★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

holy crap @ this thread

what's the correct position to take instead, Lamp? all rap is the same and all R&B is the same, critics who backed Arrested Development over all other early '90s rap are cool because hey at least they had the genre covered at all?

trying to form a slightly more coherent take on this qn - at this moment in history when music is so readily accesible to anyone w/ an internet connection its worth thinking abt music as much fitting into 'emotional' or 'functional' constellations as traditional sonic/cultural ones. & so instead of always using genre as a starting (& end) point in these discussions its worth acknowledging the emotional content of the music & how big a part that plays in how its received

does that even make sense?

i do think that indie music is privileged in mainstream discourse nowadays & i think you can see that laid out in something like the pazz & jop results of the past two years when compared to the pazz & jop results from 5 years earlier -- that said i'm not totally on the side w/ lex going 'oooh lord robert please make pitchfork pay attention to kandi' because whatever, i mean really

Pazz and Jop is not "mainstream discourse".

lamp u realize that i started writing about rap/R&B because it felt like most critics i read -- aside from, like, kelefa sannah & some of the bigger nyt/nyer names -- didnt do that w/ those genres? its kind of funny to me this feels like a weird inverse of whats going on really

hey guys, i'm peacing. someone lemme know if these guys put out more music or something

its total bullshit to pretend that The Weeknd is in the same category MUSICALLY as Diddy or Marsha Ambrosius or even a "sparse, dark & moody Trey Songz mixtape"

yeah by the way the album totally is

Pazz and Jop is not "mainstream discourse".

― Matt DC, Friday, March 25, 2011 7:02 PM (3 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

is it 'indie discourse'?

Pazz and Jop is not "mainstream discourse".

― Matt DC, Friday, March 25, 2011 3:02 PM (33 seconds ago) Bookmark

well maybe it's not "discourse" in and of itself but it does represent 'mainstream discourse'

Mainstream discourse = what you see on TV, what people talk about in the bus queue, what they dance to in town centre/High Street nightclubs, what you hear piped through in average chain stores, in non-music magazines and newspapers. There might be more indie in there than there was pre-Pitchfork in the US, and pre-Britpop in the UK, but a poll of music writers doesn't represent mainstream discourse even if it might overlap with it.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2011/03/rock-critic_pop_5.php

(btw, just to be SUPER-CLEAR about what I meant about newspapers: I don't understand why, for instance, a review Sean Fennessey writes for Pitchfork constitutes core "critical discourse," but a review the same Sean Fennessey writes for the Washington Post -- of Trey Songz, Mike Posner, Kelis, Usher, etc. -- is assumed not to. I don't get why a Caramanica or Frere-Jones thinkpiece that touches on indie constitutes "real criticism" but the stuff they write about other kinds of music just ... drifts away. The main explanation I can see is that there are more people interested in reading one than the other -- and while this might suck for some folks, market-wise, I don't see what's so terrible about the market for people who like reading critical articles about music having different sensibilities from the people who like watching TV about music, listening to satellite radio shows about music, watching documentaries about music, etc. etc. etc. Will step out of this one now.)

"magnificent think piece"

c'mon whiney you can't even think that, it was absolutely dreadful

fine, maybe i should say 'mainstream critical discourse' -- i assumed that's what we were talking about

that piece was basically "here is some "r&b" that's important cuz it has indie signifiers, and commercial r&b doesn't sell as well as it used to so i'm dismissing it"

yeah by the way the album totally is

i dunno it's closer to burial & james blake imo

nabisco i guess my motivating factor (& i hope u dont step out, i dunno why ppl think this thread is bad vibes but i think some of the discussion has been good??) in saying this stuff is that theres an element of self fulfilling prophecy to what youre saying -- maybe more of these non-indie fans would be more likely to read criticism if there was more criticism that was written for them

i dunno it's closer to burial & james blake imo

― gr8080, Friday, March 25, 2011 3:11 PM (36 seconds ago) Bookmark

nooooooooooooo

like, the weeknd is definitely more burial & james blake than dirty money & the-dream & drake & trey songz are burial and james blake but the weeknd is certainly more dirty money & the-dream & drake & trey songz than it is burial and james blake

Actually what it sounds like is a very rudimentary post-1998 Massive Attack if they decided to rope in some Terius clone on vocals. It's not actually new in the slightest, there are probably a load of mashups that approximate the same sound.

that piece was basically "here is some "r&b" that's important cuz it has indie signifiers, and commercial r&b doesn't sell as well as it used to so i'm dismissing it"

― lex pretend, Friday, March 25, 2011 7:10 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

you do realise sean fennessy writes abt r&b quite a bit right

like, he doesnt dismiss it

yeah that wasn't fair at all

i mean i thought the piece was hyperbolic in some bad places but that's just the guy writes about a ton of commercial r&b

some dude, that "shell game" post seems like the point where this thread is becoming too dicky to even post in -- I'd already said "magazines, websites, columns, and reams of daily newspaper coverage" before I even mentioned social media

