The man who goes by the name
Neffa was born
Giovanni Pellino in 1967 in Scafati, Italy, a small town near Naples, but he spent much of his youth in the northern cities of Turin and Bologna. He began his musical career as a drummer in various hardcore bands, one of which was the influential Negazione, using the name "
Jeff," but later decided to switch to hip-hop.
Pellino, who at this point was performing under the name
Neffa, in honor of the Paraguayan Cremonese soccer star, hooked up with
DJ Gruff and
Deda to form
Sangue Misto, a hip-hop group whose debut, 1994's SXM, is often considered the first great Italian rap album. In 1996
Neffa decided to try out his luck as a solo artist, and recorded the appropriately titled
Neffa & I Messaggeri della Dopa in 1996 with a group of Italian and American artists collectively called I Messaggeri della Dopa. The musician stuck with stalwarts
Gruff and
Deda for his next record, 1998's
107 Elementi, followed the next year with the five-song EP Chicopisco. It was after this that
Neffa decided to explore his other musical interests, namely soul, funk, and R&B, all of which are heard in his 2001 album,
Arrivi e Partenze. Although he received a lot of criticism from the Italian rap community, the album did well commercially, and gained
Neffa attention from a more mainstream audience. He followed up the success of
Arrivi e Partenze two years later with I Molteplici Mondi di Giovanni, Il Cantante Neffa, and in 2006 his third album as a singer, Il Mondo Nuovo, was released in Italy. ~ Marisa Brown