★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

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

--i like weeknd though & think they are making worthwhile music w/ a good balance of reverence/traditionalism & novelty, feel salem lean way too heavy on the latter & their music doesn't feel like they understand how achingly beautiful dj screw music can be, how deep/low it is, how it crawls etc.

i got into contemporary r&b via reading ilx so obv the argument u dudes are putting forward is a salient one to me. but idk i just don't feel like listening to it that often & don't feel the need to explore it too far. like flopson r&b canon is like, confessions, terius discography, aaliyah s/t, tp-2 & kelly's 12 play, b-day. not saying i'm satisfied forever but just like, this morning i listened to the marsha ambrosius album, & it was ok but i don't expect i'll listen again, besides a few songs. i'm into the genre & it satisfies a partic need i have but i'm not invested in it the same way i am w rap or something, where i want to hear pretty much everything good ever. i suspect a lot of weeknd fans are casual r&b fans with some small subsection of r&b in their pockets who since they aren't so heavily rooted in the tradition of the genre are more eager abt stuff on the periphery of r&b

a little goes a long way w/ R&B, i agree with you on that -- there aren't THAT many mainstream R&B albums released in a given year and they're not all great after all.

In this universe, because it exposed me to him on cable tv where I have considerably less autonomy about the music I'm exposed to than on the internet. And if you're focused on media outlets that matter and that potentially review r&b records, and not listeners of mainstream rap and r&b radio, then you're taking about a very few individuals' editorial policies, which means you're saying very little that's meaningful. Unpaid blog writing certainly doesn't count because there are thousands of those and you can self-select.

I haven't seen the big lebowski.

xxp yeah! and it seems reasonably unique imo. like aside from 1 or 2 things on the thread jaxon started, nothing really captures the vibe of this. not saying theres not other r+b stuff that does, im sure its out there. i feel like lex is just angry that its self-hating and not congratulatory fwiw

Wait, flopson is talking about how much the guys from Salem don't understand the "aching beauty" of DJ screw and not their music itself?

what

ok well ive got class in ten minutes & have to eat a sub before so itèll have to wait i guess

have fun eating a sub and not reading the thread, whiney

bamcquern also have we considered the plight of those hermits living in a cave these past four years who understandably will have no idea of The-Dream at al? If they only emerged in the last week it'd make total sense that they were into The Weeknd but not The-Dream yet. It's not a conspiracy though! We really should think about such people before jumping to inane, unsustainable conclusions like "The Weeknd has gotten more internet hype in 1 week than The-Dream got in 1 year."

feel salem lean way too heavy on the latter & their music doesn't feel like they understand how achingly beautiful dj screw music can be, how deep/low it is, how it crawls etc

Think it's your wording, flopson, rather than what you meant. No offense to you :)

http://i54.tinypic.com/9sf0qd.jpg

wow the founder of Pitchfork digs the album Pitchfork just named 'best new music,' great find dude

this whole thread plays like a superiority contest btw its totally gross

you just won the contest btw

nothing but generalizations and judgmental assholes imo

Srsly though who apart from lex has been remotely judgmental in this thread?

Why does indie dudes get so butthurt about their taste in stuff?

yeah idk maybe not w/e

god i'm such an idiot--srly thought i had a chance in the superiority contest

cheer up; with that attitude you stand a good chance at the inferiority contest

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/homer.jpg

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

― lex pretend, Wednesday, March 30, 2011 1:16 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

keep on thinking of whoever said earlier in the thread that lex treats pitchfork as his NYT of music journalism

at some point it's just like, stop hitting yourself, why are you hitting yourself

it kind of is that though. pretty much all music critics orient themselves around it

like, daily newspaper critics in the major papers consistently cover pitchfork acts. odd future was on the 1st page of the nyt

kinda doubt that jon caramanica is getting his cues from pitchfork?

don't you understand, you're playing by their rules

not sure what jon gets his cues from right now

but i doubt its his decision what page his piece runs on

I am certain that NYT's decision to run a piece about a musical collective of young black men saying violent, repellent shit was wholly driven by Pitchfork approval

very much doubt that scott veale is getting his cues from pitchfork

maybe not directly but cmon. the entire culture of music criticism has formed around the pfork canon. how else do u explain pnj results the last few years

'around' btw doesnt mean 'replicating' but rather the idea that everyone must engage w/ pfork-acclaimed artists

whether pro or con

Huh.

anyway lex thinking that the only reason this album 'blew up' is because of 'chillwave production' & a bunch of tumblrs is evidence of lex ngi

feel like if it was an album of female-empowerment anthems lex would be all up on it tho

feel like we need a spin-off thread soon, is pitchfork really the center of the music criticism universe

the entire culture of music criticism has formed around the pfork canon. how else do u explain pnj results the last few years

Music criticism as a field is imploding and the same 50 people write for overlapping venues?

why is indie central to music canons now in a way it wasnt a decade ago

im not saying there arent critics out there who work outside this obv ... i consider myself one. but cmon, the critical discourse is now oriented around the idea that indie records are consistently some of the most important & interesting records in a given year, and critics around the country / world reinforce that