BEDROOM RAPPER Launch with Rollie Pemberton

Join us in-shop on June 16 at 7 p.m. (MT) to celebrate the launch of Rollie Pemberton’s BEDROOM RAPPER, published by McClelland & Stewart. Rollie will be in conversation with culture writer and broadcaster Vish Khanna followed by an audience Q&A.

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COVID SAFETY MEASURES

All attendees will be required to wear a mask upon entering the gallery. 

PARKING & ACCESSIBILITY

Latitude 53 is located at 10242 106 St. in Edmonton. There are two parking stalls directly in front of the gallery entrance and additional street parking in front of the gallery along 106 St. Street parking becomes free after 6 p.m., unless there is an event taking place at Rogers Place the same evening. There are also multiple paid parking lots within one block of the gallery. 

Latitude 53 is easily accessible by way of several ETS routes, including the 7, 110X, and 500X, and is located roughly three blocks south of the Corona LRT station.

The front door of the gallery is 35 inches wide. This is wide enough to accommodate most mobility devices, such as a walker or standard-sized wheelchair, but may be a tight squeeze for others.

All washrooms are gender-neutral, with multiple stalls sharing a sink space, as well as a separate, physically accessible single-stall washroom.

A detailed accessibility breakdown can be found here on the Latitude 53 website.

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ABOUT THE BOOK:

Tracing his roots from recording beats in his mom's attic in Edmonton to performing with some of the most recognizable names in rap and electronic music—De La Soul, Public Enemy, Mos Def, Questlove, Diplo, and more—Polaris Prize winner Rollie Pemberton, a.k.a Cadence Weapon, captures the joy in finding yourself, and how a sense of place and purpose entwines inextricably with a music scene.

From competitive basement family karaoke to touring Europe, from fights with an exploitative label to finding his creative voice, from protesting against gentrification to using his music to centre political change, Rollie charts his own development alongside a shifting musical landscape. As Rollie finds his feet, the bottom falls out of the industry, and he captures the way so many artists were able to make a nimble name for themselves while labels floundered.

BEDROOM RAPPER also offers us a wide-ranging and crucial history of hip-hop. With an international perspective that's often missing from rap music journalism, he integrates the gestation of American hip hop with UK grime and niche scenes from the Canadian prairies, bringing his obsessive knowledge of hip-hop to bear on his subject. Rollie takes us into New York in the ’70s, Edmonton in the ’90s, the legendary Montreal DIY loft scene of the 2000s, and traces the ups and downs of trusting your gut and following your passion, obsessively.

With a foreword by Gabriel Szatan, music fans and creators alike will relate to the dedication to craft, obsessive passion for what came before, and desire to shift the future that is embodied in every creative project Rollie takes on. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

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.

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