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Cadence Weapon


Cadence Weapon is Edmonton-born, Toronto-based rapper, producer, writer and poet Rollie Pemberton. His 2021 album Parallel World won Canada’s Polaris Music Prize.

The son of a pioneering hip-hop radio DJ, Pemberton grew up around a diverse library of music. Splitting his time between Edmonton’s experimental electronic and underground rap scenes as a teenager, Pemberton eventually developed a hybrid of both styles. Cadence Weapon has released five albums, all of which have been nominated for the Polaris Music Prize, with Breaking Kayfabe (2006) and Hope In Dirt City (2012) and Parallel World (2021) being shortlist nominees. Pemberton has toured extensively following the success of these albums, playing festivals like Glastonbury, Lollapalooza, Pitchfork Music Festival, Roskilde and Primavera Sound and performing shows with artists such as Public Enemy, Diplo, Questlove, De La Soul and many more.

Pemberton’s music is known for pairing groundbreaking production with incisive, socially conscious lyricism. Pemberton served as Poet Laureate of Edmonton from 2009 to 2011, making him the literary ambassador of his hometown. His poem “The Garden” was incorporated into a bronze sculpture at the Alberta Legislature Grounds in Edmonton in 2018. Pemberton was the narrator and a writer for the VICELAND television series PAYDAY and Mister Tachyon and he has hosted lectures and conducted live interviews for CBC q and Red Bull Music Academy. Pemberton’s debut book, Bedroom Rapper, is a personal account of his life in music as an artist, critic and fan amid a changing digital landscape. It was released in early 2002 by McClelland & Stewart.

PRESS

“Pemberton is no stranger to pushing creative boundaries across artistic mediums to better understand himself and the world around him.” - Stereogum

“Cadence Weapon uses drill, trap, grime, and acid house production—all heavily-policed genres—to weigh in on the state-sanctioned violence that disproportionately punishes Black people.” - Bandcamp

“Even as the Canadian rap scene has become crowded with upstarts and his sound has been picked over for parts, Cadence Weapon remains one of its most crucial voices.” - Pitchfork

"His darting intelligence and racing imagination are evident in every line" – The Guardian

Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / Bandcamp

Photo: Colin Medley

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Cadence Weapon


Cadence Weapon is Edmonton-born, Toronto-based rapper, producer, writer and poet Rollie Pemberton. His 2021 album Parallel World won Canada’s Polaris Music Prize.

The son of a pioneering hip-hop radio DJ, Pemberton grew up around a diverse library of music. Splitting his time between Edmonton’s experimental electronic and underground rap scenes as a teenager, Pemberton eventually developed a hybrid of both styles. Cadence Weapon has released five albums, all of which have been nominated for the Polaris Music Prize, with Breaking Kayfabe (2006) and Hope In Dirt City (2012) and Parallel World (2021) being shortlist nominees. Pemberton has toured extensively following the success of these albums, playing festivals like Glastonbury, Lollapalooza, Pitchfork Music Festival, Roskilde and Primavera Sound and performing shows with artists such as Public Enemy, Diplo, Questlove, De La Soul and many more.

Pemberton’s music is known for pairing groundbreaking production with incisive, socially conscious lyricism. Pemberton served as Poet Laureate of Edmonton from 2009 to 2011, making him the literary ambassador of his hometown. His poem “The Garden” was incorporated into a bronze sculpture at the Alberta Legislature Grounds in Edmonton in 2018. Pemberton was the narrator and a writer for the VICELAND television series PAYDAY and Mister Tachyon and he has hosted lectures and conducted live interviews for CBC q and Red Bull Music Academy. Pemberton’s debut book, Bedroom Rapper, is a personal account of his life in music as an artist, critic and fan amid a changing digital landscape. It was released in early 2002 by McClelland & Stewart.

