Ryan Leslie, c/d, s/d

this album's better than the 1st

i guess i like his 'bloopy bubble backround noise' effect more than 'neptunes bass jangle' effect

i still find dude a way more difficult presence as an artist than he should be, though

like when folks hate on the-dream's persona, i find leslie way more ... i dunno ... unlikeable. hes so much more reserved & insincere feeling or something

i like him because i think he is more relatable in a different way

love that pusha t almost sounds like he's rapping about liking project runway. from cooking crack to sundays on the couch watching bravo...

i find leslie way more ... i dunno ... unlikeable. hes so much more reserved & insincere feeling or something

kind of sad that i can't engage w/ this album despite the fact that i really want to. there's just no excitement or something.

andy k, <3 the brady bunch ref in your review

Lanvin broke niggas call em ray-bans

i don't think leslie is more unlikable he's just a more boring writer

i think he's definitely "unlikable" - there's plenty of other issues that make his assholishness interesting & worthwhile to me though

like what

i could see not "liking" him because he's sort of a boring presence but i think you really need to be stretching with your extrapolation to think he's actively an asshole or something

I find him obnoxious but I've no idea why so it's completely unjustified. I like both his albums this year

don't get much of an asshole vibe from him, but find him less likable than The Dream b/c he a boring writer/performer.

interesting though that everyone sites "gibberish," the one song he didn't write vocals for, as his high point. you do get the feeling in his singing that he's also a little bored by his lyrics. he does seem looser or something on "gibberish." i could see the process of writing the words instead of just singing random shit taking the fun out of it.

like what

― a goon boy (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, November 3, 2009 5:50 PM (53 minutes ago)

fwiw, here's what i just wrote, last paragraph of my review

The usual complaints arise, of course – first and foremost, Leslie needs to drop this deluded dream he has of being a rapper. Songs like “Sunday Night” threaten to be sabotaged by Leslie’s laughably gauche punchlines, and even on “Something That I Like” (where his swagless “rapping” is actually much more tolerable), he’s completely upstaged by a very average Pusha T verse. At best, though, Leslie’s lyrics are agreeably bland, so what makes him so damn compelling? Is it my own sadistic nerd projection? Maybe; there’s certainly something gratifying in seeing a Harvard-educated wannabe playboy continually trip over his own lyrical feet. But Leslie’s gift for melody and mood is undeniable, and ultimately his strengths outweigh his weaknesses, especially on this record. For as long as he’s going to be referring to the girl he’s trying to get to spend the night with him as his “sidekick,” he’s gonna need to keep whipping up these great gloomy atmospheres to bum out to.

swagless!

thank you

yeah i don't really get an asshole vibe from him either, occasional "I could be with any other fine girl instead of you" lyrics aside, more like he's just a studio nerd famous for desperate web 2.0 stunts like faking YouTube stats, which would make me like him less if i didn't think he was a really talented guy and kind of an underdog

wasn't he cleared of the youtube controversy?

i dunno, never heard anything proving he didn't, link?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoHr2QmB2Mo

the point isn't whether r-les was guilty of juking the stats (oh noes) or not but that that minor fiasco was another unsurprising daily event in his implacable diddy-without-the-heart endless vlogger multimedia cross-promotion start-up company hype campaign which had been rolling on since like 2005. none of which would make him an asshole as such (he isn't really), but then when he finally follows through with that self-satisfied pharrellian chocolate-box banality of an album earlier this year i was more than a little fucked off with dude, yeah - after all the stringing-along it felt like he was quite happy just to blithely drop off his business card for the (to quote brainwasher way upthread) "...but I can't wait to hear what he comes with next!" happy helmet set, scented with just enough weak lavendery perfume to mask the main "It sucks that a lot of these songs have been around forever so the album doesn't feel particularly fresh..." bit.

funny thing is i really really like this new one though; way stronger balance between the light playfulness of what's always going to be something of a vanity side-project - he seems to be knowingly aware of his capriciousness now in a way others (like say terius) aren't (not a de facto good or bad thing-in itself before you jump on me) and not taking the piss and seeming fundamentally insincere, with better songwriting and mildly compelling better attention to detail this time round. i don't believe he should suffer critically for that lightness when dudes like dam-funk or wonky dubsteppers jacking boogie moves on hyperdub are on the exact same yuppie shit he is but gameface it out with quintuple gatefold lp sets and sophisticatedly finessed pr prescences (respectively).

another thing is that as time's gone by (since the earlier album i guess) it's felt like there's been an appreciably solidified difference between his solo stuff and his outside production, which are often more sculpted and have the darker bassier contemplative gloomy atmospherics that k3v talks about but i have trouble quite locating on this album.

the back half of his s/t kind of hints at that feel, but the new one really fleshes it out and explores it more fully. it's a winter album for that reason, like i said

i do still think i prefer the first to this though, as much as i like it. the highs are probably more pronounced and the production is probably fundamentally more impressive to me, though Transition is (to beat a dead horse here) more of a mood piece that begs to be explored - kind of the definition of a grower

er, i just kind of realized i'm disagreeing with you w/ that first post? i dunno, right out the gate you can tell there's a different look he's going for - compare "never gonna break up" & "something that i like" w/ "diamond girl" & "addiction"

but 'addiction' is the darkest out of that lot, surely? i agree that transition is more of a grower but that's by virtue of its level consistency rather than by any definable shift in mood or scope. i need to listen to the first again before i say any more tbh; like i say the context will have changed entirely though.

suppose it might matter that i refuse to acknowledge the version of 'addiction' with fabolous on it - the presence of a third party totally spoiled that shit.

but yeah no fine, 'addiction' is just the one track like that anyway; i see what you're generally saying but - slighty more demure production aside - he is still exactly the same guy on transition as he is the s/t. the trick of this album is in not making that guy look so glibly irritating now so you can have a wry smile and a pinch of salt to go with his continuing r-les-ness.

