Almost seven years ago, the Queens rapper Action Bronson emerged from the underground like a neighborhood goofball. If you watch the video for an early single like “Shiraz,” from 2011, Bronson’s world is hyperlocal: in a hooded trench coat and athletic shorts, he surveys olive tubs and orders sheets of prosciutto from a Bronx corner store. Back then, his flamboyance seemed grinning and poised, but out of place and maybe a bit schticky as a result. Bronson’s sideshow character may have been bombastic, but his rapping was always legitimately prodigious, crass as it was witty, and just downright fun.
Now, Bronson has become a caricature of his former self. He’s a walking TV show—he has had two on the Viceland network—and all of the lights and cameras have overfed his exuberance. Perpetually and overly stoned, he swan dives off yachts and shares street food with Mario Batali in Rome. These are the type of things he used to rap about as mythical put-ons, but now they’re captured on screen before they land in a verse. Bronson and his hedonism have grown larger than life, and his music has taken a backseat to his celebrity foodie status. On his last album, 2015’s Mr. Wonderful, Bronson attempted to reconcile this gap by bringing his celebrity into the booth, amplifying the ridiculousness of his music with a record that tried to do too much: the tracks-long conceptual story arc bogged down the middle; the open-ended rambles let it float around. His new album, Blue Chips 7000, is just his second as a major label artist. And like many rappers before him who have turned a mixtape run into stardom, Bronson has lowered the stakes by returning to his roots.
Blue Chips 7000 is the third installment in a vintage Bronson mixtape series (all bearing the Blue Chips name), and it’s the first to ditch Party Supplies, a frenetic, campy Brooklyn producer, as the sole man behind the boards. Still, the retail album calcifies the formula the pair instigated with the mixtapes—bare raps over funky, almost kooky rare-groove loops—and Bronson remains surrounded by the producers that know him best. Accordingly, the beats on Blue Chips 7000 save its star from doing too much. “Let It Rain” jumps around like a twitching 1970s porn soundtrack before a swampy sax solo steals the show. “TANK” is the type of glitzy 1980s pop rock that Bronson has obsessed over for years. All of the beats are off-kilter, but none of them sound alike.
As much as he is a prolific emcee, Bronson is a talker. And while there are short interludes and song intros littered throughout the latest Blue Chips, once a beat kicks on, Bronson is forced to rap. On “La Luna,” he barks out orders that he needs a Towncar. “Yo, what beat is that? Ooh that shit is funky,” he wonders excitedly about the car company’s jazz-fusion hold muzak, before launching into an off-the-cuff verse over the Alchemist’s organ-laced sample flip. It’s an endearing snapshot of a guy who sometimes seems past rapping but keeps doing it because he enjoys it so much.
Blue Chips 7000 is full of unadorned samples and short on features. The reggae singer Jah Tiger toasts a slinky, quaint hook over a sunny Knxwledge loop that seems to decay back onto itself. Rick Ross pops up on the Harry Fraud produced “9-24-7000,” a shimmering and less peculiar beat than the rest to accommodate his lounging. For all the weird brags Bronson whips up, none are as casually haughty as Ross’ kicker. “I’m the label owner/I’m the only one can shelf me,” he raps as a guest on an album that has been tormentingly delayed by the label.
The gravel in Bronson’s vocals distracts from just how high-pitched and nasally it is. “Daddy back/With his long white Cadillac/Now it’s time take a nappy nap,” he wheezes, sneering on the smooth organ of “Bonzai.” There’s a sheer glee in Bronson’s voice that is sometimes soured by the things he is actually saying. He’s flirted with disgusting, inappropriate lyricism throughout his career; here, Bronson has dropped the shock value but maintained the dopey swaggering.
Sometimes it sounds like Bronson is reading deliriously from a sheet of randomly generated phrases. “The full moon make me loco/Like I sniffed a whole baseline of cocoa,” he spits on “The Choreographer,” as if his only conceit was rapping something that nobody before him had thought to. He’s still fabling over beats, too, and at one point he swears, “I might hang off the side of the mountain to trim a bonsai/Perfect 10 on the swan dive.” Then again, Bronson is a joyously wacky guy, and his ridiculous non sequiturs mesh especially well with the eccentric boogie-funk of the Westside Gunn producer Daringer’s sample flip.
Bronson has already released a few dozen songs like the one’s you’ll hear on Blue Chips 7000. But these new tracks are probably the strongest in his catalog—full of cheeky, relentless verses to match the energetic funk he’s best accompanied by—and the repetition feels strategic. For years now, Bronson has traveled the world living out his raps and overloading on new experiences. He’d probably be the first to tell you there’s comfort in ordering the same thing twice.
