Shiva

Legnano, Corsico and the first uploads

Andrea Arrigoni was born on 27 August 1999 in Legnano, in the industrial belt north-west of Milan, and grew up around Corsico on the city's western fringe, with stretches of time in Tuscany where he picked up street art and punk alongside rap. He began recording at fourteen and put his first EP, La via del guerriero, on SoundCloud in the 2013–14 period, following it with self-made videos before signing to the Rome-based label Honiro in 2015.

The debut album Tempo anima arrived in 2017, Solo in 2018. The commercial breakthrough came through features: platinum singles with established Italian names in 2019 and, in 2020, his first number one with "Calmo" alongside tha Supreme, which he followed with the EP Routine. By then the Milano Ovest tag — the imprint that still releases his records with Sony — had become shorthand for a specific geography rather than a slogan.

The run of albums that built the audience

Dolce vita in 2021 was the first full album to match the singles, but the step up was Milano Demons in 2022, certified three times platinum in Italy, preceded by the EP Dark Love. Santana Season followed in 2023 and Milano Angels in 2024, the latter opening the catalogue to international collaborators and, in its lyrics, to the events that had overtaken him the previous summer.

Vangelo, the seventh studio album, came out on 10 April 2026 through Milano Ovest and Sony Music: thirteen tracks across roughly forty-five minutes, moving between trap, pop-rap and contemporary R&B. The guest list runs Anna on "Obsessed", Geolier on "Bad Bad Bad", Kid Yugi on "Babyface", Lazza and Sfera Ebbasta together on "Mayday", and Tiziano Ferro on "Bacio di Giuda" — the pairing nobody had predicted. Production came from Drillionaire, Adam11, Finesse, GG, Toro2x and Zazu. It went to number one on the FIMI chart, reached number five in Switzerland and was certified triple platinum. "Take 6" had trailed it on 25 November 2025; "Bugie" arrived as a bonus track on 27 August 2026.

Critics split. Newsic gave it seven out of ten; Ondarock gave it four, unconvinced that an album framed as scripture had earned the frame. The religious imagery — crosses, confession, resurrection — was the most consistent thing about the record, and it is what the stage design later made literal.

The court cases

On 11 July 2023, at Settimo Milanese, Arrigoni was set upon by two men and fired a gun, wounding both; he has maintained he acted in self-defence. He was arrested on 26 October 2023 on charges of attempted murder and firearms offences. The first-instance sentence in July 2024 was six years, six months and twenty days. The Milan appeal court cut it to four years and seven months, and the house-arrest regime that had kept him off stages was lifted in March 2025 — the precondition for everything that followed.

A separate case concerned a brawl at San Benedetto del Tronto on 30 August 2023. On 22 April 2026, twelve days after Vangelo went to number one, the judge for preliminary hearings at Ascoli Piceno, Barbara Caponetti, sentenced him to three years and six months in abbreviated proceedings, while acquitting him and his co-defendants of aggravated robbery. His lawyer, Niccolò Vecchioni, said the ruling returned the facts to their proper criminal dimension. He has continued to work and to tour throughout.

He addressed the period directly on Rai 2's Belve with Francesca Fagnani while Vangelo was still at the top of the chart — a booking that would have been unthinkable two years earlier and which marked how far the audience for his story now extends beyond rap listeners.

Where things stand in November 2026

The spring arena run sold out in Mantua, Milan, Rome, Naples and Bologna, which prompted a second leg: six indoor dates announced through Vivo Concerti and put on sale online at 2pm on 26 May 2026, with retail sales from 31 May. Naples, Rome and Bari then sold out and were doubled, adding 25 November, 29 November and 2 December. Between the two legs he played four summer festivals — Este Music Festival on 29 July, Wave Summer Music in Catania on 6 August, Vibes Summer Festival at Cinquale on 8 August and Red Valley in Olbia on 14 August.

The next record is already being teased. From the Forum stage in May he announced Santana Season 2, a sequel to the 2023 album, with no date attached. On 27 October 2026 the rollout proper began on Instagram: a red eagle as the new visual mark, the tagline "Make Italy Great Again", and studio photographs from Miami with the Puerto Rican rapper Anuel AA. No collaboration has been confirmed and no release date exists.

One episode from the spring still hangs over the project. After Ferro appeared beside him in Milan, clips of the duet drew homophobic abuse and bodyshaming aimed at Ferro from accounts in Shiva's own comment sections — ugly, widely reported, and a reminder of the part of his following that the Ferro collaboration was meant to reach across. Ferro's own account of the record was warmer, describing Arrigoni as a discovery who had approached him almost in silence.

The show as it runs now

The Shiva Live 2026 staging is the most elaborate production he has mounted: a church front built across the back of the stage, with crosses, balconies and openings that guests walk out of, a cross-shaped runway into the floor, large LED screens and timed fire jets. Reviewers of the Milan dates described the set as a passage between inferno and paradise imagery, matched to Vangelo's sequencing.

Setlists have run long and fast. The Florence show on 12 May covered thirty-three songs, opening on "Take 6", threading the "Take" interludes through the night, dropping into an acoustic stretch for "Niente da perdere" and "VVS Cartier", and closing on "Non lo sai". Milan on 20 May ran past two hours across around thirty songs, opening with intros that fell into "Milano Angels" and "6AM", peaking on "Peccati" and "Obsessed", and ending on the same closer. "Dio Esiste", the quietest thing on the album, was held back as a surprise. Guest slots have gone to collaborators rather than a billed support act: Anna for "Obsessed", Kid Yugi for "Babyface", Slings in Florence for "Don't Stop It" and "Freaky", Sfera Ebbasta and Flaco G in Milan, and Ferro on 20 May for "Bacio di Giuda".

He talks very little between songs. The lines reviewers kept quoting were "I'm just like you, nothing different" and an instruction to keep believing in what the crowd was dreaming about — delivered flat, near the end, to an arena that had been singing every word back since the first bar. The second leg opens at the Palateknoship in Genoa on 19 November and closes at the Unipol Dome in Milan on 5 December.