Action Bronson’s major-label debut, 2015’s Mr.
Wonderful, didn’t make him a rap superstar, but he became fairly famous anyway thanks to his foul-mouthed Viceland food travelogue F*ck That’s
Delicious. Without the need for a hit record to keep his pockets satiated,
Bronson can go back to the freewheeling model of the Blue Chips mixtapes
that helped his initial rise: off-kilter punchlines, giddy dirtbaggery and
beats chopped from kitschy, quirky samples. Here, producers like Party Supplies
(who did the last two Blue Chips) and Harry Fraud make funky work out of
Austrian jazz-rock, Nigerian highlife, Thai funk and Italian lounge-groove
records. Most hilarious is an Alchemist production made to sound like Bronson
is rapping to the hold music from a taxi service. Working with a major label
that clears samples is probably why Bronson and crew have opted out of some of
the more audacious selections (Blue Chips 2 had him spitting over
Elton John, Peter Gabriel and “Tequila”), but a banquet of loop-based
production still hits those old-school notes even without the postmodern
twist. For his part, Bronson is still acrobatic with a bar (“Now I’m
nestled in the Tesla eatin pretzels”) and still dabbles in the occasional sports
reference (“Two pumps from the inhaler got me feeling like Lawrence Taylor”).
