★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

oh negative concert reviews are fun. I sometimes get really outraged online comments for those, but usually I can say in all honesty I had no idea what I would think of it before I got there. plus it's a night out and you hear the bad music once, you're not alone in a room listening to something you have over and over.

negative everything is fun, but it's that which is better left to a messageboard or blogpost.

That's a step too far, isn't it?

Nobody here ever made a claim for "negative everything."

xpost

i think "negative everything" describes my posting style here pretty well tbh

i mean any negative review...is a laugh potentially.

time was you could write a blogpost

I want to be clear that I am making the following statement in the abstract; I haven't read Lex's piece yet and am making no assumptions on how he wrote it.

One thing about defining yourself as the person who writes in opposition to conventional wisdom is that, unless you're careful/judicious with your knives/praise, you could wake up one day and discover that people have anointed you the new Armond White.

so true

like why doesn't it have its own peg?

Isn't that what much of this thread has been about (Pitchfork indie's dominance of the critical discourse)?

yes but you're attacking people for publicising a band which you yourself give publicity to. you're attacking a newspaper for the fact that you yourself "had to" write an article which publicised a band you dislike to publicise ones you do.
that's as defeatist as anything i've said.

I don't get what's defeatist about a spirited defense of R&B in the face of indie critics who would have you believe the Weeknd is the only thing interesting going on right now. I thought it was nice that lex's article took all his negative energy and turned it positive by spotlighting other, less acclaimed artists and showing that R&B is doing just fine without the Weeknd. In the end, his article was more about Kandi/ Ambrosius/ Dawn Richard, etc. than the Weeknd.

the biggest problem w/ both that article and the similar way the debate has been framed itt thread is that literally the ONLY reason those particular R&B artists are set up in contrast to The Weeknd is that they also happened to release albums in feb/march

heh itt thread

Isn't that what much of this thread has been about (Pitchfork indie's dominance of the critical discourse)?

how is it pitchfork's fault that an artist has no news peg?

a house act makes a good house record will never be a news peg, even if it's a better record than a danish metal band is fusing house with metal, or some stupid shit.

its p cool that theres this one thread for all you dudes to be wrong abt everything in, maybe you cld just retitle it & keep this shit in here

how is it pitchfork's fault that an artist has no news peg?

I think that was covered too. :) In that it's not Pitchfork's fault (and I somewhat misleadignly refered to "Pitchfork indie", not Pitchfork itself) that the wider community of critics tend to lazily adhere to whatever Pitchfork is covering (see D-40's posts upthread).

(Ugh- pardon my sentence structure in that last post.)

that pitchfork is even able to 'dominate' the critical discourse is a sign of how fractured discourse is today? like if your thing is dance music there are dance music communities that you can find and be a part of that operate totally independently of the p4k sphere. like I don't understand why people care so much about whether or not p4k promotes their pet genre. stop hitting yourself.

its p cool that theres this one thread for all you dudes to be wrong abt everything in, maybe you cld just retitle it & keep this shit in here

― spectrum dudes (Lamp), Wednesday, March 30, 2011 11:13 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

The Weeknd being described as "what you need" seems like a good subject line for a thread of wrongness imo

that pitchfork is even able to 'dominate' the critical discourse is a sign of how fractured discourse is today? like if your thing is dance music there are dance music communities that you can find and be a part of that operate totally independently of the p4k sphere. like I don't understand why people care so much about whether or not p4k promotes their pet genre. stop hitting yourself.

― who is john nult? (dayo), Wednesday, March 30, 2011 3:25 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dont think u get this. everyone reads that site /pays attention to it in the music world. i can confirm having recently interview a bay area gangster rap dude who surprised me by knowing exactly what pitchfork was. its part of the game now.

like I don't understand why people care so much about whether or not p4k promotes their pet genre.

Thing is (and pretty sure I'm just repeating what was said above), I don't think the people in this thread care about what Pitchfork covers (I don't, at least). It's more about the annoying tendency of the larger critical community to privilege "Best New Music"-type stuff over everything else.

^^

yeah I guess I don't get why people care about what the 'larger' critical community privileges. or at least that's not what I find interesting about criticism, some cosmic tally of which pubs came out for or against some album. (except when eeeveeeerybooody comes out for something like kanye)

it's our job, man. if you made awesome widgets (or wrote about the best widgets for widget industry publications) but all the press and attentioned seemed to get lavished more on lower selling but much hipper sprockets you'd probably bitch about it a bit on I Love Widgets.

i would be interested to see someone actually run the numbers on the amount of press the weekend gets vs. whomever deej/al/lex wish was getting more press. i dont really have a prediction as to which way it would go but it might be nice to have some figures to talk about

yeah it's an interesting idea but i have no idea how you'd compile that -- metacritic seems to have a lot of arbitrary inclusion/exclusion practices, google blog search would have a terrible signal to noise ratio, etc.