PRESS

“Pemberton is no stranger to pushing creative boundaries across artistic mediums to better understand himself and the world around him.” - Stereogum

“Cadence Weapon uses drill, trap, grime, and acid house production—all heavily-policed genres—to weigh in on the state-sanctioned violence that disproportionately punishes Black people.” - Bandcamp

“Even as the Canadian rap scene has become crowded with upstarts and his sound has been picked over for parts, Cadence Weapon remains one of its most crucial voices.” - Pitchfork

"His darting intelligence and racing imagination are evident in every line" – The Guardian

Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / Bandcamp

Photo: Colin Medley

Screen Shot 2022-06-15 at 11.18.00 AM - Marina Allen (2).png

Marina Allen


Marina Allen is a once-in-a-decade five-tool musician: She writes beautiful melodies and brilliant lyrics, expresses her ideas with an unusual voice of extraordinary depth and range, thinks in fanciful arrangements, and constantly navigates the knife-edge between too much and too little. Allen’s fully formed and astonishingly confident debut, Candlepower is a suite of seven songs that was released on Fire Records to critical acclaim. 

A rare and super talented newcomer, Marina embarked on her first UK tour in 2021 and across the US has been touring with Waxahatchee, Chris Cohen, Billie Marten, Mega Bog, and Bedouine along with some special performances at this 2022’s SXSW festival in Austin. 

Based in Los Angeles, Allen is difficult to categorize, drawing from influences as varied as Joanna Newsom, the Beach Boys, loft jazz, Meredith Monk and the New York avant-garde, Joni Mitchell, Karen Carpenter, Karen Dalton and Fiona Apple.  Her music is intricate, fierce, soulful, mesmerizing, warm and bold.

“I went into writing Centrifics knowing I wanted to give myself permission. I was fed up with hiding myself and a fierceness started to enter the songs, which I leaned into. The entire time I was writing, I just kept saying “yes”, that was my only rule. In a way, these songs became a bridge for me to get to the other side and so Centrifics became aspirational. I threw the stone into the ocean as far as I could and then figured out how to swim to it. Instead of trying to get it perfect, the album works as a ladder to confront and hoist myself over all the hurdles, walls, setbacks and suffering. In that way imagination became a tool I desperately clung to rather than a place to recede.” 

Her newest masterpiece, Centrifics, was released in September 2022.

Instagram / Facebook / Twitter / Bandcamp

"One of the most beautiful and honest new voices.”

Rough Trade

"Intensely personal and widely universal.”

Paste 

“A rare commodity.”

UNCUT

Marina Allen


Marina Allen is a once-in-a-decade five-tool musician: She writes beautiful melodies and brilliant lyrics, expresses her ideas with an unusual voice of extraordinary depth and range, thinks in fanciful arrangements, and constantly navigates the knife-edge between too much and too little. Allen’s fully formed and astonishingly confident debut, Candlepower is a suite of seven songs that was released on Fire Records to critical acclaim. 

A rare and super talented newcomer, Marina embarked on her first UK tour in 2021 and across the US has been touring with Waxahatchee, Chris Cohen, Billie Marten, Mega Bog, and Bedouine along with some special performances at this 2022’s SXSW festival in Austin. 

Based in Los Angeles, Allen is difficult to categorize, drawing from influences as varied as Joanna Newsom, the Beach Boys, loft jazz, Meredith Monk and the New York avant-garde, Joni Mitchell, Karen Carpenter, Karen Dalton and Fiona Apple.  Her music is intricate, fierce, soulful, mesmerizing, warm and bold.

“I went into writing Centrifics knowing I wanted to give myself permission. I was fed up with hiding myself and a fierceness started to enter the songs, which I leaned into. The entire time I was writing, I just kept saying “yes”, that was my only rule. In a way, these songs became a bridge for me to get to the other side and so Centrifics became aspirational. I threw the stone into the ocean as far as I could and then figured out how to swim to it. Instead of trying to get it perfect, the album works as a ladder to confront and hoist myself over all the hurdles, walls, setbacks and suffering. In that way imagination became a tool I desperately clung to rather than a place to recede.” 

Her newest masterpiece, Centrifics, was released in September 2022.

Instagram / Facebook / Twitter / Bandcamp

"One of the most beautiful and honest new voices.”

Rough Trade

"Intensely personal and widely universal.”

Paste 

“A rare commodity.”

UNCUT