★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

the ch'uum, as it is referred to at conferences all over england.

jeremih is a way better comp than trey songz

― ico, Thursday, March 24, 2011 12:13 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

have u heard 'anticipation'? i think its iciness is a lot closer to what this is aiming for

itt deej and lex get mad at tastemakers

― dayo, Thursday, March 24, 2011 11:03 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

who's mad?

im scoffing disdainfully @ them

I've listened to this now and much of it sonically is real 1998 arse-end of trip-hop stuff. Has he sung over the Sneaker Pimps yet?

i too was thinking along those lines Matt, especially Curvatia by SpaceK.

[granted i haven't heard that album in years and need to dig it out to see if there is a connection .. ]

still tho weeknd are p obv going for a mood that is p distinct from all these other artists you are mentioning itt so

― ico, Thursday, March 24, 2011 8:35 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^ why does this point get missed. lex it seems like you still feel that they're going for a certain mood + failing but i dont think thats it

― just sayin, Thursday, March 24, 2011 8:39 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

haha yeah I love how lex is all sputtering "b-b-b-but you should listen to marsha ambrosius!!!' when marsha ambrosius sounds nothing like this

anyway I just relistened to the second jeremih album and it's like a really good version of this album except it came out first

also you should skip the track with 50 on it

i never heard the second jeremih....to spotify i go.

it's great!

some good points here: http://blatantineptitude.blogspot.com/2011/03/jj-abrams-ication-of-music-on-web.html

version of "The Morning" doesnt have the slo-mo vocal effect abused by salem
i liked the old version but i like this version too
― gr8080, Monday, March 21, 2011 8:48 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lolling that salem is ref point, not dj screw

the beats remind me of this the-dream/santogold track which i love and still listen to a lot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtWT_6ftriU

so many posts since last night, it's almost too hard to respond to everything. i know this post is gonna come off a bit defensive but glad people aren't ganging up on me. i don't nec wanna be the strawman for 'indie' 'blog reader' who only listens to something if it's weird. but i might as well accept parts of it even though i dislike indie rock and i don't read blogs. i've always liked 'the exception to the rule' music. it's almost a joke now. i'm feeling this bette midler house track. but i'm so deep in the beardy/balearic/cosmic record collecting scene where i'm always on the lookout for a funky track by a generally non-funky musician. throw a synth on it™ and i'm in heaven. disco track by a rock musician. boom. popstar records in africa or african musician records in france. oh yeah. i'm also sorta ADD in my music tastes. i get so into some genre until i feel i've squeezed the life out of them then i'm onto the next one. so it's not that i'm like this outsider to r'n'b. i've been listening to it on and off since elementary school. and it's not like i have an aversion to radio pop. it's not the major label feeling that i didn't like about trey songz. that gloss has nothing to do with being on a major label. i love tons of major label stuff. there are tons of HUGE acts that can do interesting things. beyonce, rihanna, wayne (sorry guys). they can have a song on the radio a billion times and it still sounds interesting. even some BEP. i don't hate on those guys. but there really was a feeling on the TS album that he was reading from a script of cliched phrases of what an r'n'b loverman would say to his lady. i've since listened to the How To Dress Well & The Dream albums, trying to do a lil catch up on 'real' and 'not real' r'n'b. HTDW was my least favorite out of all this. i said i liked sloppy, but this was taking it too far. i liked the parts of it that were the least "soulful" i guess, but when he started singing over new jack loops w/noise on top. meh. the dream album was fantastic. everything about it, from the drum programming to the synths and his singing voice and production. there was dirt and noise in stuff. (i coulda done w/o that florida university song though, and wish cee lo didn't cover it). anyways, glad a thread like this has come along for me to spend some time w/different music. next up is frank ocean (not looking forward to it tbh) and jerimih's second album.

i can't rate the dream highly enough...i have listened to love king more than any other lp of the last few years.

curious to hear what you think of the frank ocean record, jaxon.

me too

the unspoken message i get out of conversations like this is kind of like "I really like R&B or the IDEA of R&B, but I'm only going to sit down with an album of it if it's something outside the major label system that gets blog hype as being especially weird or creative"

― some dude, Wednesday, March 23, 2011 5:01 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

and really, i was overly dismissive of lex considering i more or less agree w/ his overarching point, which is that this group is not particularly great or important but they're quirky, which means a lot to critics right now in general

its something ive been wrestling w/ in other areas of music as well -- it seems like theres a disproportionate amount of media attention for 'certain kinds' of acts that is based on some fantastical notion of perceived significance that seems heavily inflated relative to musical accomplishments, but that ends up becoming 'true' through sheer force of will on behalf of influential people

imo

― so fly zone (D-40), Wednesday, March 23, 2011 5:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

not to give the impression that i don't value music crit or pay attention to trends in crit circles, but i think not being a critic myself and just being a guy who likes music and occasionally gets paid to DJ gives me the luxury to not give a shit about this stuff?

