Rhyme and Reason

Like any self-respecting superhero, a credible hip-hop MC needs a compelling origin story. It usually goes something like this: a once unassuming if undeniably gifted mortal faces adversity and then comes to assume a new persona — and, crucially, a new name — before laying waste to the competition and claiming the throne.

Rollie Pemberton (to use the author’s more prosaic name) approaches hip-hop from an angle all his own, so it’s fitting that he begins his memoir in less self-aggrandizing terms than his peers might. Bedroom Rapper opens with a scene featuring “an archetypal introverted fourteen-year-old Black nerd” in grade 10 math class at a Catholic high school in Edmonton:

I was sitting at my desk in navy-blue Adidas tearaways with neon-green stripes when a pugnacious white kid with spiky blond hair named Devin tapped...