Rhyme and Punishment

Sitting under an oversized umbrella on Brighton seafront is Roland ‘Rollie’ Pemberton. It’s a grey, cloudy day, and the Canadian rapper, better known as Cadence Weapon, is laughing at the irony of the parasol shading us from the drizzle, rather than the sun.

It’s not like he’s unaccustomed to the weather on this side of the pond. Since 2005’s full-length debut Breaking Kayfabe, he’s spent a lot of time gigging in the UK. Ireland, too, has proved to be something of an unexpected success story for the 22-year-old – he regularly draws large crowds to his Irish performances, and even contributed a remix to Super Extra Bonus Party’s Everything Flows EP earlier this year.
“It’s pretty surprising, yeah,” he says of his popularity here. “I think it’s just that there’s a music culture, especially in Dublin, and people are responding to it very positively because of that. It’s nice.”
It was something of an inevitability that the young Rollie would seek out a music-related vocation, although there was a diversion-of-sorts into journalism after high school. His father Teddy was a groundbreaking hip-hop DJ, and he first started rapping when he was 13 – but his brief stint with scenester site Pitchfork is brought up a little too often for his liking.
“Yeah, I kind of wish I hadn’t written for Pitchfork now, because people keep talking to me about it,” he smiles sardonically. “When I started writing for them, I didn’t know it was gonna be a big thing, because I didn’t really know what to expect.”
I ask him if his father’s job had any significance on his own developing taste.
“I always listened to the stuff that he would play at first, a lot of East Coast rap from the early ‘90s, like Nas, Brand Nubian, Outkast... a lot of the commercial rap that was out at that time. But a lot of electronic music, and Nirvana, and Radiohead were a huge influence on me, too.”
The eclecticism of Pemberton’s taste is certainly evident in his music, particularly his recent second album, Afterparty Babies. A stylistic departure from his debut, it strays beyond the usual parameters of hip-hop, embracing everything from electronica to Bob Dylan lyrics, all neatly wrapped around that rounded, rapid-fire Cadence Weapon flow.
“I think every record I put out will be totally different,” he declares. “I think of Cadence Weapon as an ever-changing project, rather than just me. I’ll have a different purpose for every record I do, a different concept every time. I never wanna be the kind of dude who puts out the same kind of Coldplay album. I think the next album will probably have real instruments.”
Pemberton’s lust for innovation is just one of the qualities that sets him apart from many of his peers. For starters, the Canadian scene isn’t one particularly renowned for its hip-hop; secondly, he’s about as ‘gangsta’ in person as one of the cuddly toys for sale on Brighton Pier. Does he think that rappers like him and Muslim teetotaller Lupe Fiasco are ushering in a new, clean-living era for hip-hop?
“I don’t necessarily agree with that,” he laughs. “I drink a lot. I don’t do drugs, but I drink, like, a ton.”
OK then. Perhaps by ‘clean-living’, I mean an absence of stereotypical rap behaviour that artists like DMX and Fiddy are still perpetuating.
“Not a lot of people do what we try to do,” he nods. “For me, I’m coming from a perspective of just writing songs. I write about the way I actually am, and try to be as honest as possible, and maybe enlighten myself and others with my weird thoughts, right? But I dunno, I don’t think I’m heralding something completely new. The kind of rap that really affected me when I was growing up was like, De La Soul and Razz Kazz, and a lot of underground stuff. The crux of all that music is really who they actually are, where they’re going, what they think about their lives. Just honesty. I feel like that intelligent, innovative kind of rap has been around for a long time. I’m just a product of my environment.”