Album Review: Well-Done by Statik Selektah

Some small, reflexive impatience in me longed to dismiss Action Bronson's existence the second I heard his sales pitch: white guy from Queens, sounds exactly like Ghostface Killah, raps over soul loops and has a thing for extravagant food metaphors because he's also a chef. I mean, come on. It felt so on-the-nose it hardly needed to exist, like an abandoned Adult Swim pilot in rapper form.

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With references to duck prosciutto, smoked brisket, and carpaccio, former chef-turned-MC Action Bronson's first collaborative effort, Well-Done, is certainly the most culinary-themed rap record you'll hear this year. But backed by East Coast hip-hop DJ Statik Selektah's trademark horn stabs, chopped-up vocal samples, and laid-back beats, the follow-up to acclaimed debut Dr. Lecter shows that there's more to the Albanian New Yorker than just a plate of food metaphors.

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Lawrence-born producer Statik Selektah has crafted tracks for nearly every credible East Coast lyricist over the past several years, and his sample-based modern boom-bap beats find a natural partner in Queens rapper Action Bronson’s bawdy charisma. Delivered in breathless slang-laced verses, Bronson paints darkly funny pictures of street-level New York life. On “Cocoa Butter,’’ backed by Statik’s horns and crisp snares, he declares himself “the Leslie Nielsen of the weed and the word.

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On “Respect The Mustache,” the table-setting opener from Queens rapper Action Bronson’s full-length collaboration with Boston producer Statik Selektah, Well Done, Bronson offers a boastful but telling profile of himself: “I’m straight raw like carpaccio/I’m just a heartthrob that’s straight off the screen just like DiCaprio. ” It’s a ripe breakdown of the winning formula that has catapulted the former gourmet chef from relative anonymity to Internet rap notoriety in only a year’s time—he’s a pure lyricist with a raw, no-frills approach to rapping (in an age where lyrics often take a backseat to novelty), and he packs a XXL charm and larger-than-life personality that, reminiscent of rappers like Notorious B. I.

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Just eight months after dropping his critically acclaimed debut, Dr. Lecter, hip-hop’s second favorite culinary artist, Action Bronson, is back in the kitchen, and this time he has sous-chef Statik Selektah on grill duties, cooking up some heaters. The recipe is simple: dope rhymes over funky beats. No more, no less.

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Jessica Reedy It would be unfair to listen to “From the Heart” (Light/eOne), the debut album by Jessica Reedy — a runner-up on the BET gospel music reality competition “Sunday Best” — without hearing the praise. But where so much of modern gospel declares its faithfulness through volume ….

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