Bronson fucks up no fewer than three times on "9-24-11", but keeps recording. It has the loose off-the-cuff spontaneity that lends to its playful vibe. The album's structured structureless-ness plays to Bronson's strengths. There is no winning.īlue Chips works so well because it's as tailor-made to Bronson as the leather Jodeci suit he invokes. Then again, A$AP Rocky got shit for not sounding enough like New York. To futurists, it might sound too traditionally New York. Originally conceived as a 1980s throwback (and taking its name from a 1990s Nick Nolte college basketball film), producer Party Supplies rifles through familiar beat breaks and Cyrus Neville, the Flamingos, and Frank Zappa samples. You could also cavil that the project is too retro-minded. The audio fidelity is about what you'd expect it would be when samples were lifted straight off of YouTube after searching stoned for phrases like "100 Acre Burgundy Carpet". It's fair to say that Bronson's influences could be synthesized more. Should you be searching for them, there are flaws to be found on Blue Chips. It is what a Weegee photograph would look like now. Bronson's New York is one of loud arguments keeping entire apartments awake, exotic smells seeping out into hallways, thick accents and thin walls, the tug-of-war between assimilation and the preservation of old world roots. The most harrowing cut might be "Thug Love Story 2012", where Bronson spins a tale of "young love/ But we thought it was eternity/ Raw sex/Never thought about paternity." It ends up with diapers being flung and assault and battery charges being beat. He raps from all three perspectives, taking special glee in his absurd portrait of Silk, aka Montel (one "L"), a pinky-ringed, Henny-swilling pimp, sporting lizard-skin boots and green suits, with "eight bitches look like they straight from the Alaskan blizzard." There have been a million songs that cover similar terrain, but Bronson boasts his own brand of gonzo humor, subtle pathos, and specificity. Take "Hookers at the Point", a triptych of pimp, ho, and john, interwoven with samples from the 2002 documentary of the same title.
Sculptures of Bronson's body are out in Nagano, he smuggles cheese in baby bags, sometimes his only friends are drugs and cannoli. Rather than mimic Ghostface's trademark vocal exaggerations, Blue Chips-era Bronson mines from the same concepts that made Ghost great: bodega slang, sleazy narratives, childhood flashbacks, and bizarre allusions. What's weird is that he did this by becoming even more like Ghostface Killah, going so far as to sample "Apollo Kids" on "Tapas". He went from promising character whose music always seemed on the brink of making you turn it off in favor of Supreme Clientele, to one of the most hilarious and creative writers in rap. But at some point over the last six months, Bronson made the leap. Admittedly, that's not entirely different from what he does now. There was promise but the only thing that made truly set him apart from the crowded field of New York revivalists was his ability to articulate the differences between Canadian bacon and prosciutto. bon appétit.īut when the 27-year old of Albanian ancestry uploaded "Shiraz" and "Imported Goods" to YouTube two years ago, the Flushing native was little more than a Ghostface manqué, a chubby, Knicks Jersey-sporting, blunt smoking chef, spitting slang over formalist soul loops and break beats. Sautee the intricate rat-a-tat patterns of Kool G Rap, the stoned perversion of the Beatnuts, and the super-fly vivid laser eye-guide specifics of Ghostface and. He blends that with epicurean inclinations- a dirty sex and esoteric food obsession suggestive of Henry Miller scripting episodes of No Reservations for Anthony Bourdain. 5'7", 260, ginger-bearded, bowling ball-built, Bronson has the swaggering confidence of the original overweight lover, Heavy D. Bronson is Homer Simpson staring into the mirror and seeing a chiseled Adonis. He speaks Polish out in London, with a face just like a young John F. But Bronson doesn't ask for his French to be pardoned.
The Ghostface similarity is the arrière-pensée precluding people from joining the Bronsolino bandwagon.