Cadence Weapon

A Renaissance man for the Digital Age, Cadence Weapon aka Rollie Pemberton is rapper/producer/author with a list of accomplishments and credits so long - from receiving industry accolades for his music to receiving awards for critiquing this same industry in his writing - you might wonder what more is there for him to do. Even so, Fall 2025 finds the Polaris Music Prize winner with a new frame of mind and yet more on the go. From the bouncy new single “Step Out,” which sees Cadence Weapon in the company of Toronto hiphop lions Junia-T and DijahSB, to prepping his third book, an essay collection titled Ways of Listening, and running back his debut album, Breaking Kayfabe, with a twentieth anniversary tour, Cadence Weapon continues his impressive roll.

At once encyclopedically historical and presciently future-minded, Cadence Weapon is known first and foremost for his lyricism: charged commentary and cautionary tales of artificiality, tech-culture, classicism, gentrification, exploitation and more fit beside the self-aware chronicles of his own life and career, encapsulated in his most recent album, Rollercoaster. Cadence Weapon has made good on the critical acclaim of his early work and still remains at the avant-garde, pushing boundaries and buttons while his signature electronic/industrial sound, a “grimy clarion call,” (Pitchfork) rings on.

An award-winning columnist and contributor to urgent cultural conversations (CBC Commotion, Hazlitt, Mood Machine, docuseries Paid in Full and more), ‘music industry sage’ Cadence Weapon represents the best of the west as Edmonton’s former Poet Laureate. Now based in Hamilton, Pemberton is poised to surprise his listeners yet again in 2026 with the release of his next album, complete with live instrumentation and a thematic pivot.