Only Action Bronson

Almost seven years ago, the Queens rapper Action Bronson emerged from the underground like a neighborhood goofball. If you watch the video for an early single like “Shiraz,” from 2011, Bronson’s world is hyperlocal: in a hooded trench coat and athletic shorts, he surveys olive tubs and orders sheets of prosciutto from a Bronx corner store. Back then, his flamboyance seemed grinning and poised, but out of place and maybe a bit schticky as a result. Bronson’s sideshow character may have been bombastic, but his rapping was always legitimately prodigious, crass as it was witty, and just downright fun.

Corey Stevens is an American blues guitarist from Centralia, Illinois. Stevens began playing guitar at age 11 and moved to Los Angeles after graduating from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale to pursue a career in the music business. Stevens worked as a school teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District for ten years before signing a recording contract with the independent label, Eureka Records. He released his debut album in 1995, garnering comparisons to Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton, and scored a rock radio hit with the single, "Blue Drops of Rain." "One More Time" from his 1997 follow up, Road To Zen, was his highest charting single. It reached the top ten in Radio & Records and #22 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. Collection includes: Blue Drops of Rain (1995); The Road To Zen (1997); Albertville (2007); The Dreaming Man (2010).