In his memoir, the rapper talks without filters about his marriage to Chiara Ferragni, the divorce, the fight against depression and the illness that changed his life.
«Floating for years on the surface of things. Run, avoid, smile. Everything is fine outside. Inside you don’t know.” With The water is deeper than it appears from aboveFedez chooses to tell the submerged part of his life: the one that for years he hid behind irony, music, public exposure. The title of his third book thus turns into a declaration of intent; what you see from the outside is not enough to understand the depth of what happens inside.
The relationship with Chiara Ferragni
The complexity of the bond with Chiara Ferragni emerges in the book. Marriage, media exposure, divorce become metaphors of a life lived between truth and representation. «I talked to her about my greatest fears. I really got naked with her. She was my confidante. My shoulder” confides the rapper. «The one that doesn’t make you feel alone when everything sucks and you don’t know where to turn your head anymore».
«We were different worlds destined to go back to being distant» continues Fedez in his book. «Our differences emerged like icebergs ready to sink the ship. I’ll give you an example: during my marriage I suffered, by osmosis, my wife’s acquaintances. I had passively accepted that type of thought, to accept the superfancy architect from Milan, the hyper-insert fashion architect and another series of unbearable figures. A beautiful package. But inside, to me, they all smelled rotten.”
On the divorce he declares: «I never really discussed with Chiara why it ended. From his point of view, I’m the bad guy and, on the one hand, I can’t help but agree.”
Betrayal with Angelica Montini
The water is deeper than it appears from above offers the opportunity to clarify the rumors about Fedez’s alleged betrayal, revealed by Fabrizio Corona. «I met Angelica shortly before getting married to Chiara. It was a strong feeling, yes, something that grabs your chest and makes you bleed. But it’s not true that I called her five minutes before putting on the ring.”
«On the one hand», continues the rapper, «there was life like the Mulino Bianco house. Perfection packaged. Chiara was there. But on the other side there was another story. Angelica was there. A story without bright lights, without stages, without the circus around (…) The feeling for Chiara was real. That for Angelica was different. With Chiara I wanted to build. I wanted to dream with her.”
The Pandoro Gate
«I didn’t know anything until they gave Chiara that million fine. I didn’t imagine there would be a mess of that proportion. The next morning, I woke up with Chiara in tears next to me. I started reading the cards, I discovered together with the outside world what really happened. And I got pissed.” This is how Fedez talks about Pandoro Gate, adding that the idea of donating one million euros was his. «It was me who didn’t want that million euros in my house. I told her: find a way, but I don’t want this money here.”
After reiterating his non-involvement in the facts, he does not refrain from commenting on the poison. Regarding his ex-wife’s work, he says he has “some doubts, because he doesn’t really understand much about business.”
Depression and frailty
«The most feared struggle is the one against ourselves, in which we live accompanied by our ghosts, we dance with our weaknesses that we pretend not to see.» Fedez talks about depression, anxiety, instability. He does not seek indulgence, but recognition. «Through writing I understood that the mistakes you don’t face always come back, until you really catch them. Analyzing and putting back in order what seemed chaotic was like starting to breathe underwater for the first time.”
In the book, Fedez also says that he attempted suicide in 2022, following the Balocco case and the numerous controversies by which he had been overwhelmed. «I spent my days on the sofa. I found myself in hospital: you know, when you try to commit suicide all those protocols come into play. The police raid your house. Thanks to a doctor friend, I prevented the real reason for my hospitalization from coming out.”
The fight against cancer
The disease marks a breaking point. “Tumor. Three fucking syllables. They are pronounced in a second, but it is a second that risks completely changing your world.” In the chapter dedicated to the disease, Fedez is keen to specify that having survived did not transform him into a better person. “Being condemned to death, even if spared by events, did not make me a better person, on the contrary, perhaps I came out more angry with life, more paranoid, more closed in on myself than I had ever been before.”
