Released November 28, 2005 Length 49:40 | Genre Hip hop Label Upper Class Canada | |
Producer Cadence Weapon and Nik Kozub Breaking Kayfabe
(2005) Afterparty Babies
(2008) | ||
Breaking Kayfabe is the debut album by Canadian rapper Cadence Weapon, released in 2005 on Upper Class Recordings. It was also released in the United States by Anti-Records on March 13, 2007. Breaking kayfabe is a professional wrestling term for "breaking character".
Breaking Kayfabe received positive reviews from critics who praised the 8-bit style beats and intellectual lyrics meshing well together. The album was shortlisted for the 2006 Polaris Music Prize. However, it lost to Final Fantasy's He Poos Clouds.
Critical reception
Breaking Kayfabe garnered highly positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 80, based on 9 reviews.
Francis Jones of Drowned in Sound praised the songs for having both production and lyrics feel equal and unique, saying that, "Breaking Kayfabe is a record that demands and deserves undivided attention, its creator fashioning a brain-searing patchwork of ragged rap, electronic flourishes and truncated rhythms." Marisa Brown of AllMusic also praised Cadence for crafting electro beats over songs that carry intelligent lyrics, concluding with, "Breaking Kayfabe is a cohesive set of songs, backpacker in the best of senses, smart and witty and provocative, experimental and well-produced, but at the same time very raw and very real-sounding. It's not often that a debut does all this correctly; listeners would be wise to pay attention." Peter Macia of Pitchfork Media gave praise to Cadence foregoing hip-hop conventions and instead worked on smart lyricism and video game-inspired production, concluding that "Breaking Kayfabe may not be his masterpiece, but it hints that he may be capable of one, and now you can finally get his music without having to write a check to his landlord." Ian Mathers of Stylus Magazine noted that the production starts to sound droll at first but found the production and lyricism shining bright after a few listens, concluding with, "Too exciting for the underground (maybe), too weird for the overground (hopefully not), he deserves to be heard by both; I'm willing to bet it's all because he's Canadian."