Rollie Pemberton (Cadence Weapon)

What Happened Next: a podcast about newish books

My guest on this episode is Rollie Pemberton. Rollie is a writer, rapper, producer, poet and activist who performs under the name Cadence Weapon. His album Parallel World won the 2021 Polaris Music Prize and his writing has been published in Pitchfork, The Guardian, Wired, Toronto Life, and Hazlitt. Rollie has also acted as Poet Laureate for his hometown of Edmonton, Alberta. He also recently released a song and a video celebrating that city’s hockey team and its run for the Stanley Cup. Rollie’s debut book is the memoir Bedroom Rapper: Cadence Weapon on Hip-Hop, Resistance and Surviving the Music Industry, which was published by McClelland & Stewart in 2022.

The Toronto Star called Bedroom Rapper “an intriguing window into a creative mind that takes creativity and the constant betterment of that creativity very seriously.”

Rollie and I talk about his relentlessly curatorial approach to art and the world, about the need for more and better artistic criticism, and about why he thinks books and writing will soon eclipse music as his central creative pursuit.

This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.

Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.