★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

(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)

(Also, "Kandi" turned up too much noise.)

yeah, you're going to get a ton of Real Housewives nonsense with her no matter what you do

were we talking about ALL press mentions or specifically reviews/music press coverage? like, Trey Songz is a celebrity, how much he pops up in newspapers 6 months after his last album is a pretty separate matter from how much music critics covered that album.

my problems is a) daaaavid eddings is way overstating their influence (hard to judge)

i never gave a quantifiable amount of 'influence' so im not sure what youre specifically disagreeing w/ is out of scale here.

b) misunderstanding 'how ppl interact with music' (easier to show)

where/what am i misunderstanding?

c) conflating a bunch of market & technological based changes in ~the industry~ w/ some kind of aesthetical/critcal stance

the weeknd gets a tumblr & its the technology's fault they're more celebrated than the-dream?

i mean yes 'everyone reads/pays attention to' is something of an exaggeration but my pt is that its got a centrality to discourse that the source or vibe dont have

so indie has its cake & eats it too; it can consider/reject what it wants cuz its 'just doing it for an indie audience' except that critics see this 'indie audience' as the cutting edge where all the important developments are happening so everyone pays attention, which forces artists in other genres to pay attention, etc

i never gave a quantifiable amount of 'influence' so im not sure what youre specifically disagreeing w/ is out of scale here.

vs.

weeknd gets a tumblr & its the technology's fault they're more celebrated than the-dream?

vs.

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

i contextualized that last quote

I don't think The Weeknd are actually more celebrated than The-Dream right now at this point in time, or possibly than The-Dream was when his first album was released.

I mean, if you're talking critical reception The-Dream seems to have gotten similarly good scores from a variety of sources on his first album, from Rolling Stone, All Music and Entertainment Weekly to name a few, so I'm not really buying the argument that he was ignored unless you are specifically taking a Pitchfork-centric view of how people talk about music.

we're beyond the looking-glass here, people

code 10 abort

yeah all dream had to do was create charting singles. all weeknd had to do _______

code 10 abort

― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, March 30, 2011 4:57 PM (49 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

u never want to get involved in anything lol

seems like people used to be more self-conscious about genre tokenism or marketing strategies/medium playing a large role in the perception of music. is it progress if people aren't as worried about those things and maybe people that still want to talk about those things are the old world cavemen?

lamp i think you're tying my argument too directly to pitchfork, the website rather than pitchfork as the most visible representative of an aesthetic worldview & critical approach towards music that is highly influential w/in music criticism

fwiw a lot of those trey songz hits are articles about lupe fiascos album