Action Bronson's 'Planet Frog' Is Queens Weirdo Rap at Its Finest
Only a kid from Flushing could announce a rap album by conning his way onto Wheel of Fortune. Back in May, Action Bronson turned up in a mock game-show bit alongside Ryan Seacrest and Vanna White, and — with a little help from a magical dolphin planted in the studio audience — solved the puzzle spelling out Planet Frog. A week later, on May 8, the record was here. If you blinked and missed it this spring, consider this your formal summons: the best weirdo-rap album to come out of Queens this year has been sitting in your feed for months.
For the uninitiated, Bronson — born Ariyan Arslani in Flushing in 1983 — is Queens' most improbable renaissance man. He cooked professionally before a broken leg rerouted him from the kitchen line to the recording booth, and he never fully left the stove behind: his Viceland travel-and-food series Fck, That's Delicious made him a cult figure to people who couldn't name a single bar he'd ever spit. The rap catalog, though, is deep and strange, running from 2011's Dr. Lecter through his 2015 Atlantic debut Mr. Wonderful and on into a run of gloriously unhinged records — Only for Dolphins, Cocodrilo Turbo — that treat the album title like a fever dream and the rhyme scheme like a buffet.
Planet Frog is his first full-length since 2024's Johann Sebastian Bachlava The Doctor, and it is self-released, which suits an artist who has always operated like a one-man borough. Thirteen tracks, and the song titles alone read like a Bronson word-association test: "Lebron Hennessy," "Olympic Vince Carter," "Iguana," "Chutney," "My Blue Heaven." The lead single, "Triceratops," drags Lil Yachty and Houston legend Paul Wall into the swamp with him. Elsewhere the guest list is a who's-who of the rap underground he's championed for a decade — Roc Marciano, his longtime Queens running mate Meyhem Lauren, plus Yung Mehico, Julian Love and Clovis Ochin.
The sound is built by hands Bronson trusts. Harry Fraud and Daringer — two of the most distinctive producers in New York's grimy-luxe underground — split the boards with Human Growth Hormone and Bronson himself. It's the kind of production that makes room for a rapper who might spend one verse on a Vince Carter dunk and the next on a plate of food you can't pronounce, delivered in that famous rasp that has launched a thousand Ghostface comparisons.
Why does it matter to us out here? Because Bronson is what Queens sounds like when it stops apologizing for being weird. He is not a crossover play or a brand-safe export; he is a Flushing guy who built a national career without sanding down a single rough edge, dragging his food obsessions, his outer-borough loyalties and his roster of local collaborators along with him. In a rap year dominated by algorithm-chasing, Planet Frog is defiantly a Queens object — dense, funny, regional, and completely uninterested in your streaming numbers.
Play it loud on the 7 train, ideally somewhere between Willets Point and Main Street, and let the guy who was supposed to be a chef remind you that the strangest voice in the room is usually the one worth hearing. The frog, it turns out, was the whole point.
Sources: Wheel Of Fortune Announces New Action Bronson Album Planet Frog (Stereogum); Action Bronson Announces New Album Planet Frog (V13)