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Friday, March 25, 2011 2:50 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i'm sorry if that wasn't sufficiently clear

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Friday, March 25, 2011 2:51 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah but my response only addressed the social media part, and I thought specifically mentioning those things would be understood that way, so the way you interpreted my post as equating that to the other things I hadn't talked about felt a little manipulative to me. if it was all a big misunderstanding then i'm sorry for being dicky.

also I read lots of music writing in daily papers like the Wash Post and occasionally write some (I interviewed Trey Songz for the Balt Sun!), and I don't feel like anything I've said has ignored the existence of those kinds of outlets.

deej mentions "criticism written for fans of r&b and rap" but one thing i'm interested in is whether the rap & r&b world's fascination with "haters" (by both artists and fans) has stifled that type of criticism at all

the "#teambreezy" effect

true

likewise i wonder if the perception (or reality) that major labels nowadays value only what sells over what is 'good' has done the same for that type of criticism

like tons of ppl -- both fans and writers alike! -- wouldn't say "hey look this b.o.b album sucks balls", instead they'd say "hey it's not my thing but can't knock the hustle!" or whatever the hell

i dont think that someone writing about R&B or rap makes them immune to charges of not recognizing the type of biases we're discussing here fwiw

like, its completely fair to accuse someone of indie-centrism or other biases or blindspots, even if they were once music editor at vibe (nb im not saying this is the case w/ sean)

matos told me that fennessey's a former vibe editor - had never heard of him before this week - i assume he's just gotten old and past it, happens to so many

you dont need to be an 'indie writer' to hold values that negatively reinforce opposition to certain aesthetic qualities of some genres

i've definitely felt a subtle shift from a few years ago when i started writing about a lot of regional/urban music that doesn't typically get a lot of critical ink, where a lot of artists were (and to an extent still are) super grateful to get that kind of coverage, but now in the Twitter era there's a lot of emphasis on having "supporters" and "followers," and more artists seem totally disinterested or outright hostile to the idea of opening themselves up to criticism or any kind of feedback that isn't 100% cheerleading.

but once again, artists not chasing down critics or catering to them is not really a good reason not to cover them if their music is good and worth writing about.

lol lex -- i'm pretty sure you and fennessey are the same age

some people grow old before their time ;_;

hahaha

He also writes for the NY Times and Washington Post and tweets and blogs. Maybe his handling of this one item should not define him for you.

its pretty lol that you complain abt how little ppl write abt r&b and you've never heard abt this guy

The article in the Guardian references Toop's Sugar & Poison. The journalist needs to reevaluate this. The mood on that compilation is no where near Weeknd are aiming for. S&P is an exercise in indulgent, bitter-sweet, melancholic soul. Weeknd quite obviously play for a seedy, sexual but vulnerable mood. In my opinion there is a lot of rubbish being written about Weeknd. Who judges the music the like on the same scales? I've really enjoyed Weeknd's mixtape this week but they've(he's) yet to create something truly worthy.

trying to form a slightly more coherent take on this qn - at this moment in history when music is so readily accesible to anyone w/ an internet connection its worth thinking abt music as much fitting into 'emotional' or 'functional' constellations as traditional sonic/cultural ones. & so instead of always using genre as a starting (& end) point in these discussions its worth acknowledging the emotional content of the music & how big a part that plays in how its received

I think we all do this, including all the writers you complain about in this thread lamp. The only difference is that when people aren't into something much they tend to downplay the "emotional" content as they don't consider it very effective or compelling.

At any rate what I've been trying to say is that "emotional content" is cultural, and no more genre-neutral than sonic content. Just as people get primed to connect with certain kinds of sonic tricks (both by listening to music and reading about it / discussing it) they get primed to connect with certain emotional tricks as well.

Personally I haven't really had a position on Weeknd in this thread, or even the media's treatment of R&B really, I'm just a bit suspicious of any arguments premised on some vague dichotomy between thinking and feeling.

please tell me you've at least listened to them

question for you guys re: avenues to discovering the weeknd:

a friend of mine said she found out about the weeknd when it came up on a pandora station she had programmed to play artists like:

• radio dept
• kings of leon
• erykah badu
• adele
• phoenix

payolandora?

best bit on the thread so far is lex not knowing who my beautiful dark twisted fennessey is

thats "hurricane" fennessey to you

One time I used pandora to find some good 70s new age. It kept playing blaring droney crap that I 86'd until it basically went "fuck it" and started playing Jaheim and teedra Moses. turned out that was what I was looking for all along.

tim, i meant to note earlier that i definitely know what you're getting at on this thread. the only thing i feel a need to note is that the "priming" you're talking about is surely, for most people, an INCREDIBLY complicated interaction between stuff in the world (narratives about genre, media, social taste, etc.) and a lot MORE stuff about themselves (self-image, emotional desires, etc.) i worry when conversations seem to be overemphasizing the first part. but maybe that's not what's happening here.