Cadence Weapon - Breaking Kayfabe

Cadence Weapon's hip-hop blog RazorBladeRunner displayed a remarkable breadth of taste, with the young journalist showing love to everyone from Sage Francis to Nelly Furtado. His subsequent breakout from columnist for Wired and Pitchforkmedia.com to celebrated producer, MC and remixer is evidence of a genius-level intelligence. Opening track Oliver Square is at once a direct, in-your-face introduction to his home city of Edmonton, and a demonstration of his off-kilter approach to beats and melodies. A thrashing rave bass lurches around the sharp 808 kicks, as Cadence spits insouciantly, nodding to Kool Keith and Spank Rock. Sharks, already an underground anthem across much of Canada and the US, has a similarly rolling electro theme, with the Weapon flipping his own script, stretching rhymes and reversing meanings ("This isn't a house-by-writing bumper sticker / It's something you stick in a bump / Like a heroin needle..."). Like the best hip-hop, tracks such as Holy Smoke are, unarguably, pure poetry: an account of the appeal of marijuana's disconnective bliss, from the eyes of a non-smoker exposed against his wishes. Influenced by techno, old-school hip-hop, Bob Dylan, and grime, but sounding like none of them, this album is uniquely challenging and innovative, like Kanye West with a fetish for literate wordplay, and a head full of Nintendo beats. [Bram Gieben]