videos
Cadence Weapon - Hype Man The new visual treatment from this Canadian rapper takes a satirical look at the rap ego.
When I spoke to him in March last year , Cadence Weapon spoke of how the track Hype Man from his LP ‘Hope In Dirt City’ was intended to be a slyly comic look at rap culture, and how he saw the rapper persona becoming something of a caricature of itself:
“I feel like my song ‘Hype Man’, which is more of a UK bass sounding song, is about [a critical approach to hip hop]. I wanted to play a bunch of characters when you have this one very mean rapper guy who is just totally treating his hype man like shit. The hype man doesn’t really see it like that and thinks the rapper is going to give him a chance to become a rapper in his own right, but it never happens for him. There’s something about hip hop culture and the specificity of it all, the little nuances and funny unspoken relationships… The big picture stuff doesn’t interest me as much.”
True to his vision of the track, the video for Hype Man sees Cadence Weapon in a T.I./T.I.P.-esque split character study of the rapper and the hype man, and pokes fun at elements of rap without deriding them. If there’s one thing that’s underrated in rap-at-large, it’s having a self-deprecating sense of humour, so Hype Man feels quite refreshing.
- 07.02.13
