Alberta-born rapper brings message of social justice to Calgary concert
Global News
Edmonton-born hip-hop artist Cadence Weapon will be hitting the stage on Saturday night as part of Calgary’s Block Heater festival.
When Cadence Weapon’s album Parallel World won the 2021 Polaris Prize in September 2021, he started getting a lot more attention.
Songs on the album cover issues like racial profiling.
“I talk about surveillance and how it disproportionately affects Black people and Indigenous Peoples in Canada. I have songs about racial discrimination, microaggressions,” said Cadence Weapon, who was born Roland Pemberton.
He plans on using some of the Polaris Prize money to support political advocacy groups and using his wider audience to hold political power accountable.
“I feel like that is the responsibility of an artist. I feel like that’s been lost in recent years where people think more about, ‘I don’t want to offend anyone or I want to make sure I have the highest-streaming numbers,’ but for me, it actually comes really naturally,” Pemberton said.
Pemberton was born in Edmonton and was the city’s poet laureate in 2009.
He says performing at the Calgary Folk Music Festival’s Block Heater concert is a perfect fit for him. He’s scheduled to play at Olympic Plaza on Feb. 19.
“I am born in Alberta. Folk music is protest music. I consider myself to be quite similar to someone like Bob Dylan. I want to be this generation’s Leonard Cohen,” Pemberton said.
