Cadence Weapon.

I just listened to (and downloaded) a new song over at the Cadence Weapon myspace, and it has given me an excuse to take a long overdue look at his 2006 debut, Breaking Kayfabe.....and yes I'll be renaming the blog to "Every Single Canadian Artist that I Can Possibly Mention Before I Die".

The term Breaking Kayfabe (wiki) refers to breaking character, or letting people see that something isn't real even when they already know that it's not. On the album Breaking Kayfabe, Cadence Weapon breaks convention, and let's you see the guts of each song. He exposes every part of the process, allowing each bit to play it's part with no pretensions about what it is supposed to be. This allows him to use the same tools to put together an altogether new machine....one with big-gnarly bone-crushing exposed gears.

I certainly don't mean to say that Cadence Weapon is altogether reinventing rap. What I do mean to say is that there is art that hides it's origins...like a perfectly polished marble statue. And there is art that allows you to see the process within the finished piece. Breaking Kayfabe is the second type, it feels finished but not so polished that you can't distinguish the layers. The beauty of this approach is that you never get totally comfortable listening to Breaking Kayfabe. It won't let you relegate it to a low-end bump while you figure out what to do tonight, or talk about your favorite Indian restaurant.

I don't know....
Like, the percussive staccato keyboard part on Oliver Square that doesn't pretend to be anything but, and that you can't tune out. Or just when you get comfortable with the groove in Sharks you get ground out of your daze at a minute thirty. Or like how you can't help but listen to every part in Fathom for a few seconds each, and you can't quite reconcile them to be one thing.

So here's the jam from Breaking Kayfabe, a video from the same, and you can check out his myspace to listen to the "open ended new shit" of a new song. The new record should be going down this spring.

Sharks by Cadence Weapon (buy)

Black Hand Video