Anyone concerned that major-league hip-hop is currently lacking in former chefs who garnish their raps with gourmet food references can now rest easy. One of the more eccentric figures to emerge in recent years, Action Bronson is single-handedly filling that void.
The New York rapper went top 10 in the US this year with his second album, Mr Wonderful, whose unique appeal is encapsulated here by opening track Brand New Car. Looking like a hip-hop Grizzly Adams, the extravagantly bearded 300lb Bronson rhymes over Zanzibar, a 1978 Billy Joel cheesefest, taking care to praise “seasonal vegetables lookin’ exceptional”.
It sets the tone for an evening where his standard-issue rap braggadocio is undercut with self-mocking humour. On the woozily warped Actin’ Crazy, Bronson claims to be such a trend-setting sex symbol that “now motherfuckers all wanna be chubby”. Falconry finds him confessing that he fails to follow his Muslim faith simply because he loves pork too much.
Unlike Eminem, the last great white rapper to emerge from the US, Bronson shows no sign of being driven by inchoate rage: he is in this for a laugh. This flippancy leads to a truly bizarre mid-set interlude when he lumbers around stage to a soundtrack of Rod Stewart’s Young Turks and Phil Collins’s Easy Lover, lobbing Rice Krispies and Doritos into the crowd.
Accompanied only by a DJ, he recovers some poise for Baby Blue, a lovelorn lament at being exploited and cuckolded, but even this supposed sadness has a pantomime quality, and by the encore he is mugging away to Right Said Fred’s I’m Too Sexy like the missing link between the Wu-Tang Clan and Weird Al Yankovic. Which is exactly what Action Bronson is.
- At the Institute, Birmingham, on 18 September. Tickets: 0844 844 0444. Then touring.