also, this was touched on upthread wrt 'pageantry and theatricality', but pop music has always been about more than faceless recorded music. image and quirk and mythos arent't unfortunate byproducts of pop music, they're part of its makeup. there's absolutely nothing wrong with liking the weeknd because of a quirky aesthetic.

btw it should go w/o saying i'm pretty much in the same boat as jaxon taste-wise.

the thing abt 'quirkiness' is only really addressed at other critics / journalists writing about how 'important' this is. its not addressed at people who just like the music, man. obviously my taste heavily overlaps w/ yours & jaxon's when it comes to this kind of stuff, but there is a commonality to all the stuff the three of us have ever talked about, which is that we all think the songs are good, right? like, you want to listen to them over & over? i know you like these, but for me these just arent good songs on the level of, like, former porn stars singing about 'flying like an eagle' or eartha kitt's disco record -- both of which are campy, but not, like, constructed sloppily as an affect. they both function to me the way great songs are supposed to function. that they are weird/interesting is a bonus.

anyway this is where it comes to an issue of taste -- i just wanted to be clear where my lines are w/ this

grady just listen to R&B

― D-40, Tuesday, March 22, 2011 9:32 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark

also, this was touched on upthread wrt 'pageantry and theatricality', but pop music has always been about more than faceless recorded music. image and quirk and mythos arent't unfortunate byproducts of pop music, they're part of its makeup. there's absolutely nothing wrong with liking the weeknd because of a quirky aesthetic.

i can't tell if you're flipping my argument on me on purpose or what but i was saying that 'anonymous' anti-image stuff like The Weeknd, while certainly shrewdly mythology-building in its own right, is kind of a way of hooking people who are turned off by more star/persona-driven R&B that's more overtly about dramatic videos and big melismatic vocal performances.

i dont know if i was flipping it on you or not but i was saying that image is part of it no matter what, and some ppl like the jj-abrams-ication image

you cant be "anti-image" i guess is what i was saying, there's no such thing

haven't listened to them, but on a scale of 1 - 10, how #based is this band?

the unspoken message i get out of conversations like this is kind of like "I really like R&B or the IDEA of R&B, but I'm only going to sit down with an album of it if it's something outside the major label system that gets blog hype as being especially weird or creative"
― some dude, Wednesday, March 23, 2011 5:01 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

i just wrote something a little unsatisfying about this, but ... there's always the impulse to discuss this stuff on the level of media, perceived coolness, and what's "okay to like" -- what seems much harder for people to talk about is, like, what specific difference makes this intriguing to certain listeners in a way mainstream r&b is not? I'm not discounting the effect of media, or the air of cool, or tribal affiliation, but that feels minor: this record does concrete things differently than mainstream r&b I like just as much or better, and that sticks out pretty clearly if i, say listen to it during commercials on 106&park. production sensibility, emotional effect, sense of persona -- I don't even know that they're pointedly "weird" so much as just a slightly different thing. ("weird" depends where you're coming from, I guess; like many people, I enjoy r&b and beach house both, so this doesn't exactly jar!) it might be hard to articulate, but it seems easy to hear concrete choices here that will be inviting to one audience rather than another.

it actually seems to me that it would be productive if, instead of worrying much about audience-crossing and such, we considered it a GOOD thing for acts to stake out weird middle stances between styles and methods we're used to, just to open out the field and see what develops!

grady just listen to R&B

― D-40, Tuesday, March 22, 2011 9:32 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark

― gr8080, Thursday, 24 March 2011 21:35 (10 minutes ago) Permalink

tbf this was in response to you saying that this music made u think of sex & weed & dismissing sade as old woman music

man grady you really think sade is old woman music

hey nitsuh i guess what intrigues me about it would be, is this middle-ground artist actually appealing to both audiences, or are they just one audience's artist in the end, and if they end up appealing to both audiences, is it in the same way jay-z hates rap but loves coldplay cliche of ilx yore

does that make sense

like, what is the *social effect* of this sonic blending

better teachers in inner city schools

ha

jumping off that joke i have a friend who teaches in inner city schools & bless her heart she tries to push indie rap on her kids who are big gucci / waka heads and its just, like, the cornier end of cliche'd 'deep' indie rap & shes like 'they just wont listen to me!' & i want to break it down & be like 'youre fundamentally misunderstanding the way rap functions' but then i think i would seem mean so like most of my music nerdery i restrict it to ilx

friend of friend remixed. totally accentuating the burial aspects: http://soundcloud.com/vin-sol/what-you-need

