Greater ear crime A LFO B NKOTB 05/26/09 2:25pm Rapping about getting drunk in Oliver Square apparently has its benefits.
Roland Pemberton will become Edmonton’s poet laureate on July 1. That sounds so official. Let’s try this instead: Cadence Weapon will be droppin’ city-sanctioned slang this summer. Pemberton, a lifelong Edmontonian who raps under the name Cadence Weapon, was nominated for the post by local artist Trevor Anderson. “I suggest that Rollie’s work already represents our City to its citizens, and that he acts as one of our most exciting municipal ambassadors when he tours nationally and internationally,” Anderson wrote in his nomination letter. “Roland Pemberton is a poet of the people, and I think that might be the most important qualification for the Poet Laureate to hold.” “I’m honoured that the city of Edmonton has considered me to be their poet laureate, a worthy chronicler of events and a representative of the diversity and cultural breadth of Edmontonians,” says Pemberton. “This guy will bring poetry to a whole new audience, and challenge the rest of us on our conventional perception of what it means to be a poet,” says Edmonton mayor Stephen Mandel. “I sometimes hear that young people aren’t into poetry. But Roland, as a musician/hip-hop artist, will show them they really are into the art form — they just didn’t know it. Cadence Weapon has a new “mix tape” called Separation Anxiety available to download from his…
Cadence Weapon has played the Lollapalooza, Glastonbury and Roskilde festivals and toured the world in…