Episode 51: Rollie Pemberton

Travel back in time and enjoy a recording from our June launch of Rollie Pemberton’s stellar memoir BEDROOM RAPPER. Rollie appears in conversation with musician, journalist, and friend, Vish Khanna.

***This conversation was originally published as an episode of Vish’s podcast Kreative Kontrol. Check out the episode and support Kreative Kontrol here.***

Rollie Pemberton is a writer, rapper, producer, poet and activist who performs under the name Cadence Weapon. He won the 2021 Polaris Music Prize for his album Parallel World. His writing has been published in Pitchfork, The Guardian, Wired and Hazlitt. Currently based in Toronto, Pemberton was a former Poet Laureate in his hometown of Edmonton.

Based in Edmonton, Alberta, Vish Khanna works for CKUA Radio and has played in several bands and toured North America. He hosts a renowned topical interview podcast called Kreative Kontrol, is an Assistant Editor at Exclaim! Magazine, where he oversees the Comedy section, and he’s a co-organizer of the Long Winter arts series in Toronto, where he hosts a monthly talk show called Long Night with Vish Khanna. He was a Host and Producer at CBC Radio 3 and is an on-air columnist for the CBC Radio One program, The Next Chapter with Shelagh Rogers. He wrote a monthly arts column for the Guelph Mercury Tribune and his written work has also been featured in Pitchfork, NOW, the AV Club, the Globe and Mail, Spinner, Huffington Post, Signal to Noise, Aux, Eye Weekly, Chart Attack, Off the Shelf, and more. He began organizing and promoting concerts in Guelph in 1997 and did so sporadically until 2019 (including December’s annual Stay Out of the Mall mini-festival), under the moniker KYEO, which is a reference to a Fugazi song of the same name. He once co-hosted CFRU 93.3 FM‘s The Mich Vish Interracial Morning Show! with his wife Michelle.

You can order BEDROOM RAPPER here.

Find Rollie on Twitter and Instagram @cadenceweapon; or on his website and stream the album, Parallel World, wherever you get your music.

Find Vish on Twitter and Instagram @vishkhanna; or on his website.

Find Glass Bookshop on all social platforms @glassbookshop and check out previous episodes of the show on the Glass Bookshop Radio website.