Fat Tony + Cadence Weapon Tour
Fall 2021 Tour
Cadence Weapon and Fat Tony embark on an extensive North America tour, set to kick off September 30, 2021 in Denver, CO. The tour includes cities: Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle + more. Tickets are now on sale here. See more details below.
Tour Dates:
9/30 – Denver, CO – Hi-Dive
10/2 – Chicago, IL – The Empty Bottle
10/3 – Cleveland, OH – Beachland Tavern
10/6 – Brooklyn, NY – The Sultan Room
10/8 – Atlanta, GA – The Earl
10/13 – Houston, TX – White Oak Music Hall (Upstairs)
10/15 – Austin, TX – Far Out Lounge
10/16 – Dallas, TX - Club Dada
10/20 – Los Angeles, CA – Zebulon
10/21 – San Francisco, CA – Bottom of the Hill
10/22 – Portland, OR – Polaris Hall
10/23 – Seattle, WA – Clock Out
MORE INFO ON CADENCE WEAPON:
Cadence Weapon is Edmonton-born, Toronto-based rapper, producer, writer and poet Rollie Pemberton. The son of a pioneering hip-hop radio DJ, Pemberton grew up around a diverse library of music. Splitting his time between Edmonton's experimental electronic and underground rap scenes as a teenager, Pemberton eventually developed a hybrid of both styles. Cadence Weapon has released five albums, all of which have been nominated for the Polaris Prize, with Breaking Kayfabe (2006) and Hope In Dirt City (2012) being shortlist nominees. Pemberton has toured exclusively following the success of these albums, playing festivals like Glastonbury, Lollapalooza, Pitchfork Music Festival, Roskilde, and Primavera Sound and performing shows with artists such as Public Enemy, Diplo, Questlove, De La Soul and many more.
Pemberton's music is known for pairing groundbreaking production with incisive, socially conscious lyricism. Pemberton served as Poet Laureate of Edmonton from 2009 to 2011, making him the literary ambassador of his hometown. His poem "The Garden" was incorporated into a bronze sculpture at the Alberta Legislature Grounds in Edmonton in 2018. Pemberton was the narrator and a writer for the VICELAND television series PAYDAY and Mister Tachyon and he has hosted lectures and conducted live interviews for CBC q and Red Bull Music Academy. His newest album Parallel World was released this April and was selected as a 2021 Polaris Prize Short List nominee. Pemberton is writing a book about his career called Bedroom Rapper that will be published by McClelland & Stewart in May 2022.
MORE INFO ON FAT TONY:
Somewhere between DJ Screw and Bad Brains, De La Soul and Scritti Politti sits Houston’s native son, Fat Tony. For the last decade, Anthony Lawson Jude Ifeanyichukwu Obiawunaotu has been everywhere: from star-making turns on the first A$AP Rocky mixtape to hosting shows on Viceland and Super Deluxe, to co-founding a DIY culture magazine to playing every worthwhile rap party in America and burning the stage down every single time. A singular and experimentally-minded rap artist adept at both traditional regional styles and indie pop, hardcore thrash, and melodic candy-painted bangers. He is punk in the platonic sense of the word: experimental and subversive, but also funny, whimsical, and virtuosic.
Over the course of more than a half-dozen LPs, and countless other short-form gems and collaborations with everyone from Das Racist to Bun B, Fat Tony has reimagined and blurred the boundaries of hip-hop. There are a few things you can depend on in this schizophrenic world. About once or twice a year, Fat Tony will drop an album and it will sound like nothing that he has done before. There’s a spirit of creative restlessness and intelligence that runs through his deep discography. He is a national treasure, one of those rappers destined to seem forever underrated until you ask around and realize that everyone in their right mind likes Fat Tony. He is the Whataburger of rappers: if you know you know.
Raised in Houston’s historically black and culturally radical neighborhood, the Third Ward, Tony’s mom and teachers educated him from the get-go about how this was the regional cradle for the Black Panther Party — and how BP hero, Carl Hampton, was murdered by the Houston Police Department. It was an environment where social awareness and Pan-Africanism were always around and celebrated. His childhood home was filled with records—country music, King Sunny Adé, and Jimmy Cliff from his father’s collection, his mother’s classical music, rock, and soul, and his granny’s gospel. Then as a teenager, empowered by the internet and his discovery of independent artists like E-40, Bikini Kill, and Bad Brains, Fat Tony began recording and distributing his own music. Heavily influenced by renowned Texas rappers like UGK and Scarface, Fat Tony started playing and organizing live shows at a time when there wasn’t much of a scene for young artists in Houston. He started booking bands of all types from all over, hand-making flyers for the shows and mailing them to addresses nabbed from the Carnegie Vanguard High School student directory.
His dedication to Houston’s rap scene earned him Houston Press Music Awards’ “Best Underground Hip Hop Artist” in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2013. Primed for more national audiences, Fat Tony began taking his music on tour and collaborated with more artists around the country. His sonically unpredictable and emotionally vulnerable music has garnered praise from Pitchfork, The Fader, and Noisey. His achievements in rap have pushed him out of his comfort zone into other performance and hosting opportunities on TV and the Internet. Last fall, Fat Tony released Exotica on Carpark Records. It heralds his most visionary work yet, an ode to the art of storytelling through music. A rich and compact iteration of rap short fiction that firmly establishes him as his own one-man genre, the preeminent post-modern griot shooting game.