Bio

Cosenza, 1996

Mirko Filice was born in Cosenza on 2 March 1981. He first came across Hip Hop at fourteen, almost by chance, but the date that matters came later: on 2 March 1996, his fifteenth birthday, his father gave him Sangue Misto’s “SXM”. It was the record that changed his life, and soon afterwards Mirko became Kiave.

The jams DJ Lugi organised in town were his school. It was on a mixtape by Lugi and DJ Marcio that his first recorded verse appeared. With Iken and Nerba he formed his first group, Dietro Le Quinte, on beats by Zope: the trio played live a lot and recorded a demo that made it all the way to Aelle, then the leading magazine of Italian Hip Hop, which reviewed it. Meanwhile Kiave grew close to Paola Tribe, a crew from the surrounding area that also included Macro Marco and Dest: with Macro he began a collaboration that would run through his whole career.

Turi, Migliori Colori and university

In 1999 Kiave recorded a demo produced by Turi. The tape remained unreleased, but the meeting led to a partnership: the two shared stages all over Italy and put their names to “Pane a chi non ha denti” (2000) and a couple of tracks on Turi’s album “L’amico degli amici” (2004).

Also in 1999 Kiave formed Migliori Colori with rapper Franco, DJ Kerò and DJ Impro. The group released the tape “Assassinati da Orologi” in 2002 and the album “Rullanti Distorti” in 2004, a record full of ideas, with meticulously crafted rhythms. During the same years Kiave studied Philosophy at university in Cosenza, trying to juggle exams, gigs and days in the recording studio. Among his influences, alongside the greats of American Rap, were the Italian singer-songwriters: De André, Gaber, Tenco.

The first record and freestyle

On 16 March 2005 came his first solo release, the EP “Dietro le 5 tracce” (Vibra Records/Saifam): six previously unreleased tracks and a multimedia track, a very experimental choice for the time. The CD-ROM explained the four elements of Hip Hop and told Kiave’s story up to that point, with fifteen more tracks in mp3 format, videos and photos of aerosol art pieces.

Around the same time Kiave made a name for himself across Italy as a freestyler. His improvised rhymes, at jams and in competitions, saw him win one of the “2TheBeat” qualifying nights in 2005 and reach the final in 2006, at what was then Italy’s most important freestyle contest. Improvisation would remain one of the hallmarks of his work, on stage and off. It was during this period that he moved to Rome.

“7 Respiri”

In June 2007 he released the single “Digli di No”, with two unreleased tracks and two remixes produced by DJ Impro, Rayden and Macro Marco. It was the first taste of “7 Respiri” (MK Records/Vibra Records), his debut album: fifteen tracks produced by the same beatmakers as well as Bassi Maestro, Turi, FatFatCorFunk, Zonta and Deal, featuring Ensi, Clementino, Cario e Brigante and Hyst, artists with whom Kiave had long shared the studio and the stage.

The album took him on tour from north to south. Along the way he also brought his music to a number of communities and tried something rare: translating Rap into sign language, both in songs and in freestyle, so that the content of his songs could reach deaf people too. In 2009 he released the single “Infinite Possibilità” on Macro Beats, the label he helped to found and to which his career would remain tied.

Blue Nox, ottava rima and “Il tempo necessario”

In 2009 Kiave was one of the founders of Blue Nox, a collective bringing together Ghemon, Macro Marco, Hyst, DJ Impro, Mecna, Rafè and Negrè. First through a website, then with selected live shows and various releases, Blue Nox put forward an idea of Hip Hop far removed from the one the media were pushing at the time.

Alongside this, Kiave took freestyle into the theatre. With a group of poets and rappers he took part in improvisation shows in which poets of the ottava rima, an ancient Italian poetic tradition, and rappers challenged each other in rhyme on themes suggested by the audience. The format worked and travelled as far as the theatre of the University of Nice.

At the end of 2009 came “Il tempo necessario” (Macro Beats), recorded with old friends and new musicians. The album took him around Italy again and onto many radio stations, inside and outside the Hip Hop circuit.

With Macro Marco: “Fuori da ogni spazio ed ogni tempo”

In 2011, after years of collaboration and friendship, Kiave and Macro Marco finally released an EP together: “Fuori da ogni spazio ed ogni tempo” (Macro Beats). Kiave wrote and performed the lyrics, Macro Marco produced almost all the beats. Several videos came out of the record. The one for “Reato d’Emozione” was shot in Cosenza, around the city’s streets and the places where Hip Hop in Cosenza first took root. The vinyl pressing of the EP also includes an unreleased track, “Terra Bianca”.

