. As of late September 2026 no rescheduled date for Casa 360° has been announced, and the stated condition for any new dates is medical clearance rather than a diary slot.