Will it be the third time the charm of Cadence Weapon, born in Edmonton and based in Toronto?
With the rapper’s latest work, “Parallel World,” competing for Monday’s $ 50,000 Polaris Music Prize with 10 other worthy contenders, Cadence, aka Rollie Pemberton, will enjoy a victory lap after the previous top 10. from your albums “Hope in Dirt City” and “Rompiendo Kayfabe”?
“I’ve been saying I don’t want to be the Susan Lucci of Polaris,” joked Pemberton, whom he came to in Montreal before an appearance at that city’s Montreal International Pop Music Festival, and days before local performances at the Garrison on September 28. and 29.
Soap opera fans know all too well who Lucci is: the “All My Children” actor whose daytime Emmy nominations became a joke. Nominated for Best Actress 21 times starting in the late 1970s, Lucci won once, in 1999.
Unlike Lucci, Pemberton has not been relegated to a role when it comes to producing his astute observations of hip-hop, always changing it and being rewarded for his stylistic reinvention.
His fifth album, “Parallel World” mixes electronic synthesizer sound effects with themes of social injustice.
“There are some issues that I’m really concentrating on, but I think the main one is about systemic inequality and the many forms it takes in our lives, especially with regard to racialized people,” Pemberton said. “Even in a song like ‘On Me,’ I’m talking about surveillance and specifically how it affects us … the idea of facial recognition technology, flawed when it comes to a black face, and that’s kind of what it is. important to speak for me. “
Are we making our personal information and ourselves too available?
“Definitely,” Pemberton said. “I think the big lesson from ‘On Me’ is that we do a lot of these things voluntarily that we don’t really examine them and it gets normalized. My role as an artist is to point out things and I hope you can interpret them in any way you want.
“People perceive what I do in different ways: many feel that my music is dystopian… For some, it is a dystopian future but, for me, it is a dystopian present. I’m just reflecting what I see in the world as it is. “
“Eye To Eye” is about racial discrimination, inspired by a 2020 incident in New York’s Central Park that involved a black man named Christian Cooper and a white woman named Amy Cooper (no relationship). She “tried to put guns on the police. She was Canadian, but that was just another thing that wasn’t just a Canadian problem, “Pemberton said.
“There is also the erasure of the history of Canadian blacks, inspired by me living in Eglinton West and seeing what was happening with Little Jamaica and the construction of Crosstown LRT. The story of this is happening not only in North America, but also in Canada, in places like Amber Valley or Africville. “
Former Edmonton poet laureate Pemberton said he is not hiding anything in “Parallel World.”
“These are things that I had taken advantage of in the past, but never so openly,” he said. “I think I would analyze things here and there, but never with the level of specificity that I do here.
“What really caught my eye was George Floyd’s protest last summer, when I started to see how organizing people can have an effect, you know. I was thinking of ways to do it through my music, but also my platform … for example I did a tweet comparing the GoFundMe campaign (Adamson BBQ owner) Adam Skelly and the amount of money raised for that versus Launching GoFundMe for Black Businesses in Little Jamaica. “
Skelly is the Toronto restaurateur who opened an unlicensed establishment in defiance of pandemic closure orders in 2020, was arrested and raised more than $ 341,000 for legal fees.
The GoFundMe created to create grants for Little Jamaica businesses disrupted by LRT construction has raised just $ 44,483.
“When I published the Little Jamaica GoFundMe, thousands of dollars came in,” said Pemberton. “And I’ve been thinking, ‘Wow, saying things like that can really have an effect. How can I do that more with my music? ‘”
He found some of that response during the pandemic, which he found creatively stimulating.
“For me, it really brought me back to when I started working on music, which was in isolation, on my own, and it really made me feel like I was a teenager again … in my mother’s attic doing rhythms again “. he said. “And I feel like I haven’t been able to have that level of sustained focus that I had while making this album since my first album in 2005.
“There were no shows, tours, and so many distractions, especially during the early part of the pandemic, because you can’t go anywhere. That actually had a very productive effect on me. I didn’t know what to expect, it was such a rare situation, but I finished an album and almost finished a book. “
The book, called “Bedroom Rapper,” to be published in May 2022 by McClelland & Stewart, “is primarily autobiographical with an element of cultural criticism, deconstructing different elements of my career, but using them to talk about broader issues.”
The night after he performs his last show at the Garrison, he and rapper Fat Tony fly to Denver for a three-week tour of the United States.
“I couldn’t be happier to be doing shows,” Pemberton said. “It really is one of the great joys of my life and I am seeing a greater meaning than ever since the pandemic. I really realized that virtual cannot take the place of a real show and I feel like I am providing a really important public service, especially in tough times where people can get some relief.
“I played a festival in Sudbury called Up Here, and I played Rouyn-Noranda and Northern Quebec. I’m playing places that don’t have shows all the time, you know? It becomes much more meaningful. “
Backxwash, a contributor to “Parallel World”, winner of last year’s Polaris Music Prize, joined him on the Quebec date earlier this month after he invited her to work on the song “Ghost.”
“Once I saw her win Polaris, I got really excited about that record because it was nice to see a weird rap hit in Canada and I instantly felt a kinship,” Pemberton said.
Now that “Parallel World” is on the books, Pemberton is planning the next Cadence Weapon album and looking to make a meaningful statement.
“I already have a pretty good idea of where I want to go with this and, for me, the next album will definitely delve into issues of black identity and physically relate to the African diaspora.
“I really want to have a multimedia experience. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but I didn’t have the capacity before, and now I think I’m ready to do it. “
Reference-www.thestar.com