“MTV Spit” and “Solo per cambiare il mondo”

In 2012 Kiave took part in the first season of “MTV Spit”, the freestyle battle show hosted by Marracash, and made it to the final episode. It was an opportunity that made him known beyond Hip Hop culture, but his main aim was to bring Hip Hop to TV in a genuine way.

The same year saw the release of “Solo per cambiare il mondo” (Macro Beats/Audioglobe), a varied album that moves between party tracks in the most classic Hip Hop style and deeper reflections meant to shake up the listener. The guest list shows the respect Kiave enjoys in the scene: Ghemon, Mecna, Hyst, MadBuddy, Musteeno, Ensi, Clementino and a name unusual for Rap at the time, Brunori Sas. The album was followed by a long tour across Italy.

Also in 2012 Kiave dedicated a song and a video, “Il termine esatto”, to femicide, answering the “Mai più complici” appeal launched by “Se non ora quando”. “I decided to make a track because signing isn’t enough”, he explained. Part of the scene criticised him for using rhymes on such a sensitive subject, but Kiave stood his ground: Rap can also raise awareness and open listeners’ minds.

2013: the first workshop

In 2013 Kiave moved to Milan, and that same year the association Il Razzismo è una brutta storia invited him into Monza prison (Casa Circondariale) for a Rap writing workshop. This was how “Potere alle Parole Lab” began. Kiave went in without a ready-made method and built one in the field, session after session, helped in part by exchanges with Andrea Gorni aka Mastino and Davide Fant. The workshop was renewed for three editions and produced three albums written and recorded in prison: “Potere alle Parole Lab” (2014), “Second Round” (2015) and “Parole oltre i muri” (2016). The records were presented at the Feltrinelli bookshop in Piazza Piemonte, Milan, and at a concert inside the prison.

In the same years, with the “Potere alle Parole” campaign, Kiave took Rap into schools as a tool against racism: from the secondary school in Bisignano, in the province of Cosenza, to the Scuola Holden in Turin, where he led a workshop against stereotypes and prejudice for young people aged 14 to 18. In 2015 he was one of the rapper-educators at the Expo Gate workshop in Milan. “I’ve always believed that everyone has the right to a second chance”, he says. “Hip Hop gave me mine, and now I’m just trying to pass on what this culture is meant to do: propel people towards something better.”

Stages and collaborations

In the years that followed Kiave kept going. He worked with Rocco Hunt, Omar Pedrini, Mistaman and Ghemon, and in 2014 he took the stage at the May Day concert in Piazza San Giovanni, Rome, as Clementino’s guest. Among the concerts he remembers most is the “Hip Hop TV Birthday Party” at the Forum di Assago, alongside a legend like Kurtis Blow. Also in 2014 came “Pezzo positivo”, a standalone track, with a video directed by Francesco Paura Curci, the Neapolitan artist Kiave has always considered one of his mentors.

That same year, with the Macro Beats crew, he won the “Red Bull Culture Clash”, the first contest between some of Italy’s leading crews, organised by Red Bull Music Academy. His name began to circulate outside music as well: with Ghemon, MadBuddy and Johnny Marsiglia he wrote and performed “We love this game” for Nike’s European event “The search for the baddest”, which Kiave hosted in Milan. He was a brand ambassador for Reebok and Activision, and in 2015 he was a coach, with Mistaman, at the Italian edition of “Converse Rubber Tracks”, a series of workshops for young musicians on metre, writing and technique. The same year came the “FixTape”, a free download combining unreleased tracks and collaborations with many artists.

Behind the mixer

Alongside Rap, Kiave built a career as a sound engineer. He trained in Catania at the Suoni & Rumori school (now The Cave Studio), where he gained his certification, and specialised with an advanced course at Umberto Maggi’s Umbi Studio in Polesella. At the Macro Beats Studio in Milan he records, mixes and masters, which is why he looks after every stage of his own records, from the lyrics to the final sound. His studio work also took him to the Red Bull studios in Paris, where he recorded a track with singer-songwriter CRLN and producer Gheesa. Today he runs the Macro Beats studio in Milan and continues to work as a sound engineer.

