★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

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

i don't dislike salem particularly but it's p much an exact parallel yeah

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

tbf Salem is fucking awful by any metric

also, in light of this being a discussion about a black dude making music who was signed by another black dude, could we maybe think a few times before leaning so heavily on the "this is what happens when white people try R&B" arguments?

I don't think it took people long to pay attention the-dream, deej. At what point in the-dream's output do you think people should have been paying attention, and, more importantly, what distribution channels would have allowed them to do so?

When the-dream-produced snoop dogg song played on MTV and mainstream rap radio, that earned him recognition by a lot of ordinary non-music-journalist folks. On the other hand, if I weren't on ilx and if I didn't open pitchfork for a few days, who knows when I would have heard of the weeknd.

indie people maybe?

or just shut-in people

xp

Canadian is the white of the world

xxxp they are not going to start thinking that way.

Canadian is the white of the world

― ★ Project Pat ★ What Cha Starin At ★ I Ain't A Mirror ★ (some dude), Tuesday, March 29, 2011 5:44 PM (20 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

irl lol

bamcquern his debut album was almost completely ignored by critics -- this is pretty much an inarguable fact

if the 'people' we're talking about are sites like Pitchfork, PF didn't review The-Dream until his 3rd album and only included his 2nd in an 'honorable mention' addendum to a year-end list

1. Nobody cares about critics, certainly not your average listener.
2. As an average listener who doesn't care about critics, it seemed that his first album got plenty of attention. It's the two after that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere.

No, the "people" I'm talking about are me and people I know who listen to the radio and ask me if I've heard x song.

British people, man. What the fuck.

haha this dude otm

Because nobody actually cares about pitchfork. I don't even read their reviews when I go there; I just scan the titles and go back to ilx.

maybe you've noticed that the audience being discussed 90% of the time ITT is people who don't listen to R&B radio and read blogs or are critics themselves

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.

hmmmmm

I was looking at Metacritic because of another album (ahem) and kind of lolling that the Pitchfork review was on the bottom of the "most clicked" list (the top was Tiny Mix Tapes, oddly-to-me)

You have to consider more goes people discover music in this conversation and not so much what their tastes or motivations for listening are. People like r&b. It's not something only you guys like because you have special nonracist ears.

How, not goes

ok thanks for playing Donnie in The Big Lebowski itt, your contributions have been very entertaining

also in what alternative universe was "Gangsta Luv" at all a significant moment of exposure for The-Dream