So Fresh, So Clean: “Step Out” with Cadence Weapon
Photo credit: Vonny Lorde
All natural, not synthetic: Cadence Weapon’s new single, “Step Out,” signals a fresh energy, sound and style for the award-winning rapper/producer/author. With its high-key charisma, the product of the song’s creative triple-threat with Junia-T and DijahSB, “Step Out” revels in the golden age of 90s hip hop and fashion, fitting threads for the vintage-loving lyricist.
The official video for “Step Out,” directed by Fatty Soprano.
Cadence Weapon revisits his debut album, Breaking Kayfabe, with a special run of shows this fall in honour of its 20th anniversary. The Polaris Prize nominated landmark debut was recently named to the Globe and Mail’s 101 Best Canadian albums and The Toronto Star's 17 most important albums of the 2000s. Outlasting most from that era, Breaking Kayfabe is a testament to the grit and grime it takes to break out - and stay there - for over two decades. See tour dates below.
Subscribe to Cadence Weapon’s Substack for essays on the importance of thrifting, Breaking Kayfabe at 20 and more here.
TOUR DATES
11/20 Toronto, ON - The Garrison
11/21 Montreal, QC - Bar Le Ritz
11/22 Ottawa, ON - NAC
12/27 Edmonton, AB - Starlite Room
Tickets and details here.
ABOUT CADENCE WEAPON
A Renaissance man for the Digital Age, Cadence Weapon aka Rollie Pemberton is rapper/producer/author with a list of accomplishments and credits so long - from receiving industry accolades for his music to receiving awards for critiquing this same industry in his writing - you might wonder what more is there for him to do. Even so, Fall 2025 finds the Polaris Music Prize winner with a new frame of mind and yet more on the go. From the bouncy new single “Step Out,” which sees Cadence Weapon in the company of Toronto hiphop lions Junia-T and DijahSB, to prepping his third book, an essay collection titled Ways of Listening, and running back his debut album, Breaking Kayfabe, with a twentieth anniversary tour, Cadence Weapon continues his impressive roll.
At once encyclopedically historical and presciently future-minded, Cadence Weapon is known first and foremost for his lyricism: charged commentary and cautionary tales of artificiality, tech-culture, classicism, gentrification, exploitation and more fit beside the self-aware chronicles of his own life and career, encapsulated in his most recent album, Rollercoaster. Cadence Weapon has made good on the critical acclaim of his early work and still remains at the avant-garde, pushing boundaries and buttons while his signature electronic/industrial sound, a “grimy clarion call,” (Pitchfork) rings on.
An award-winning columnist and contributor to urgent cultural conversations (CBC Commotion, Hazlitt, Mood Machine, docuseries Paid in Full and more), ‘music industry sage’ Cadence Weapon represents the best of the west as Edmonton’s former Poet Laureate. Now based in Hamilton, Pemberton is poised to surprise his listeners yet again in 2026 with the release of his next album, complete with live instrumentation and a thematic pivot.
