4MTL : I heard you were a journalist before.
CW : When I was a youth, i went to journalism school in Virginia in Hampton University, for a year, but i dropped out of college to put out some records.
4MTL : Didn’t you wrote for Pitchfork for a while?
CW : Yeah I was actually already writing for Pitchfork at that point. I wrote for Pitchfork, C Magazine and Edmonton blogs. I’ve written for a couple of publications since then and I still like to do writings, but in different ways, like put out some kind of book or something. I recently became Edmonton poet’s laureate so i would eventually like to put out a book of poetry.
4MTL : What did you say ?
CW : Poet Laureate. I’m like the poet of Edmonton. I do poems about Edmonton, like the lifestyle there.
4MTL : Is that true ?
CW : Yeah it’s true. Google it. I’m Edmonton’s Poet Laureate.
4MTL : Is Cadence Weapon a character or a real person ?
CW : It’s just a name for the projects that I do. My real name is Roland Pemberton. I’m just a multi-faceted person, like I don’t just rap, I make all my beats and I rap in them. I don’t have serious credentials for what I should or shouldn’t do.
4MTL : I read in an interview that your next record is gonna be about an existential novel. Is that true too ?
CW : Yeah I’m serious. It’s based on a book called Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre.
4MTL : What is the novel about ?
CW : It is about a real French guy : whatever he thinks about existence and life and the world around, it makes him wanna puke. That’s the basis of it.
4MTL : I also read in that interview that the style might be very different.
CW : It’s pretty drasticaly different. I sing a lot on it. I sing, I rap. The beats are made with a lot of live instrumentation. I think it will be very jarring for people who heard my music before. I always intend to experiment and to challenge people.
4MTL : How would you describe the style of music you’re doing ? Rap ? Electro ? What is it ?
CW : I’m a performance artist.
4MTL : Ok, but who would you compare yourself with ?
CW : I wouldn’t really compare myself to anybody. I like to consider myself a performance artist. I’m kinda like anybody in Mile End. Those shows. I’m more experimental.
4MTL : You’re doing a lot of remixes and collabs and you put them on mixtapes. Can you tell us about that ?
CW : I really like doing remixes and collabs. I put them on a mixtape called Separation Anxiety and i released it on the internet for whatever people wanna pay for.
4MTL : You like that way of selling music?
CW : I’m cool with that. I would have done that normally. I just don’t really care if people buy their shit or not. It’s been a cool experience. People have checked it out. That’s the most interesting thing to me. It’s a very interesting social experiment. Because I give something to people that’s something that’s equal to something that’s been release before. But I wanted to see what their physical response to it would be. Would they buy it or they’re just gonna hook it up for free ? To me I don’t really care either way. If people think that’s it’s worth their money, i think that’s great, but if they just want to check it out, that’s cool too.
4MTL : Knowing most people would just pay 0 $.
CW : Sure and I think that’s a shame. Because my father was a Dj, and I come from a background that buying a record is more than just buying a record. Like you buy a record and you learn about a person. You buy a record and you get informaiton about who they are, you read the liner notes, there’s this kind of ritual involved and that’s something that’s really exciting to me. But now i feel that people who are growing up at this time won’t have an experiment. They won’t go on itunes and buy a jpeg of the album and be like, ‘I care about this’. Its a different kind of knowledge and i think that’s too bad, but i hope people will go back and think about where the artist come from.
4MTL : What do you think about the music becoming more like a gobal project, with many people involved in the creative process (remixes, collabs, etc) and at the same time, the artist being able to individually say less and less?
CW : That’s cool with me. I think that the nature of control is a bit overwhelming. I think it’s perfectly find for people to get beyond that. I love the openess of music now. People hear the song, like the song and say: ‘I want to do a remix’. They’ll take elements for that song and just chop it up. That’s great. But when you get in that realm, nobody gets paid. To me I don’t care, but there are a lot of people who are bothered by the fact that people like their song, take shit from it, do a remix, and that they don’t get any money out of it.
4MTL : Especially when there’s more and more artists on the scene and…
CW: … less and less people buy it. But personnaly, I don’t really give a shit whether people buying or not. I care if people have an emotional response to what I do but I don’t really care if people pay or not.
4MTL : Let’s finish this really fast so you can go DJing now. Can you just tell me what you’re doing in Montreal exactly?
CW: I’m doing some recording, I’m working on a couple of records, I’m hooking up record with The Girl Guides and some other people in montreal. I’m pretty pumped bout that. I’m also doing a record with Megasoid. And also with Hadji from Wolf Parade, ee’re doing an EP together. And then I’m actually going to Toronto to do my own next record which is gonna involve mainly live instrument… and some emotional thoughts.
4MTL : Thanks a lot.
- Pay what you want for his new mixtape : http://www.cadenceweaponmusic.com/
- Cadence Weapon’s myspace : http://www.myspace.com/cadenceweaponmusic
Coolio