“StereoTelling” and “StereoKilling”

2016 was a very prolific year. In January came “StereoTelling” (Macro Beats/A1 Entertainment), a concept album built on storytelling, Kiave’s great strength: the ability to conjure images and tell stories with words. The year closed with the EP “StereoKilling”, seven tracks in which Kiave went back to his love of punchlines, with gritty sounds and direct lyrics. The two records produced seven videos. A tour of almost two years followed, with producer Gheesa replaying some of the beats live on stage with finger drumming.

The workshops grow

While he toured Italy with his records, the workshops carried on. In 2016 Kiave went into Milan’s Cesare Beccaria juvenile prison, with ENAIP and the association 232, for a programme against discrimination that brought young detainees and students together. In 2017 he worked with young people in the SPRAR refugee reception system in Rho on the “Onde Sonore” project, which ended with a concert at MAST in Rho. In 2018 he took Rap writing into Varese prison, with the programme that took the name “Voci Spiegate”, and in 2019 to the Repubblica dei Ragazzi in Civitavecchia. Almost every workshop ends with a record and a concert.

A common thread links every encounter: the original values of Hip Hop culture. At its heart is the fight against every kind of discrimination, racial, social or gender-based, tackled through art. Rap becomes a way to get off the street and turn negative energy into creativity.

TEDx, the reading and the juries

In 2017 Kiave told the story of Hip Hop from the TEDxCosenza stage. In 2018 he returned with “Alba verde”, a single produced by Godblesscomputers, a choice in keeping with his ties to the underground and his distance from passing trends.

Also in 2018 he began working with WE Reading and toured Italy with the reading “L’animale dentro – dalle strofe del Rap italiano ai poeti dell’antimafia”. Its thread is the Socratic “daimon”: Kiave looks for its origins, and for ways to contain it, in the lyrics of Italian Rap, all the way to the verses of Peppino Impastato and Rocco Mangiardi. The reading ends with “Animalia”, a track written specially for it, which can only be heard live.

Meanwhile he was called on to judge a great many freestyle battles all over Italy. For years he was the host and resident judge of “Tecniche Perfette”, with MastaFive and DJ Double S, and from 2018 he toured a jury-plus-showcase format, as well as being the resident judge of “Fight Club”, a national contest and a reference point for fans of the genre.

“Musica contro le mafie”

His bond with the anti-mafia movement goes back a long way and runs through “Musica contro le mafie”, the project born in Cosenza within Don Luigi Ciotti’s Libera network. In 2012 Kiave was one of the artists on the book-and-CD “Musica contro le mafie” (Rubbettino/MK Records), edited by Gennaro de Rosa and Marco Ambrosi, with contributions from Carlo Lucarelli, Vito Teti and Don Ciotti himself: the proceeds went to Libera. His lyrics start from Calabria, from omertà and from the story of a fourteen-year-old raised to believe that fear breeds respect. The line that sums it up is “Non rivoluzioni se non ti rivoluzioni”: you can’t revolutionise anything unless you revolutionise yourself. The same social commitment also led him to write for Il Fatto Quotidiano’s blog, starting on 23 October 2012.

The relationship has continued ever since. Kiave is one of the voices in “L’Alternativa”, the 2014 documentary, alongside Don Ciotti, Fiorella Mannoia, Simone Cristicchi and Roy Paci. He hosted one edition of the national award in Cosenza, was among the artists at the “5 Giorni di Musica contro le mafie” in Cosenza in 2016 and, the following year, was one of the professionals on a programme about the rule of law with students in Rossano. In 2019 he was back in bookshops with “Change your step” (Rubbettino), a hundred artists and their words of change, and presented the book at La Sapienza University in Rome with journalist Roberta Rei.

“InForma”

In 2019 he released the single “InForma”, produced by Macro Marco and accompanied by an official video, and Kiave was back on the road, racking up the miles. Between festivals, live shows and battles, the reading “L’animale dentro” also reached Calabria, in Cosenza and Lamezia Terme. It was the pace he had been used to for years, mic in hand, one date after another.

Covid, the turning point

Covid hit while Kiave was in the middle of promotion and out playing live. Used to being constantly on tour, he found himself shut indoors and began to ask himself how he could be useful to Hip Hop culture away from the stage. The answer was already in his work: the workshops, which had never stopped since 2013, became the way forward.

