★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

yeah, but live (or at least at the last live show i was at) saadiq drops all the retro shit and just kinda poses and thrusts hips and sings hits
tho tbf i have seen his retro schtick show as well and it's a lot less fun

sure, but i mean there's not a lot of live band r&b on record these days, or at least not a lot that i'm hearing. especially with a-list players like maxwell has.

man he really needs to hurry up and put out the next album, last one was so good

I wasn't in love with it but "Big Easy" and "Staying in Love" have made a few comps.

pretty sure some dude is talking about maxwell, in which case i agree. listened to it twice on a long drive last weekend.

so glad he is making proper use of chris dave in the studio.

yeah meant Maxwell, since the follow-up to BLACKsummers'night has supposedly be more or less in the can since before that album's release and still has no release date

even more evidence for the drake file

― wavy g. wavegarten (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, March 29, 2011 5:54 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

lol should I be paying attention to drake :/

GOD NO

not unless you are doing so with a bat aimed at every microphone he gets near

best new music yall

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/mar/29/the-weeknd-rnb

http://www.thirteen.org/riffcity/love-and-other-drugs-the-weeknds-altered-state-rb/

lex offtm

The group's penchant for druggy atmospherics is mirrored in their lyrical content, which is overtly sexual, narcotics-focused, and occasionally downright frightening. Debauchery is obviously nothing new in R&B, but this takes it a step further-- the drugs are harder, the come-ons feel predatory and lecherous, and the general feeling is self-hating rather than celebratory.

While Drake himself dabbles in longing when he’s not crooning about his swag, whether by success or general nice-guy demeanor, he could never sound quite as convincingly on the verge of a delicate breakdown as this dude. The music is almost nihilistic in its total committal to feeling good. Like The Weeknd’s appeals for love, sex, drugs, are simply distractions before the end of the world.

these two quotes capture the appeal for me, and it's why this mixtape takes me to an emotional space that other R&B doesn't. sure, by itself the production is nothing new, but combined with the detached, glassy-eyed dead-inside lyrics & the quavering delivery, it becomes something more. it doesn't really feel like R&B so much as R&B appropriated for something else. like, it works because there's a constant tension between his voice and the lyrical content - and those f-bombs and n-words, they def stand out, but it's because you feel like it's false bravado, that somehow he's found himself at this party of the young and rich and needs to convince himself that he too can belong there, can hang.

I never really listened to trip-hop and I have a few portishead albums but I don't listen to them too much so idk

Like The Weeknd’s appeals for love, sex, drugs, are simply distractions before the end of the world.

the idea that this is something unique to this group is wild to me though. tons of R&B is about this either directly or indirectly

this is reiterating tim's post but it's just done so obviously it reminds me of when you're a teenager & you drink for the first time & its like a Big Deal or something. so you talk about it a lot. Dudes, we should try to get some beers! or weed it works with that too. its just sort of naively obvious w/ this stuff

I feel like it's the bleak nihilism of it all that appeals. there probably is a ton of R&B out there that deals with this (suggestions?) but maybe not as directly? I feel like there's a immolation of ego here, or rather an imbrication of self with surrounding that's lacking from other stuff, where usually there's at least hope for redemption of the singer.

Least convincing / most lol-worthy aspect of The Weeknd's quick rise to Internet fame

hey ilxor, funny thread title, thanks for contributing, glad you stopped by

thanking u for display name

feel like you should indicate you made an edit you asshole

^^ i made an edit

honestly i would've used the whole thing but it was 2 characters too long :(

okay someone should have told me that "Happy House" was sampled on one of these tracks and I would have been way less reserved in my like of this

this should help: one of the B-sides is a cover of INXS's "What You Need"

tombreihan Tom Breihan
British people, man. What the fuck. http://bit.ly/hNUJ7U
55 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

Lex, I have read your piece in the Guardian with great interest. One thing that sticks out for me - having read this thread, liking The Weeknd and not being an overall RnB afficionado - is that you approach The Weeknd from almost a purist's notion of what RnB is/should be.

"the further away it gets from its formalist roots, the more praise is lavished on it."

This may be true in Fennessey's case, or others', because they approach the Weeknd from their 'indie-realm'. The diametrical opposite though could be said about your point of view: "the closer it gets to its formalist roots, the more praise is lavished on it". The point of your piece seems to be that there is way purer (and better) RnB around, and that - the headline says it all - "Most RnB fans have better things to listen to". Of which you give a multitude of examples after that.

I understand taking a - in your view - bad example of RnB, works quite well to write about what you think RnB is/should be. But you don't go into what, if anything, the Weeknd signifies. You only say it's not that good, not in terms of songcraft, in emotion etc. You don't trace it back to any roots, or connect it to anything. Basically you merely state that you don't know what the fuss is all about.

Which is fair enough I suppose, but as embarrassing as Fennessey's statement is, you can't deny that the Weeknd (and some acts before them, like HTDW) are doing something new/different with RnB. Even if you don't like it, or perceive it - quite lazily in my opinion - as "The addition of vaguely lo-fi chillwave textures are a lazy way of connoting darkness" (ugh). It would be at least worth it to investigate.