can't believe some dude loves midgets :o

The Weeknd being described as "what you need" seems like a good subject line for a thread of wrongness imo

its like... even your jokes arent funnie anymore... so saddd

everyone reads that site /pays attention to it in the music world

bro just... i mean...

i would be interested to see someone actually run the numbers on the amount of press the weekend gets vs. whomever deej/al/lex wish was getting more press. i dont really have a prediction as to which way it would go but it might be nice to have some figures to talk about

i started to do this w/ chris brown but realized it was p unfair comparison but i mean... lexs beef should be w/ the outlets for mnstrm r&b not giving shine to 'kandi koated' not that fact that cosmicvibes.tumblr.com doesnt give a fucc abt 50 yr old reality tv stars

I can see where you're coming from some dude, makes me glad (and not to disparage your job in any way) that my relationship to music is v personal and I don't really have to invest anything of myself into it. it just annoys me when the discourse centers around "why is this band getting hyped!!" and not "what is this band doing differently, are they actually doing anything different, what about this music works/what about this music doesn't work" etc. etc.

there's been a good amount of "what is this band doing differently, are they actually doing anything different, what about this music works/what about this music doesn't work" itt imo

yeah, that was before the p4k bomb

"bro just... i mean..."

not literally, but the impact of the site is significant in the music industry. ok call it the impact of indie culture as magnified thru the site or whatever you want but when regional rappers who are as far afield from its aesthetic as possible know that its covering whats 'cutting edge' its rep is probably pretty big, regardless if they actually read it regularly.

i mean look who gets late night national tv bookings.

dayo- As far as caring about the critical community goes, it's not hard to see why R&B fans might wish that a group like Electrik Red could get anything even approaching the level of attention lavished on the Weeknd, is it?

i started to do this w/ chris brown but realized it was p unfair comparison but i mean... lexs beef should be w/ the outlets for mnstrm r&b not giving shine to 'kandi koated' not that fact that cosmicvibes.tumblr.com doesnt give a fucc abt 50 yr old reality tv stars

― spectrum dudes (Lamp), Wednesday, March 30, 2011 3:53 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

imo it makes more sense for cultural critics to have the burden of expanding coverage than gossip blogs writing for entirely new audiences

lol @ u shifting goalposts from pitchfork.com to cosmicvibes.tumblr.com

well i wanted 2 mention a site that ppl i know read

its like... even your jokes arent funnie anymore... so saddd

LOL- Not quite as funny as your bizarre attempts to stifle discussion itt.

if i thought lamp had a sense of humor i'd be hurt that he was unamused by my half-assed attempts at lightening the mood

haha i am p humourless its true

part of the problem is that despite this apparently being yr jobs u dudes dont even know where the goalposts are

cuz i mean i understand that p4k is a substantial enuff publication to move some segment of the population but my impression is they dont really ~break~ bands anymore but essentially are acting postfacto the weeknd wld be 'big' to p much the same ppl that its already big w/o them its already on all the blogs omg HOW MANY PPL WILL D/L YR FREE MIXTAPE

yeah i dunno about anyone else but i definitely wouldn't blame/credit Pitchfork for breaking The Weeknd or a probably the majority of new 'bnm' acts

part of it's that album reviews are the one thing people really pay attention to on PF and they have the (admirable imo) restraint to usually wait until release dates or take a week or so after an internet-only release to run reviews. so even if they're doing song reviews or news bulletins and the staff is on the ground floor of advance hype for a new act, full-length albums come so late in the hype cycle that by the time a Pitchfork review runs it looks like they're just putting their stamp of approval on something that already got pretty big without their help.

but i do think draaaa...D-40 is right that when Pitchfork DOES finally put that stamp of approval on something, that's one of the big things that does lead to tour bookings, mainstream media coverage, critics that weren't up on the advance hype being ready to vote for it at Pazz & Jop time, etc.

tom

lol

otm

but i do think draaaa...D-40 is right that when Pitchfork DOES finally put that stamp of approval on something, that's one of the big things that does lead to tour bookings, mainstream media coverage, critics that weren't up on the advance hype being ready to vote for it at Pazz & Jop time, etc.

sure, & i acknowledged their ability to move certain segments of the audience (although i still think this is overstated but w/e)

my problems is a) daaaavid eddings is way overstating their influence (hard to judge) b) misunderstanding 'how ppl interact with music' (easier to show) c) conflating a bunch of market & technological based changes in ~the industry~ w/ some kind of aesthetical/critcal stance

daaaavid eddings

Okay I LOLed.

i would be interested to see someone actually run the numbers on the amount of press the weekend gets vs. whomever deej/al/lex wish was getting more press. i dont really have a prediction as to which way it would go but it might be nice to have some figures to talk about

Google News hits over the last month:

Trey Songz: 199
Marsha Ambrosius ... 107
The Weeknd ... 37
Timothy Bloom ... 19
K. Michelle ... 4

okay lol

(I think Google News is valid why because Nate Silver uses it)