With Street Arts Academy, together with Musteeno, he worked with eight young people in workshops held partly on Zoom. The result was “B.I.B.L.E.”, nine tracks on beats by Sick Budd, released on 30 June 2022 on Gatto Pirata Dischi. Also from 2022, Kiave ran the workshop at the Fanciullezza day centre in Milan for three years in a row.

The mic stays on

Rap, meanwhile, didn’t switch off. In 2023 came “36 Stanze”, a single with Gheesa and Macro Marco, produced by Macro Marco, with mix and master by Kiave. In battles Kiave remains a reference point: since the eighth edition he has judged “Fight Club” at every regional round, up to the 2026 final.

Rap in the theatre: Brecht at Paolo Grassi

In 2023 Kiave brought Rap into a theatre classic. For Bertolt Brecht’s “Terrore e miseria del III Reich”, directed by Ben Naylor and staged from 26 May to 1 June at the Civica Scuola di Teatro Paolo Grassi in Milan, he was Rap consultant and music coach, working alongside the third-year Acting students. He rewrote Brecht’s introductory verses in a Hip Hop key, performed by seven actors over beats by Andrea Centonza: rhymed interludes that connect the 1938 text to the present and update Brecht’s alienation effect. With the actors he worked on breath, rhythm and flow, to turn words into bars.

ForMattArt

With ForMattArt, where he leads the programmes linked to Hip Hop Pedagogy, the workshops moved to the centre of his work, until they took up almost all of it. In Milan, starting from Corvetto, came “UpToYou”: four editions and four records between 2023 and 2025, “Rumore dal fondo”, “N.I.E.N.T.E.”, “Davanti a me” and “Antropia”. Kiave doesn’t stop at the writing: at the Macro Beats Studio he handles recording, mixing and mastering, so that participants end up with a professional product in their hands.

The thread stretches in every direction. In 2025 “Voci Spiegate” started again at San Vittore prison and at Como prison, with weekly sessions. Kiave works in schools, from IC Console Marcello to the Scuola Bottega of the CAG La Strada youth centre in Milan, and in other youth centres, where “Troppo Stress” was born at CAG 500 and “Confini Spinati” at Fondazione PIME’s “Time Out”. Between 2025 and 2026, with the “IoNoi” project, he worked across Rozzano, Locate Triulzi, Pieve Emanuele and Binasco, producing the album “Spoken Future”. Since 2026 he has also been running a workshop on the paediatric ward of the Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, which is still ongoing.

The work also reaches beyond Milan. In February 2026 he was in Taranto with the “Oltre l’Ombra” project: five days with people serving alternatives to custody, which gave rise to the single “099”, covered by ANSA and RaiNews TGR Puglia. In Milan, meanwhile, the young people made it to the stage: with “Training Live” they prepared for performance, and in May 2026, on the “FringeMI” nights, more than twenty young artists from the workshops performed. Since 2014, twenty-one productions have come out of this work.

“Keep It Real”

Another decisive step was “Keep It Real”, Italy’s first national network of artists and educators who use Hip Hop as a tool for inclusion. There Kiave met people doing the same work as him and realised how developed Hip Hop Pedagogy is, how fast it is growing and how well it can keep the culture alive. Through the three-year project “Comunità in cammino”, promoted by ÀP – Antimafia Pop Academy, conceived by Pasquale Grosso and supported by Fondazione Alta Mane Italia, six rappers work in Rome, Milan, Naples, Bologna and Cosenza, together with associations, teachers and researchers.

In Milan Kiave runs the workshop with Stefano Cesana aka CesaOne, rapper and psychologist: the first year led to the album “Nomi senza volti” (2025), the second to “Spunti di Vista” (2026), nine tracks and nine young artists who have become a real crew. The Milan programme is also a case study in the European research project CLiViE. At Sapienza University in Rome Kiave took part in the network’s meeting in October 2025, and in September 2026 he gave a talk at Scuola Democratica’s international conference. The workshop continues every Tuesday.

Thirty years

In 2026 the name Kiave turns thirty. Instead of a solo record, he has chosen to work on the records of the people in his workshops, and to offer them everything he has learnt about the culture, Rap and the studio. From that 1996 birthday present to today, the driving force is the same: thirty years of love for Hip Hop.