Lethal Weapon

Roland (Rollie) Pemberton, aka Cadence Weapon. (EMI Music Canada)

Twenty-two-year-old Roland (Rollie) Pemberton, the emcee-producer-DJ from Edmonton known as Cadence Weapon, is the young turk of Canada’s hip-hop scene. For the second time in three years, he’s flipping the script for what it takes to win in the rap game. Out today, his sophomore studio album, Afterparty Babies, roils with electro, techno and house beats — dance rhythms that are rarely heard in hip-hop circles.

Cadence’s original plan was to write an album about condos, thinking he would call it Urban Sprawl in Texas North. That changed when he decided he would rather have a “time capsule” of events in his and his friends’ lives. Afterparty Babies is an aural reflection on his summer of 2006, which he spent in deep conversation with close friends. “It seemed more prudent to make an album about the people in the houses rather than houses themselves,” Cadence says on the phone from a Toronto hotel room. It is early in the day, long before many rappers’ notion of first thing in the morning. Within the hour, he will leave the city to launch a five-week U.S. tour, immediately followed by a cross-Canada jaunt in April.

Afterparty’s 14 songs celebrate the lives of people — including Cadence himself — who were conceived during the private moments that sometimes follow public celebrations. “My dad said I was an after-party baby. This goes out to all the accidents out there. Keep on making mistakes,” he raps at the end of the opening track, the drum-and-a cappella Do I Miss My Friends? (Pemberton says his mother confirms the timing of his conception, but she insists he was no accident.) Another new song, Juliann Wilding, is named for one of the three friends Cadence spoke to most often in the summer of ’06. The two frequently discussed romantic gossip. “Ms. Wilding, Mr. Weapon, repartee on every other day. I know about dames and the games they play, just remember what we used to say,” he rhymes on its chorus.

The verses are introspective and self-deprecating,  more evidence of the distance between Afterparty and hip hop’s proud, boastful middle of the road. Cadence clearly relishes the view from afar.

“You know what the problem with Canadian rap has been for the last 10, 15 years? It’s that all the rappers are trying to sound like they’re from the States. There’s been a major fear of having a Canadian identity in our rap community,” he says. “It makes more sense to me to be honest [about my life], but I feel like I’m taking a chance doing that.... I’m going against the people who are saying, ‘Stop snitching’ [the name of a predominantly American campaign to silence police informants]. But snitching about what, who knows?”

Cadence Weapon’s verbal flow is a staccato rattle. In most instances, his diction is precise, although he’ll chop the odd “g” from his gerunds, as heard in this description of Wal-Mart from his first album, Breaking Kayfabe (2005): “They’re a bigger public enemy than Flavor Flav workin’ for Monsanto.” (“Kayfabe,” adapted from the pig Latin word for fake, refers to pro wrestling’s portrayal of its matches as real. “Breaking kayfabe” means revealing the whole thing is staged.)

The cover of Cadence Weapon's new album, Afterparty Babies. (EMI Music Canada)

His production style roves rap music’s left field, taking cues in equal amounts from hip hop and pop producers like Prince Paul and Timbaland and electronic music masters Aphex Twin and Autechre. Cadence’s records swim neither with nor against the mainstream’s current; he is typically classified as indie rap, an amorphous grouping that includes Halifax’s Buck 65, New York City’s El-P and outer Los Angeles’s Madlib. They’re all known as makers of concept albums — rare things in the modern era of downloadable singles.

“I’m on my iPod and I can’t even listen to a song for longer than 30 seconds anymore. I think I’m losing my mind,” Cadence says. “I’m trying to get it back to the way it was. An album used to feel complete, you know?”

Rollie Pemberton was raised with the hip-hop equivalent of the Tiger Woods plan. (The golfer’s father famously coached him from an early age.) Teddy Pemberton, Rollie’s dad, was a transplanted Brooklynite who is often credited with introducing rap music to Edmonton. For two decades, Teddy hosted “The Black Sound Experience” on the University of Alberta station CJSR-FM. On air, he mixed rap standards with a hot plate of funk, soul and R&B tunes. At home, he played his favourite music for his family. “He was like, ‘OK, son. This is a Biggie household. We don’t have any 2Pac here,’” Rollie/Cadence says. (To this day, he’s barely heard the latter titan’s catalogue.) He remembers Teddy habitually starting his “Black Sound” broadcasts with Nas’s N.Y. State of Mind, and ending them with shoutouts to his wife and children. Rollie was often “Roller Coaster”; his sister, Gena, was “G Baby.”

Teddy had kidney problems his entire life and passed away shortly after Rollie’s high school graduation. His music lessons, though, had already sunk in. Rollie started rapping at age 13, although it was a few years before he took it seriously. During the same period, his mother encouraged him to write music criticism. She hoped he might pursue a journalism career. He hoped to fund extra trips to the record store.

In 2003, Rollie began writing rap reviews for Pitchfork, the internet’s arbiter of indie rock cool. He was canned 10 months later, when his editor complained that his submissions had become too vague to follow. And how: Rollie sometimes wrote about his own experiences as an entertainer when he was supposed to be reviewing other people’s music. “I was a little nervous at first. After two hours and 13 bottles of Stella Artois, I had placed myself into an awkward situation.... Although I managed to rhyme ‘go Paul Martin’ with ‘no hard coughing,’ the crowd was thoroughly disenchanted by my performance,” he wrote in his last published album review, ostensibly of an album by Boston rapper Mighty Casey.

After high school, Rollie tried and quit the journalism program at an all-black college in Virginia. (He tired, in part, of explaining his interest in electronic music to his classmates.) Back home in Edmonton, Cadence Weapon came to the fore. Rollie was eager for an alias that would obscure his real name — he hated the idea that anyone might think he was exploiting Teddy Pemberton’s reputation.

“Originally it was a stage name, a nom de plume-type jump-off. Now I feel like it’s becoming closer and closer to just being the name of the music project,” he says. “I’m becoming more comfortable letting people know that my [birth] name is Rollie.”

Breaking Kayfabe was critically adored. Sonically creative songs like Sharks and Oliver Square made Cadence Weapon stand out against the tapestry of Canadian hip hop: he was harder, odder than the rest. (The album’s production is heavily influenced by grime, the British bastardization of hip hop, reggae and several types of dance music.) Kayfabe was nominated for 2006’s inaugural Polaris Music Prize, for Canadian album of the year. The publicity carried Cadence’s name across the country.

May it ring out again. Afterparty Babies is a better body of music than Breaking Kayfabe. Grime has faded from Cadence’s mix, though the new album retains that genre’s deliberate sense of physical location — it could easily be subtitled The Edmonton Album.

“On the first album, the lyrics clashed with the beats sometimes. They were disconnected because I wasn’t making them at the same time. But with [Afterparty Babies], these beats were specifically born for these songs,” Cadence says. He recorded Afterbaby’s beats and rhymes in concert at an Edmonton studio. He intentionally sequenced the album to start slowly and gain speed as it plays forward. Tracks 1 and 2 (In Search of the Youth Crew) are relatively subdued; the last three songs, House Music, Unsuccessful Club Nights and We Move Away, are full-blown electronic bangers.

“I like to think the album ends at the peak hour. It ends at midnight,” he says. “It’s like the album is thinking, ‘I am going to be a dance record — but when?’ And by the end of it, it’s accepted its fate.”

Afterparty Babies is out March 4.

Matthew McKinnon is a Toronto-based writer.

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