"Addiction" definitely felt more like itself in its original incarnation, but that's one of my favorite recentish Fab verses and I always think of it when I think of the song (whereas I never thought his encroachment on "Shawty Is A Ten" was an improvement in any way and kind of ruined the intro)

i dont get the comparison to dam funk / wonky dubstep at all (& i only feel defensive about the former, usually totally into h8ing on dubstep but whats the comparison exactly??)

i <3 his rapping fwiw

like, i would take this more seriously if he released it on quadruple gatefold? i doubt it

deej I don't think you're the kinda strawman r|t|c's referring to.

no leave it, he likes puzzling me out. http://www.soulstrut.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/popcorn.gif

i didnt mean that tho, i just mean this 'lightness' 'yuppy' thing ... i dont get the concept behind it -- that these guys are all indulgent? that there's not ... what ... meat to it? what does that mean? it feels like a vague concept imo

oh no doubt it's a vague concept. i mean, i like dam-funk okay i guess but i just feel i'm unlikely to ever see anyone finding him a problematic artist the same way they might leslie, and the only real reason i can see for that - besides the fact that leslie sings songs and dam-funk doesn't, which is a superficial distinction imo - is that dam-funk has all the apparently legitimizing trimmings of a serious musical dude of gravitas. and what they share is not a sense of indulgence as such but i dunno, a dorky retro boogie keyb capriciousness, a cute 80s flavoured peculiarity. (maybe leslie is more of modern times for some people but that's how i hear him anyway to a certain extent.)

the yuppie thing is partly a straight descriptive of that (particularly in leslie's case) but also - besides being my handy way of stating where i stand on wonky artists and kode9's pert claims on a lineage from pirate radio/nuum/etc, heh heh - kinda nicely sums up the ~vybe i get from these three put together, what's at play in the sphere of fandom (that i find myself in too, to an extent, tbf) for this sort of stuff: i dunno, it's all a bit, um...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGsht0Lto9o

~ internet connection, babyyy - serious~

... yknow?

anyways, carry on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXWJB-XZFUY

i posted this upthread, but this is probably my favorite r leslie thing from this year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63sl_txFw5A

listening to transitions and enjoying the hell out of the sound, the 80s yuppie twinkly keyboards and bass and stuff, he's such a great and distinct producer. unfortunately still a total nonentity as a frontman. i don't get how anyone could think he's an asshole: he'd have to impinge on you at all to get to that stage.

i mean come on, he's inarguably an asshole! it's whether or not it affects your reaction to the music that's the question

how long have we been arguing the point for you to suddenly throw out "inarguably"?

i agree with lex tho, he's largely a non-entity as a frontman - it would be like calling your comforter an asshole or something. it's just kinda there. idk.

asshole is maybe too strong a way of putting it but i still think what we all discussed on a rolling r&b of the past about leslie being cut from kanye cloth applies; certainly back in the day he used to run his mouth a lot more (dimly recall one particular whinge about not getting his dues where he took a pop at ne-yo!) but i guess that all impinges more on a rss reader than it does one's ears. not that that doesn't still count of course.

essentially with him in particular people are always gonna have very differing reactions to his persona, depending on a variety of factors - i doubt he'll ever be one for the outright definitives so the scope for interpretation is greater than your average.

i couldnt really ever say he's a non-entity as a frontman though - slight and amateurish sure, but there's as much to chew on with him as with anyone else.

I think he wants to come off like an asshole more than he actually is one. Arrogance is a common trait of the kind of stardom he aspires to! After all, what else is "I'm a lead man, you could be my co-star" but wishful thinking? And possibly his pickup line to Cassie all those years ago?

i mightve misremembered that ne-yo hypebeef or else they made up, why because ooh this look intersting

http://www.sohh.com/2009/09/fabolous_ryan_leslie_ne-y.html

OMFG wait how could i forget about that ultra-bateman interview with him a few years ago, hold up while i find it!

In the time I’ve spent with Leslie, he has revealed only two interests beyond his life as a musician and an entrepreneur. The first is buying custom-made clothes. The second is watching DVD biographies of industrial-era titans like John D. Rockefeller. Ask him to speak contemplatively, and he’ll quickly hide behind platitudes or shift the discussion to talk about the next goals in his sights. At these times, he pitches his tone less to the person sitting across from him and more to some sort of vast audience in his head. As though he were speaking into Daytona’s camera and dispensing advice to fans, like in his video-diary entry titled “A Word About Good Representation.” (This tone can sometimes contrast sharply with his surroundings: He once gave a lofty speech to me over a meal at Jimbo’s Hamburger Palace—the cash-only greasy spoon on Lenox Avenue where Leslie eats almost all his meals.)

http://nymag.com/news/features/24094/ , of 2006 vintage!