D, i'm not saying they get both audiences -- seems really rare that anyone manages that. but there are simple, obvious, audible, above-anyone's-cynicism REASONS for which audience goes for it, not just "who said it was cool," right? it's not solely translating or marketing something for a new audience: it winds up actually staking out some sonic and emotional space that's just a little "different." which is cool! even if it sucks, the mere fact of opening up a few extra spaces seems nice to me. not for social effects, but just for musical ones. (though maybe those can become social ones down the road.)

ok yeah that seems generally true & i agree

it actually seems to me that it would be productive if, instead of worrying much about audience-crossing and such, we considered it a GOOD thing for acts to stake out weird middle stances between styles and methods we're used to, just to open out the field and see what develops!

not when the middle stances are privileged so heavily over the original styles and methods

or like one of em anyway

it actually seems to me that it would be productive if, instead of worrying much about audience-crossing and such, we considered it a GOOD thing for acts to stake out weird middle stances between styles and methods we're used to, just to open out the field and see what develops!

This is correct as far as it goes: the problem is that as a critical community we are having increasing difficulty identifying music that stakes out "weird middle stances" without the kind of signifiers of indie-friendly audience-crossing quirk that some listeners are objecting to here.*

This kind of thing is something we recognise full well in politics, and recognise as being important to how politics functions: the way in which particular rituals, affectations, phrases, ideas and allegiances capture the field of broad principles that everyone agrees in the abstract are good.

This is my perennial complaint: "weird middle stances" happen all the time well within the confounds of "generic" (in both senses of the word) music but the more critics try to adopt a kind of omniscient across-all-genres faux-objectivism the harder it is for them to recognise what is of interest within genre. The unsurprising irony of course is that critically the exception to this rule is indie rock itself, wherein actually generic (again in both senses of the word) music still can be celebrated insofar as the unspoken assumption that indie in and of itself is a "weird middle stance" confers legitimacy on even its most rote manifestations.

(*the massive caveat being that each and every one of us here is guilty of this in some area of music - but the point here is not the awfulness of individual instances of people doing this kind of thing, but the limiting effect of our entire critical discourse becoming premised on it)

just yesterday i was thinking "damn i wish i could throw up the nabisco signal over the weeknd thread"

:D

not when the middle stances are privileged so heavily over the original styles and methods

give me a break, dude.

No, lex is right. I've seen this a lot with listeners the last couple of years.

im going to backpedal slightly & say tim otm lol

yeah i dont think he is, even a little, but i guess this comes down to how aware you are of the 'critical community' & how you perceive it

lex, how many times have people called you geir?

yeah otm

writing this r&b/weeknd column at the moment and there's so much interesting stuff happening in r&b right now - it's been a beleaguered genre commercially of late, but in the past few months alone you've got two of its biggest stars explicitly defining it on record - r kelly singing "i wanna bring the love songs back to the radio" and diddy's intro to the r&b remix of "yeah yeah you would" - like they're pretty much staking something on this idea of "real", traditional r&b as something that's important to keep alive. and the career arcs of how kandi and dawn richard have wound up making some of the best r&b of the year are fascinating in themselves. and then that timothy bloom video that dropped out of nowhere and pretty much blew the r&b community away.

against this backdrop how the fuck do you even write a column purportedly about r&b and focus on the weeknd.

*tim otm

haha

lex, I'm curious to learn what you think of the new El Debarge record, my favorite "trad" R&B record of the last six months. Clearly he's following the classicist route (which he helped invent and define for R. Kelly and Ne-Yo).

i think lex has a point but the thing he should realize is that 'middle stances' being privileged over original styles isn't something that just happens to rap or r&b in the pitchfork universe -- it also happens to traditional indie music that ppl we would call squares like -- i think nabisco sorta wrestled w/ this sort of thing in his male bonding review from last year -- 'how do you make a plain r&b record appealing to people that are head over heels for the weekend' is the same as 'how do you make the make the male bonding record appealing to people that are head over heels for sleigh bells' -- it's something all formalists have to deal w/ now

i liked it alfred, albeit i didn't go back to it as much as the r kelly or jazmine ones - there was such a glut of r&b albums in december (each and every one EVEN KERI HILSON being exponentially more worthy of attention than the weeknd)

against this backdrop how the fuck do you even write a column purportedly about r&b and focus on the weeknd.

― lex pretend, Thursday, March 24, 2011 6:11 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

well idk i guess it depends on what you find interesting?