The Death of the Middle-Class Musician

Summary

Rollie Pemberton was barely a teenager when he started rapping. His hometown, Edmonton, didn’t have much of a hip-hop scene in the early aughts, so he honed his craft online. He plugged an old-school microphone into his mom’s desktop computer, recorded a few verses, later turned them into tracks, and sent them out into the burgeoning music blogosphere. Within a few years, he’d adopted the emcee name Cadence Weapon and earned a reputation as a shrewd critic and sharp lyricist. This work didn’t pay—until, all of a sudden, it did. In 2003, while Pemberton was in university, the American music magazine Pitchfork began paying him to write album reviews. Then Edmonton radio stations started spinning “Oliver Square,” a Cadence Weapon song stuffed with choppy synths and hyper-local references. A Toronto-based indie label called Upper Class Recordings took notice and offered Pemberton recording, publishing, and management contracts. The so-called 360 deal came with a $1,000 advance, barely enough for him to record his first full-length album, and it entitled the label to take a cut of all his future revenue streams, including album, ticket, and merch sales. Even at nineteen, Pemberton knew the terms weren’t ideal. But in 2006, he signed the deal, reasoning that it could be his only shot at stardom. And Pemberton’s star did rise. His debut album, Breaking Kayfabe, earned him a cover story in Exclaim! magazine and a nomination for the Polaris Prize, which recognizes the best Canadian album of the year. He released more music, played the legendary Glastonbury and Lollapalooza festivals, DJ’d Sacha Trudeau’s birthday party, and performed for Queen Elizabeth II at the 2010 Canada Day festivities on Parliament Hill. By then, Edmonton had selected Pemberton as the city’s poet laureate, and the CBC had picked him to sit on the panel of its battle-of-the-books show, Canada Reads. He was everywhere. From the outside looking in, it seemed that Pemberton had made it, and then some. Behi...