If a sign of a genuine New Yorker is running occupational errands throughout the city, then consider Action Bronson to be Uncut Gems’ Howard Ratner. He’s always on the move. When we were first slated to meet up for this interview, I made the mistake of showing up 30 minutes late, and Bronson was firm with me. “Do me a favor next time, don’t be late,” he said. “I got a lot of meetings. I’m always on the go.” New Yorker to New Yorker, I had to take my lumps and respect his hustle.
When we meet again, it’s release day for Coccodrillo Turbo, his best project in years. We aren’t hanging at the studio today, though. That would be too straightforward for a guy with as many interests and ventures as Bronson. Fragrances, food, and acting aren’t just side notes to a veteran rap career, they’re expansive aspects of a man who understands the wonders of life. When people say someone is more than just a rapper, it often functions as a backhanded compliment, as if a rapper is not a profound enough career to stand out on its own. However, with Bronson, it is not only an adept statement, it gets to the core of his persona, and even his music. He’s a cook, and one of the most public representatives of New York’s effervescent food culture. He knows where the best Dim Sum spots in Flushing are, as well as the Italian spot where New York don Carmine Lupertazzi of The Sopranos would pragmatically hold sit-downs with the glorified New Jersey crew.
Because of his Albanian and Jewish heritage (the Queens-raised artist calls himself a “mutt”) he knows the city’s epicurean cuisine and understands both “Inshallah” and being “wild since the Rabbi snipped it.” Bronson is just as comfortable in Flushing, Queens as he is at a fashion show promoting his fragrance, and he’s someone who can remember Yankee Stadium shaking when Joe Girardi hit his game-clinching triple in Game 6 of the 1996 World Series. Watching Bronson go to multiple restaurants in search of the finest cuisines made by the most ingenious chefs in the city, I see a man who was born for this. He speaks their language; the food connoisseur who raps, and the rapper who knows the most exotic foods. It’s as if Anthony Bourdain moonlighted as a bouncer at the strip club Starlets.
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After a steady rise to stardom over the years, thanks to a series of successful albums and a hit food show, Fuck, That’s Delicious, Bronson is back with Cocodrillo Turbo, an experimental and psychedelic rap album. “I love to get experimental,” he tells me. “I feel like I’m known for that. One of my attributes is beat selection and off-kilter rhythms, and being able to flow and fucking finesse anything to make it sound crazy.” Turbo is a hallucinatory and unconventionally sampled rap record that finds Bronson the closest to his 2011-2012 run we’ve heard in years. On “Jaws,” he’s name-dropping maniac Sopranos characters like Richie Aprile and making claims of coked-up nights with Michael Irvin. On “Jaguar,” he warns not to look at his eye like “a gypsy selling roses” and compares his performance on wax to “Aaron Donald at the combine.” Early in his career, Bronson was a guy who talked sports with the Muslim cabby who just moved to New York and couldn’t stop talking about Carmelo Anthony. Now, he’s back with similarly off-kilter and intricate details of New York culture and sports, but from the perspective of a regal gentleman who has Yankees southpaw hurler CC Sabathia on speed dial (“CC is a beast,” he tells me. “Hardest working person I know.”)
The thing about Bronson is that all the dirtbag lyrics and soul loops can’t overshadow his intensity. On “Storm of the Century,” he’s reflective like Randy “Ran Man” from The Wrestler going in for one last dance in the ring: “I’ve done things only the Devil knows/ Got bicep tendonitis from revving the boat/ And all this ancient knowledge, reverend, that’s from heavens ago.” On this record, being Action Bronson is about more than just the VICE shows and the cultural talks; it’s about being a raw man who has come a long way from the memories of a young Ariyan Arslani who lived in a small Flushing apartment with his foreign-language speaking parents. I ask him about his humble beginnings and how it feels to have used his knowledge of cuisine culture in his artistry, and he replies, “It’s hard to talk about myself for real. Like all these people that you know, when you rap, you’re supposed to know what you’re talking about. I feel that in my heart. But it’s hard to fucking come out and be boastful, because I’m such a fucking humble man. I come from such humble beginnings. And I’m from a family that don’t even think like that.”
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Our first stop on Bronson’s restaurant tour, while filming a new episode of Fuck, That’s Delicious, is Frenchette, a French restaurant in the West Village. The head chef, who Bronson is familiar with, takes us down to where he keeps the chicken. “You’re getting the exclusive stuff,” Bronson tells me, before I’m served a bread and egg dip dish. Armed with a camera crew, Bronson goes to Shuko in the East Village next, where the chef is making sushi with squid. He allows me to try it, and my knees buckle from the juicy, rich taste, before he makes fun of me for my virginal food tasting experience. “You see his face?” he says. “He loved that shit.” (He’s right. It’s the best sushi I’ve ever tasted.)
On top of his food show, Bronson also appeared in Martin Scorsese’s 2019 crime picture The Irishman. His cameo at the end of the movie was memorable, and it was amusing to see Bronson, a New York cat, appear in a film with Robert De Niro, a legend and Big Willie in New York culture. He says the process was easy. “It wasn’t like the Pete Davidson movie, where I was waiting for hours,” he explains, mentioning his role in 2020’s The King of Staten Island. “They had me in and out of there. Classy gentlemen. And Bob De Niro was like, ‘Kid, you’re fucking up the lines out there.’ I was nervous, and then he goes, ‘Nah, I’m joking, you’re doing good.’ Marty, at one point, before the scene, said, ‘Action, Action!’ And then laughed. It was a fun experience.” He also had opportunities to do Good Time and Euphoria, and even auditioned for Uncut Gems. (“They wanted me to be the guy next to the main goon, the Russian,” he says. “But I bombed at the audition, bro.”) The Euphoria role ultimately wasn’t the right fit: “They wanted me to play a drug dealer that was getting with the high school girls. Action Bronson ain’t doing that, bro.”
Watching Bronson throughout the day, I’m impressed with how curious he is. He knows he carries a weight of respect around him, but he also gives that back, and despite his success, he never feels unapproachable. As a New Yorker, he’s able to talk to anyone, and food is his universal language. When he described himself as a “gentleman,” he wasn’t being facetious. At Don Peppe’s in Queens, a place where the Matrie’D tells me to take my Yankee cap off, he has an extensive lunch with patrons, eating clams and exchanging stories. When you spend enough time around Bronson, he comes across as the kind of New Yorker that can tell you what it was like when Gotti killed Castellano outside Sparks Steak House. “I’ve been here for ten years,” he says. “I’ll always be here, too.”
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Action Bronson turned down a role on ‘Euphoria,’ and included an incorrect quote about him potentially working with Ghostface Killah.