The Weeknd might increase my fondness for RnB a little bit more. Just like HTDW did. I for one do not care one iota about if there is "nothing shocking" about the Weeknd. There's enough "nothing shocking" music out there that I love. I get The Weeknd and enjoy the 'dirtiness' of it. The edge it has to it (which is not LOL-lofi-chillwave *at all* to me) made it easier for me to get in there. Telling me there's a whole slew of artists that make better RnB will not change that. But then again, as noted from the headline, you did not write this piece for me or people like me, but for what you perceive to be "most RnB fans".

this whole thing is just that standard internet meme of claiming that anyone who likes "thing y" does so because they think it's "genre x", and then insisting this is the case because you are so annoyed at the fools who think "stupid point z". then searching the net far and wide for people to support this awful view you hate.

it's like....look out the window, there's a world outside music criticism.

"The disproportionate attention accorded to the Weeknd is reflective of an attitude towards R&B that just won't seem to die: the further away it gets from its formalist roots, the more praise is lavished on it."

^ agree w/ lex here -- but to be fair, doesn't "the further away it gets from its formalist roots, the more praise is lavished on it" apply to pretty much every "traditional"/older genre that indie critics cover? e.g., rock, metal, folk, etc. etc.

I'd probably like this group's music more if I knew nothing about the sub-Last-Night's-Party tawdry image they were pushing.

Then again "debauchery into shattered emptiness" is not really where I go for kicks these days, anyway.

tombreihan Tom Breihan
British people, man. What the fuck. http://bit.ly/hNUJ7U
55 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

one of those comebacks that says more about the person making it, right? the people who've cosigned me vs the people who've taken offense = vindication tbh

you can't deny that the Weeknd (and some acts before them, like HTDW) are doing something new/different with RnB

idk, i really don't think they are though - i don't think the mood they try to evoke is particularly different from anything that's been common in r&b, i don't think there's anything particularly distinct about their production (cf 40, bei maejor) - all that's distinct is the anonymity and ~mystique~ and sense that they've come from ~the underground~.

"the further away it gets from its formalist roots, the more praise is lavished on it" apply to pretty much every "traditional"/older genre that indie critics cover? e.g., rock, metal, folk, etc. etc.

btw by "formalist roots" i don't just mean trad maxwell-style r&b! dawn richard's booty-popping swag fits in this as well. could you imagine the weeknd sneering "i'm on my superman shit, whippin up town, blowin up shit" with just the right attitude that dawn does lol

Tom is my homie from way back and i enjoy his writing about a lot of different music but on the rare occasion he writes about R&B it's on some boring "how great is Beyonce" ish so yeah

its kind of amazing how much work it took to get ppl to pay attention to the-dream vs this when the-dream is 100x better & still w/in this 'indie people like this for a reason' (per nabisco) aesthetic

this entire mess summed up so concisely by a random girl i don't know on someone else's fbook profile

C****** N*** ‎'underground discovers urban' omgz
44 minutes ago · LikeUnlike · 1 person

D-40 otm

But then again, as noted from the headline, you did not write this piece for me or people like me, but for what you perceive to be "most RnB fans".

it's not like they commonly get anything written for them in the mainstream music press so yeah, i'll take that

It's a useful response. Without the "only a fool" line and naming Fennessey, I don't see anything in there to get riled up about.

its kind of amazing how much work it took to get ppl to pay attention to the-dream vs this when the-dream is 100x better & still w/in this 'indie people like this for a reason' (per nabisco) aesthetic

― they reminisce over dayo (D-40), Tuesday, March 29, 2011 1:11 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is tied into the point i made upthread & on my blog. your point is right & the reason is just straight up marketing & promotion. clearly the weeknd targeted pitchfork & blogs and as such their first mp3s made a big splash immediately. if they were trying to push this thru normal a&r channels we might not even have heard of it yet or if they were just aiming for a straight r&b audience like the-dream they'd probably be in the same position as like timothy bloom

i feel bad when convos like this start to feel like one group scolding another for not listening to the right stuff, because honestly it should be like hey if you think that's dope R&B you really need to hear this other stuff that's just incredible! spread the love!

^^^^^^OTM

honestly it should be like hey if you think that's dope R&B you really need to hear this other stuff that's just incredible! spread the love!

It would help though if they would listen to my Vandross-Freddie Jackson comps though.

feel very odd bringing this up -- lol too much time on ilx -- but honestly i keep thinking of this statement strongo made back in the mists of time, that sooner or later the white kids with spock haircuts were going to try to sound like timbaland

idk, i bring up dope r&b all the time and there's no way it gets a hundredth of the attention my more uh aggressive stance does.

or as tom ewing put it on tumblr:

The question “hold on, why are you paying attention to this stuff and not to that stuff?” is a) fundamental, b) often hard to ask politely, c) very much in the interests of the attention-payers not to answer. So trolling works as a way of asking it, for me.

(i don't think i'm trolling though!)

okay correct me if I'm wrong but no one I can find in any of the pictures of The Weeknd that pop up on GIS are actually white...?

hope not cuz theyre dropping nbombs like no tomorrow

The Weeknd dude is not white.

“hold on, why are you paying attention to this stuff and not to that stuff?”

is how i feel abt ppl who listen to salem & not dj screw