Martin Basile · Biography
Martin Basile was born in Genoa in 1992. March 21st, World Poetry Day. He didn’t choose it. But he decided not to waste the coincidence.
Very little is known about his childhood, except that at the age of eight he said “Rabelaisian” twice.
A Mixtape, Two Pots
According to the earliest accounts, after his first concerts and singles released in 2007, in 2010 Martin looked after a hedgehog with a cold and a Christmas compilation which featured, among others, various Italian rappers and Santa Claus.
During the same period he opened concerts for rappers who were big at the time and are probably still alive today.
In early 2011 he released Esaurito Mixtape, a collection of collaborations, live recordings and unreleased tracks. The same year he mobilised a group of musicians known as Butter Pasta, giving birth to “Improvvisazioni culinarie”, an album recorded in one-day sessions with people who had never met each other, using pots and kitchen utensils. The result was what it was.
In May 2014, Martin and Butter Pasta won the Toscana Selection with “Affogarti nei fiori”. Performing the same song, they also won the Sotto Toni competition in Concordia Sagittaria. Two wins with a single song: had there been a third competition, they would have swept the board.
That same year he was sent against his will to X Factor, where the producers paired him with his ex-girlfriend, Diandra Delfino. Three days after they had broken up. He swears they had already split before. One of the judges, a famous Italian rapper, called him “a didactic rapper.” It wasn’t a compliment. He took it as one.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in Literature, a master’s in Performing Arts, a master’s in Creative Writing, a production course and a screenwriting course. Everything except music. This didn’t stop him from becoming a musician, but it does explain why every song he writes comes with a footnote.
One Listen Isn’t Enough, Two Aren’t Either
Also in 2014 he released Kalokagathia, a double EP blending early 20th-century Italian poetry and neo-soul. One critic described it as “a project that requires far more than one listen.” Translation: they didn’t really get it.
His first short film, “Intuito femminile” (2014), was an unauthorised adaptation of a song by Uochi Toki. When they saw it, they wrote to him saying the film was embarrassing and that, as compensation, he should buy them focaccia for life. They may have been joking. They may not.
In 2016 he won the Emanuela Pedullà Prize with “Mangiatene tutti”, a song that invited listeners to a healthy form of cannibalism.
Coffee Assistant
In 2017 he wrote and directed “Il film uccide”, in which a boy in a wheelchair tries to convince everyone that reality is a film. The film went badly. The short went well: it was selected by several Italian festivals and won the Video Voyager Prize.
In 2018 his song “L’infinito”, produced by Nembo Kyd, was presented at the International Poetry Festival by the poet Davide Rondoni for the bicentenary of Leopardi. “L’infinito” and “Zibaldone Freestyle” entered the Indie Music Like chart. That summer he performed at the Goa-Boa Festival, opening for Caparezza.
In 2019 he wrote and directed ALEXIA, in which a man discovers his domestic android is cheating on him. With another supermarket. That same year he worked as personal assistant to the showrunner Andrea Di Stefano on the Prime Video series “Bang Bang Baby”. In 2021 he worked as a casting assistant for “Blanca” (Lux Vide). Before deciding that fetching coffee wasn’t his forte.
In 2020 he was among the seven finalists for the Bindi Prize, one of Italy’s most respected songwriting awards. The same year he wrote and directed Il paradosso di Zenone, which won several awards I won’t bother listing. And — why not — he worked as a body double for Luke Evans in Murder Mystery, alongside Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler.
In 2021 he directed BPD, which won Best Horror Short Film and Best Sound Design at the OTB Film Awards. He worked closely with an actress diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. He asked her to review the script. She corrected it by hand, line by line. Then she said: “Now it’s worse.” He kept that version.
He also wrote and directed “Mini-Croissant”, which won nothing but in which a man enters a house with two shopping bags and dies shortly after. A typical ending in his films.
The lead actor is the same one who in “Ciao amore, ciao” (2022) wakes up and finds a stranger in the bathroom who claims to be his girlfriend. He says he’s never seen her before. In short, normal cohabitation. The film won Best Comedy at the Monza Film Fest.
In the meantime he released a series of singles and albums that lengthened his discography and shortened the distance between trap and metaphysics.
Since 2023 he has been directing and writing with author Irina Turcanu. Together they have made “Tutti per UNO” (2023), “La riga in mezzo” (2025), “novecentonovantuno” (2026), and the feature film “Revenge Art”, in development. They have produced more shorts in three years than is reasonable. Perhaps they should slow down.
In 2025 he wrote “Crepe”, a song about a broken roof. The song was selected among the finalists in the contest for the 800th anniversary of St. Francis and took him to the CET, the legendary Italian songwriting school founded by the man who wrote some of the most famous Italian pop songs of all time, where they wrote a song with seventy-four hands in under an afternoon. You can imagine the result.
Push-ups and Alien Contact
For three years he ran the marketing department of a medical aids company: during that time he bought two apartments and then retired at the age of 33. Today he alternates music, cinema, and push-ups. He claims that writing a verse and buying index funds are the same thing. Try asking him what he means — I don’t know much about finance myself.
His current artistic research blends ethics, metaphysics, and fine cooking. His influences range from David Hume to the beloved Italian TV host Antonella Clerici. For years he tried to convince everyone he was an alien from the Hyperuranion. Now he’s stopped. Not because it isn’t true. But because being human is already absurd enough. And the ones who believed him were still less strange than he is.