Q&A: Rollie Pemberton AKA Cadence Weapon
Happy accidents, hip-hop bling and Bob Dylan -- Cadence Weapon tells John Meagher how it is. Just don't mention music critics' karma
ON A ROLLIE: Cadence Weapon's second album is more pop accessible
- Your new album is called Afterparty Babies. Explain please. .
My dad used to call me an after-party baby. He would tell all his friends that I was an accident. I grew up with this idea and play around with it in the album -- I love the idea of happy accidents. My mom heard it, and she's like: "You weren't an accident -- you were planned." Maybe both accounts are correct
- This album is quite different to your first. It's a more accessible album, more pop-friendly. It's definitely more immediate. But I also wanted to make an album that was of this moment in time -- that captures what it's like being a 22-year-old kid living in Canada right now. So many musicians seem obsessed with replicating the past, but that bores me. The artists I love best -- people like Bob Dylan -- were able to encapsulate their times extremely well. Listen to Blonde On Blonde or Highway 61 Revisited and you're transported back to the early 1960s.
- You used to review albums when you worked for Pitchfork. Is it odd being on the other side of the fence? When you make music, it's no longer yours. People will take certain feelings from it that you didn't intend, but work for them. The reviews for me have been good, but I'm due for a really bad review, karmically speaking, because I've given out really bad reviews. Maybe, I'll be bothered if someone really slates me, but I doubt it. You'll never please everyone and I always laugh at the artists who get really upset when the critics' knives are out -- they should have a bit more confidence in themselves.
- How healthy is hip-hop at the moment? Some good music is being made, but mainly on the fringes. Most big-name hip-hop is lazy and safe and samey. Money is thrown at it, and you can hear that money in each track. Very few people are doing anything different in hip-hop and I'm not surprised that so many people say they are bored by it. At the end of the day, some hip-hop artists are more interested in their clothing line than their music. People are sick of that shit. There's so much bullshit about keeping it real. Hip-hop has become an old-boys club with a rigid set of rules and I just don't fit into that.
- The cover of the album is about as far from conventional hip-hop bling as you can get -- most of the faces are white, for instance. Well, Edmonton is predominantly white -- but I agree, you don't see too many non-black faces on most hip-hop album covers. All these people either helped me to make the album, inspired the making of it or are talked about in it. The cover is my version of Sgt Peppers.
- As a Canadian, how do you account for the disproportionate amount of great music emanating from your country over the last few years? It's incredible, isn't it?
When I was growing up, Canadian music seemed to be a byword for naff. Everything coming out of the country was awful -- Celine Dion was typical. I think a lot of the current crop of musicians simply revolted about coming out of a place like Canada. On a serious note, the funding that comes from the government has helped a lot of artists, me included. I've received grants for my videos, for instance. Maybe that's one of the reasons why Canada has stolen a march on other places in recent times.n
Afterparty Babies is released today. See review
- John Meagher
