Action Bronson
The bawdy Queens rapper talks about being an equal-opportunity shit talker, why penmanship means a lot to him, and what to expect from his major-label debut.
http://pitchfork.com/features/update/9585-action-bronson/
"I’m up at 6, but I try to hold out until at least 8:45, 9 o’clock," says Action Bronson, discussing his routine for getting high while scraping marijuana wax out of a tinfoil pouch, a motion he repeats a few more times throughout our interview. “It's so habitual, man. It's just like: wake up, go there, light it. Just keep it moving. I feel nothing, kind of. You smoke so goddamn much you're asleep by 8 o'clock at night.”
Bronson and I are sitting in the Manhattan office of Goliath Artist Management—the firm run by longtime Eminem manager Paul Rosenberg—which added the rapper to its roster a few years ago. The place is undergoing renovations. Discarded mementos of the past fill up the lounge, most notably an oil painting of Dr. Dre, Eminem, and 50 Cent that’s probably only 10 years old but feels like an ancient relic. The present is represented by an Etsy-caliber painting of fellow Goliath artist Danny Brown and, of course, Bronson, who’s laid up in a recliner, his specialized wax bong and a butane lighter at arms length on a nearby coffee table.
The Queens native, born Ariyan Arslani, took up rapping in 2011 while saddled at his mother’s house after suffering a leg injury in the kitchen where he was working as a chef, and he’s since crafted this narrative into an odd sort of media empire. To a certain Internet-bred rap audience, he’s ubiquitous: Along with his several trash-talking, boom-bapping mixtapes, he’s got a VICE food series called “Fuck, That’s Delicious”, and his shameless crassness always seems to be getting him involved with some online scandal about racist Instagram comments, distasteful album covers, or Twitter feuds regarding DMs with Azealia Banks. In modern parlance, he’s a content machine, forever ready with a punchline.
Action Bronson and Danny Brown: "Bad News" (produced by The Alchemist) (via SoundCloud)
But while he may merely come off like an extremely NSFW stoner, the father of two is admirably hard-working—all those globe-trotting YouTube videos don't make themselves—and slyly ambitious, too. He dreams of one day combining his love of cooking and music into a business involving a food truck that doubles as a stage. “Pull up, do a show, sell shit,” he explains. “I'd be cooking, but I'd have a staff, and while I'm rapping, they could cook. It's a fucking mobile gold mine.”
Until then, there’s the matter of his forthcoming major-label debut, Mr. Wonderful, due out March 24. The album gives his trademark Golden-Era-NYC-meets-fantastical-fan-fiction style a bit of polish in an attempt to reach beyond his current web-crazed fanbase. It’s also his most musical and melodic project, featuring guests including Chance the Rapper, and production from longtime co-conspirator Party Supplies, as well as Alchemist, Noah "40" Shebib, 88 Keys, and even current chart-topper Mark Ronson, who wrote a letter to Billy Joel to help clear a sample of the pop legend’s 1978 track “Zanzibar” for a song called “Brand New Car”. “[Billy Joel] was feeling it,” says Bronson, “so we were like, ‘Fuck it, let’s use it.’”
"Not all women are perfect. It's a fact of life. Nobody's perfect.
A woman or man could be a piece of fucking shit."
Pitchfork: If someone is coming to your music for the first time, how do you expect them to approach it? There’s lots of far-out elements that blur the line between reality and fantasy, and some of your lyrics disparage women.
Action Bronson: Let me clarify: I don't talk about women in a crazier manner than any other rapper. Let's take Billy Joel—he just talked about realism. Like, not all women are perfect. It's a fact of life. Nobody's perfect. A woman or man could be a piece of fucking shit. At the end of the day, this is equal play. I deal with disparaging men as much as I deal with disparaging women. And I don't glorify disparaging women.
I grew up fat, OK? I'm a fat fuck. I had a lot of fantasies about women that I couldn't achieve—that’s the type of repressed mindframe I grew up with. I write about it in such an out-of-this-world way that it becomes comical; it's more comedy to me than it is trying to put anybody down. Because I'm not that type of person. I don't put people down. I build people up. That's how I always wanna be looked at. Sometimes I don't have the best taste with words, but sometimes it's needed to get my point across. I don't like things being too real because that’s boring, and it's going to be depressing. It's all about getting a rise, like, "Oh fuck, I can't believe he just said that, you kidding?" It ain't about making people feel bad or being distasteful with women. That's just not me.
I feel like I've been dealt a little bit of a bad hand with that type of shit just for that early Instagram picture [which he captioned: “Close up of Drunk Mexican Tranny after Bes poured a Bottle of water on its head”], which was just me writing something stupid. It didn't really depict what was actually going on. And just growing up in the type of situations I grew up in, in Queens, being on the streets all the time, you see crazy things, and it's not always gonna be glamorous. I have to depict that as well.
Pitchfork: As a rapper, are you totally spontaneous or more of a writer?
AB: I love writing: legal pads, those fucking binder books, spiral notebooks. I like the actual act of writing. I bet a lot of kids’ penmanship is shit these days, because everyone's [mimes typing]. Penmanship means a lot to me. I don't have cursive penmanship, though. I've created my own penmanship. It's very clear. Everyone can read it. I write things down all day long.
Pitchfork: Do you need to get high to write?
AB: My life consists of smoking constantly, so it's not like I need to smoke to do this. I'm already in the zone. It's not the drugs, though they’re definitely a heightener—it makes all your senses go off. You're tingling. For real. There's something about smoking something and listening to some crazy beat that does something to me, and that translates onto the track. I'm not the type of guy to go so deep with the concept songs, but there's deep thought in everything. Maybe it's not just a repetitive hook telling you what the song is about—you have to use your brain a little bit.
Pitchfork: Your kids are 8 and 10, do they listen to your music?
AB: My son doesn't like the curses, but my daughter knows every fucking word. She watches all the interviews. It's a little bit much.
Pitchfork: What about your mom?
AB: My mom is a fucking hippie; she’s my fucking everything. That's my rock. I was a terrible child; when kids grow up in a house with just their mother, they’re going to yell at her.
Pitchfork: What does she think of your music?
AB: She loves every second.
