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by Chris Bryson<\/b><\/p>\n
Cadence Weapon is an artist in flux. The ex-Pitchfork writer, post-poet laureate, chameleonic rapper has always weighed on the side of experimentalism, and his most recent self-titled LP,\u00a0<\/span>Cadence Weapon,\u00a0<\/span><\/i>marks his rebirth. <\/span><\/p>\n From an early age Roland \u201cRollie\u201d Pemberton, a.k.a. Cadence Weapon, has had an innate drive towards the artistic world. Pemberton grew up in Edmonton where his father, Teddy Pemberton, a hip hop DJ on campus-based community radio station CJSR-FM, was a pioneering force for the genre. Growing up around an abundance of music gave Pemberton an encyclopedic knowledge of it, and his experiences as Edmonton poet laureate, living in Montreal and currently Toronto, along with everything else along the way, has helped make him the versatile artist he is today.<\/span><\/p>\n Cadence Weapon albums have always pushed boundaries with unexpected experimental elements. \u201cThat\u2019s just kind of the way I see art, basically I\u2019m always looking for that next thing. It\u2019s been that way since I was younger. It just comes naturally to me\u201d says Pemberton. \u201cI think it gets tiresome when people just do the same thing over and over and over again. You\u2019ve got to give people something to get excited about. That\u2019s the thing when you listen to a Cadence Weapon album, at the very least you won\u2019t be bored. You might not be able to appreciate everything I\u2019m doing, but you know that it\u2019s going to be something that you haven\u2019t quite heard before.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was first making music in Edmonton I felt very isolated, like I was making music, you know I was producing all this stuff in my bedroom, I was making all this weird music and it was totally from my mind to the listener and there was kind of no other filter really for the music,\u201d explains Pemberton. \u201cWhereas when I moved to Montreal it became so community oriented and I started warming up to getting outside producers and doing things like that and just collaborating and being a part of a music community in a different way and then since I\u2019ve been in Toronto it\u2019s really been even further into the collaborative aspect and it\u2019s also just made me more focused on the lyrical side of my music.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n They\u2019d \u201cbe making the beat and I\u2019d be like in the background figuring out flows for it. And that was how we\u2019d make some of these songs,\u201d says Pemberton. \u201cIt\u2019s catered directly to me, the music is made for me, rather than just getting a beat that was made for whoever.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n The beats range as stylistically influenced by UK grime and Afrobeat, house and trap music, and producers who aim to crack formed norms into an electro-funkified fusion that\u2019s unmistakably Cadence Weapon.<\/span><\/p>\n Pemberton\u2019s lyrical concepts have also broadened along with his experiences of the world. \u201cAll the new stuff I\u2019m doing is more like sympathetic and empathetic of other people and other perspectives and me trying to explore how I feel through the experiences of others,\u201d says Pemberton. \u201cIt\u2019s a broader style of music in a way. I feel like it is definitely made with an audience in mind that\u2019s a big difference for me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n A part of the reason for creating the most recent album in the way that he did was to develop a certain energy with the songs. \u201cWith rap music where you\u2019re using all these static beats that maybe you made yourself or somebody else made but you didn\u2019t even meet them in person, you can feel that lack of energy,\u201d says Pemberton. \u201cA lot of my favourite classic albums you think about the process of how they were made, there were people in the room, people bouncing ideas off of each other and that was the result of that, you know, it was the result of shared energy. That energy is beamed off to thousands of people. That\u2019s kind of the excitement about music. Because you could tap into a universal feeling with just a handful of people that ends up influencing or inspiring maybe even the entire world. It\u2019s pretty cool.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n With whatever he\u2019s working on, Pemberton is always pushing himself in new directions. \u201cI always try to do something different for every album I put out. Right now I think I\u2019m interested in making things that are more populist, that lots of people can really appreciate. I feel like I\u2019ve proven a lot as a creative artist, but I really want to see what I can do more in the pop arena. So I think part of what I\u2019m trying to do is get into more songwriting for other people. Get into writing songs that are more designed for a mainstream audience, but while still maintaining my integrity. I definitely feel like the next thing for me is just trying to work on songs that are broader in that way. Because I feel like as an artist you\u2019ve got to try and do things that don\u2019t come easily to you. I feel like it\u2019s very easy for me to make freaky weird music, but it isn\u2019t easy for me to make music that is like universal or pop oriented or anything like that. So I\u2019m trying to push myself out of my comfort zone by doing different things.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Pemberton plans to continue working with collaborators and says his next album is well in the works and being produced by only one person. \u201cI would say we\u2019re 75% done,\u201d says Pemberton. \u201cIf I had it my way I\u2019d be able to put it out later this year, that\u2019s the vision I have.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n When talking about creating things with an intended permanence, in an age that can be so rewarding to fleeting and passing trends, Pemberton says \u201cI thin<\/span>k it\u2019s like rather than worrying about whether what you\u2019re doing is substantial or not, it\u2019s like try and make this the best thing you can in whatever way you want to. That\u2019s kind of what I\u2019m trying to do. You might see the next album I put out every song is two minutes long but it\u2019s like punk music, electro punk music. That could be the next direction.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Cadence Weapon will be at the Good Will on June 20<\/span><\/i>th<\/span><\/i> for the 2018 TD Winnipeg International Jazz Festival.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Chris Bryson Cadence Weapon is an artist in flux. The ex-Pitchfork writer, post-poet laureate, chameleonic rapper has always weighed on the side of experimentalism, and his most recent self-titled LP,\u00a0Cadence Weapon,\u00a0marks his rebirth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1247,329,434,472,1209],"class_list":["post-11089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-cadence-weapon","tag-experimental","tag-hip-hop","tag-jazz-fest","tag-rap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11089"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11091,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11089\/revisions\/11091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}