Oh nice! I’m playing in Montreal with @mike-eagle.bsky.social on May 7th at L’Esco. Come through!

I’m only spiritually British (I’m actually Canadian!) but the featured rapper Manga is an actual UK legend from the group Roll Deep. Thanks for the props!

Tonight at 8 pm ET I will be sharing my new album Forager for the first time ever during a free private virtual listening party!

I'll be breaking down each track one-by-one. Might play some unreleased demos and other stuff too.

You can sign up for the stream here: tinyurl.com/cwforager

I read the geese piece in wired & what I have to contribute is that undisclosed advertising campaigns, in addition to probably being literally illegal (like FMC points out in my LRT), are extremely harmful to media integrity. this includes not just paid UGC campaigns but unlabeled spon-con (1/2)

Cadence Weapon, Junia-T - Toronto Zoo (feat. James Baley) [Official Video] YouTube video by Cadence Weapon

This is the final single from my upcoming album Forager, dropping in two weeks!

Trust me, as an artist myself, I know! That’s why I mentioned PR specifically. Not many indie bands can afford the most powerful PR firms

All props go to Eliza McLamb for uncovering it first, but I’m happy to spread it out there further

That bummed me out too! I paid to see his show at History in Toronto. Hate to think that I was fooled into it somehow

Very interesting euphemism for fraud

What makes it so hard to untangle is that these bands use this agency alongside traditional methods: booking agents, press interviews, etc.

The music is also often quite good, further complicating the picture. You’d think it’s just a good band with decent press if you were unaware of the jet fuel.

That’s the thing is that the music is generally pretty good so I kept listening. Now I feel like I got fooled into being a fan.

Another good euphemism they had was saying "controlling the discourse" to describe using hundreds of accounts to post comments under a band's SNL performance to make it look like everyone loved it.

Yeah, PR exists. That's nothing new. And what I like is consistent and based on my existing taste. Just feels a bit slimy to think that I possibly didn't find out about Dijon or Mk.gee organically or by own choice. This situation is not quite the same as happening upon them in a magazine, you know?

On top of that, the majors all own a piece of Spotify behind the scenes and use that to leverage better placement for their artists within the app. To paraphrase George Carlin, it's one big club and we ain't in it.

Yeah, I had no idea that they had taken astroturfing and brought it to music until I read Eliza's piece. It's getting hard to be able to even trust our own ears and taste.

Eliza's piece blew me away, finally confirmed something that I suspected was happening but couldn't totally prove. It's a scary time to be an artist and a fan, we can't even be sure if we like something because it was our own idea or because it was explicitly served up to us!

Music is an arms race and major label bands with powerful agents and PR have a new weapon: a sophisticated army of fake fans.

In this piece, I navigate my future as an independent musician in a world where it’s finally been proven that the most hyped bands really do have their thumbs on the scale.

The Trend Simulation Era Your favourite band made it big with the help of hundreds of fake accounts. Does it matter?

I wrote about digital music marketing agency Chaotic Good Projects. Musician Eliza McLamb uncovered that they used hundreds of fake accounts to artificially generate buzz for bands like Geese, Mk.gee and Dijon. The co-founders call it "trend simulation."

happy to announce that Canadian legend Cadence Weapon is joining us in Montreal and Toronto

and underground icon lt. headtrip is rocking with us in Cleveland

less than six weeks away. get tickets while you can

mikeeaglestinks.tumblr.com/post/8966612...

Cadence Weapon: Live Concert | CBC Music Live YouTube video by CBC Music

I performed most of my upcoming album on CBC with a full live band. I even managed to fit a costume change in there. You can watch the whole thing here.

Yeah, that’s crossed my mind. I need to learn more about how I would switch everything over.

Do either of those platforms have a social media aspect to them or is it just pure newsletter posting?

I’m gonna start looking into how I can switch over and what that would entail.

Thank you! This is one place that hasn’t been stressful so far. Substack has been enjoyable as well

Farewell to X A final goodbye to Twitter and thoughts on how our time might be better spent

Posting on Twitter was something that I felt I still needed to do to stay relevant as a musician and a writer. But the blowback from a viral tweet I made last week has led me to finally leave the app for good. This is my elegy for X.

Cadence Weapon, Junia-T, Ariel - Raghouse (Official Video) YouTube video by Cadence Weapon

Past champ @cadenceweapon.bsky.social's new song "Raghouse."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wusu...

Into the Raghouse How the shadowy world of textile recycling inspired my new single

I wrote about how scoping out ‘90s Calvin Klein ads and digging for vintage clothes at a textile recycling facility informed my new single “Raghouse.”

The test pressings for Forager just arrived and they sound insane!

So stoked for people to hear this album next month.

Pre-order the vinyl here: cadenceweapon.bandcamp.com/album/forager

The Problem Solvers My take on the Live Nation / Ticketmaster DOJ settlement

I wrote this Ticketmaster / Live Nation villain origin story in response to the settlement of their US DOJ antitrust lawsuit, somehow managing to invoke the door price policies of ancient Greek theatres in the process.

there was a time during my teens where Del was basically Nas + Biggie in my rap pantheon, Rollie does well explaining how beloved he was among a certain subset of rap dorks

Thanks for checking it out!