firm , so she connected me with a lawyer at her law firm who looked at it , but he wasn ’ t a music lawyer , specifically . So , we looked at the contract , but that ’ s the thing that people don ’ t really understand . It ’ s not like I ’ m stupid or something . It ’ s not like the contract says , “ we ’ re going to take all your money for the next 10 years ” and I ’ m going , “ Sure , I ’ ll sign it !” because I want clout . No , no , that ’ s not how it was . We saw that there were some issues , but I felt like it was my only opportunity , and I felt like I had no leverage at all .
You got to understand , this is a time when there was no Google . There was no way to look up what ’ s in a record contract . Like , I would go on Alta Vista or something [ laughs ]. This is 2004 or 2005 , so YouTube didn ’ t exist , so there ’ s no tutorial I can watch . I ’ d have to go to the library in Edmonton and find a book about the music industry or something .
It ’ s easy to look back now and be like , “ Oh , why did you sign that deal ?” But , I mean , this happens all throughout rap . If you think about rappers in New Orleans who are coming from projects and public housing , and they see a contract and how much the advance is , it ’ s hard to say no . It was the same for me . It was like , I had to pay a certain amount of money to get my record back from the studio , and that ’ s all I cared about at that time . It was just a few thousand bucks , but I was just like , sure . Then they started giving me advances and they ’ re flying me to Toronto and I ’ m getting to play CMW and do all these things that I didn ’ t think I could ever do . I assume that stuff costs money , right ? So really , the one thing is I am still waiting for the accounting from them . and Dave started a band called Tops . We all moved in together – me , Jane , and Dave – in Outremont and we had this building where it felt like Friends or something . It was like a sitcom with all Canadian musicians . So , Sean Nicholas Savage was down the street , across the street was Agor from Blue Hawaii , Mac DeMarco moved into our apartment building . We found him an apartment and I would just go down there and he ’ d be in his underwear , smoking , with a reel-toreel tape machine on the kitchen counter and he ’ s just making what would be Rock and Roll Nightclub . He ’ d show me the songs and I ’ d be , “ Baby ’ s wearing blue jeans ? A song about someone obsessed with jeans ? What is this shit ?” [ laughs ].
CADENCE WEAPON PERFORMING AT THE GARRISON IN TORONTO , 2021
PHOTO : BOBBY SINGH
CM : So , you never saw a breakdown of what money was being made from you , what was being spent , and how much you still had to recoup over that time ?
Pemberton : No , because it was really important to keep me in the dark , I think .
CM : Can you tell me about the underground scene you found in Montreal after moving there in 2009 ?
Pemberton : Oh , it was really exciting time , man . I just felt like I was in the right place at the right time . I moved there because my friends , David [ Carriere ] and Jane [ Penny ] from Edmonton , had moved there ahead of me . They had a group at the time called Silly Kissers and I was just looking at all these photos of them on Facebook and they were wearing face paint , wearing crazy clothes , and I was like , you can never do that in Edmonton . In Alberta , you get yelled at if you look different . So , I was really inspired by that , so I went and moved there .
We had this crazy artistic community . We would have house parties and that was the first time I met Claire [ Boucher ], who is Grimes . Our whole crew was like Grimes , Sean Nicholas Savage , Jane
CANADIAN MUSICIAN 39