At Venue on Sunday, April 20

Whether they’d already digested a hearty Easter dinner or developed a case of the munchies after taking in a few bong hits down at the art gallery for 4/20, Vancouver rap fans were hungry for Action Bronson by the time they streamed into Venue on Sunday night. Thankfully, the gourmet chef turned rapper from Flushing, Queens, would celebrate the double holiday by serving up a hedonistic blend of food and drug talk.

Up first, though, was a trio of micro sets from some locals. Opener Ghost released his Have Nots mix tape earlier in the day and showcased smoked-out and synth-spiked tracks like “iGrind” and “Hat Back” on-stage. J West was next, sporting a backpack and gladly yanking a joint from the crowd after delivering a red-eyed hook of “I drink/I smoke/I fuck/I flow.” The Money Hungry crew talked big about their East Van neighbourhood, but left more of an impression via a nod to Rick James’s “Mary Jane” than with their own material.

The 4/20 theme continued as a DJ cued up a ska-punk song from Sublime, to which a black-hoodie-wearing Action Bronson walked out on-stage in near darkness. After a few cheers, the husky and hirsute rapper ripped into his own catalogue with Blue Chips 2 opener, “Silverado”, letting a jaunty piano loop lifted from Elton John’s “Island Girl” back an apt punch line of “Why the fuck would I have a bodyguard/If I look just like the motherfucking bodyguard?”

The ginger gourmand didn’t strut around the stage too much but did bust out a hand-swinging Pee-wee Herman dance during the intro to “Pepe Lopez”, which borrowed the familiar sax-assisted snap of the Champs’ “Tequila”. A foot-long joint then made its way to the front of the stage, leading the rapper to take in a hit or two during the track and leaving him staggered and stumbling for a moment before he attacked the mike on “The Don’s Cheek”. “I’m too high for this bullshit, man,” a foggy Bronsonlino said with a laugh after grinding his palms into his forehead.

The set list was primarily plucked from the recent, Party Supplies–produced Blue Chips 2, with highlights including an a cappella verse from “It Concerns Me” that had the epicurean MC miming the act of catching an octopus so he could “grill it, hit it with olive oil, then kiss my fingers”. Elsewhere, Bronson peppered the performance with the wrestling-themed “The Rockers” from his SAAAB Stories EP with beatsmith Harry Fraud and stood at centre stage with his hood flipped up and a fist raised in the air for “The Symbol”, a dirt-under-the-nails-grimy, soul-music-sampling track from the Alchemist-helmed Rare Chandeliers.

Though low-energy on the whole, the show hit a serious lull when Action Bronson lazily let loose an off-key cover of Billy Joel’s “Moving Out”. He managed to bring things back around, though, after busting out his “Contemporary Man”, a mind-bender wrapping his words around a series of ’80s-vintage singles. “Let me take you on a trip through the mind of an ’80s baby,” he said before rhyming about Beau Brummel, Big Bird, anal sex, and more over samples of Peter Gabriel, John Mellencamp, and Phil Collins.

The rapper later used the unlikely backdrop of Tracy Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason” for his “Amadu Diablo”. Throughout the song, he rolled out gnarly lines about “coke shits”, turkey sandwiches, drug deals, and fidelity before calling himself the bee’s knees and dropping the mike. The crowd called out for Bronson as he walked off the stage to let the blues-pop song play in full. There was no encore, or rather, the rapper didn’t come back for seconds.