I knew before going into last night’s show that Cadence Weapon was a brilliant musician—and probably the smartest lyricist currently working in hip hop, so no surprises on that front. There were, however, some things I did not know:

(1) CW is also an incredibly nice, approachable guy. He’s Canadian, so the odds were in favor of this one, but nice to have confirmation.

(2) He has a new album out, Afterparty Babies, which on the basis of a preliminary listen, sounds just as good as his debut.

(3) Born Ruffians, fellow Canadians with whom he was touring, are actually pretty great too. I had actually planned to just show up for Weapon and then head home early. Fortunately they changed the order of their sets, which meant that I got to discover a solid new band. I was about to write that the double-header makes this the best show I’ve seen in a long time, but the Doug Gillard/Times New Viking combo at Don Pedro’s in Brooklyn last week also made for a strong show. Gillard you’ve probably already heard on the latter-day Guided by Voices albums, but they’re all worth checking out.