Edmonton's Cadence Weapon readies new album, begins gig as poet laureate

Rollie Pemberton, also known as Cadence Weapon, shown in Toronto, Tuesday, Feb.26, 2008. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

Nick Patch, THE CANADIAN PRESS

TORONTO - Whether it's in his newly adopted role as Edmonton's poet laureate or his day job as one of Canada's more innovative hip-hop artists, Roland Pemberton has never been particularly interested in tradition.

Just as the artist known as Cadence Weapon readied a third full-length album called "Roquentin" that he calls "pretty out there," he took over as his hometown's poet laureate Wednesday with a mandate to promote the nooks and crannies of Edmonton's under-served underground arts scene.

"I think I represent a different side of Edmonton, and it exists, and I want to tell people about it," Pemberton said in a recent telephone interview. "There's a whole underbelly of creative people that do not get represented and usually don't get championed the way I have been, so I'm going to take advantage of that."

Pemberton was announced as the city's poet laureate in May, a move that drew international headlines and kudos from admirers of his dense, challenging music.

Pemberton's term will last two years, and his duties will include writing poems and performing them in public, talking in schools and generally advocating the Edmonton arts community in all his endeavours.

For his part, he thinks the city made a good choice.

"Sometimes they'll get criticized for being too safe or being too conservative much like the province as a whole, but this is a pretty unique, culturally representative choice that they made and I'm proud to be a part of it," he said.

Outgoing poet laureate E.D. Blodgett, a professor emeritus who has published 19 collections of poetry, apparently wasn't so sure. He was quoted in newspapers expressing misgivings about the selection of Pemberton.

Pemberton brushed aside the criticism, saying he would give Blodgett the "benefit of the doubt."

"I'm realizing that (his comment) was probably taken out of context, much like most of the stuff that I've said to people has been mangled around too," he said.

"Outwardly, we are the most opposite people you can imagine - he's an old white man and I'm a young black man, right, but if you're a poet and you're a part of a certain creative discipline, you can't dislike something (similar) that much, you know?"

Meanwhile, Pemberton is hard at work at "Roquentin," a "drastically different" new record he's hoping to release next year.

Pemberton says the album - named after the main character from "Nausea" by Jean-Paul Sartre - examines themes of existentialism and the reasons why people do things, "really taking it to a more literal approach."

"At the same time, it's the most experimental thing I've done and most traditional thing, weirdly enough," he said.

The album will feature rhymes from Buck 65 (on a track about the much-maligned vocal tool Auto-Tune called "You Can't Stop the Machine") and strings from Final Fantasy's Owen Pallett, Pemberton said.

"There are some songs that are like '50s girl group songs, and I'm singing and stuff, a lot of echoes, some psychedelic textures, and live instruments, strings, and horns - it's pretty different," Pemberton explained.

"I wanted to make something organic. I feel like the only criticism I have of my own albums would be that they feel too slick sometimes, too clean. I just want it to be so clear that this was made by a human being, that it's not a computer making it, that it's me."

But while Pemberton says his taste in poetry tends to skew toward the daring and unconventional - "traditional poetry is not exactly my forte, and the writing I'm going to be doing is pretty free-form" - it's a different story when it comes to hip hop.

"My taste in rap is pretty drastically different than the music I make," he said. "I'm into like Project Pat and stuff, I like thugged-out rap. These dudes are just gonna make like 100 albums about how big their rims are with these spooky beats. I find it really entertaining and funny. That's the problem with a lot of underground rap, it's so self-concerned. ... "I just feel like I prefer something that has no pretensions about being serious anyway."