Track of the Week: Action Bronson — "9-24-11" - RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture

Last Monday, Action Bronson premiered his new project with Queens producer Parties Supplies, entitled Blue Chips. We’re still waiting to hear back whether Peter Luger Jr., what Action calls himself on Twitter, did indeed design the cover art for the mixtape. Action designed the cover art for Well Done, and Blue Chips features a similar vein of pastiche and collage, except this time it recalls the EC comic artwork of the 50s. [Update: Dust La Rock designed the cover art.]

We’re going to go ahead and crown his record “9-24-11”, off Blue Chips, the RESPECT. Online Track of the Week. “9-24-11” features a chopped up sample of Dean Martin’s “Return To Me” and has Action rapping about the usual suspects: women, food, a sublime combination of the two and “a fiend getting his cock sucked.”

Action begins “9-24-11” with a profoundly visual first line, “Sign my name with the feather, tap dance under the fool moon,” after informing us that he has been “smoking fucking Thanksgiving turkey bags, man.” In case you weren’t aware, cooking a Thanksgiving turkey in an oven bag makes the bird extra moist, and you can make gravy out of the juices. Action goes on to rap about how he can “smuggle cheeses in a baby bag, and then… serve it at a private tasting.” Then he loses his train of thought and bumbles into the confession, “Fucked my last word up but I don’t give a shit, man.”

That intermission, spurred by Action’s loss of words, occurs at 1:18, and provides a very accurate representation of Action’s live performance. When he performed in Toronto in the fall, part of the Droppin‘ Knowledge initiative, he was constantly stopping his raps, switching raps, bouncing back and forth between raps, weaving raps, so this creative/haphazard departure mid-song is of no surprise.

At 1:41 Action goes back in on the beat, spitting a rather memorable anecdote about a hooker who is about to be married: “Up in an alley with a fiend getting his cocked sucked, and she wearing a wedding dress, a special day, she says she finally met a man who takes her breath away, well naturally I’m jealous because I’m lonely, at times my only friends in life are drugs and a cannoli.” Although the section begins by lambasting (sort of) a chick, it ends by subtly commenting on the curse of most artists. They feed off pain.

Towards the end of the track, around 2:44, Action breaks off into another intermission, this time tapping the street knowledge of his brother ‘Big Body something or another’, who shouts out his nonna as well as their home country of Albania. “We out here, no muthafuckin shoes on, muthafuckers pissing in the streets,” spits Big Body, depicting a backside of Queens you got to live to know, apparently.

To conclude the song, Action waits for the drop at 3:32 and reels off a couple punchlines that are bound to impress on our mental inscriptions for weeks to come. Action reminds us that in “27 years [he’s] never met an honest bitch,” and then spirals into some clever wordplay and alliteration about “basil on the boat” and “hookers on the half shell”. When the song is finished you almost wish Action would keep going – clearly he could – but then you remember it probably wouldn’t be as good if he did. After all, good business says you should leave the consumer fiending for more.

Leading up to his first traditional studio album, which surely has to be coming, Action has us itching our beards in anticipation.