★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

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

98 of them to be exact

the metaphorical pitchfork

how many of them are all "what the hell, Lupe"

marsha ambrosius:

~10 reviews or similar
~10 profiles or interviews
the rest seem to be articles about her billboard debut

the weeknd (FOUR mentions in the guardian, lol):

~15 pieces of criticism/reviews (incl. lex's)
~15 links to mixtapes/video/news about release

contextualized that last quote

vs.

critics see this 'indie audience' as the cutting edge where all the important developments are happening so everyone pays attention

i mean i just dont see anything you say was being true & i guess its all pointless bcuz i cant really prove that sitting here in my office on my laptop but: there is no discourse. or there are a thousand different discourses & a thousand different outlets & a thousand new ways of hearing & caring abt music. & so many of them exist outside of 'indie' & 'p4kworld' & its like these all dont count bcuz its not ppl you consider your peers or smthing idk

also i mean: what even is 'indie'? i cant think of a suitably nabiscian way of putting this but: the way critics that dont seem to be particularly invested or engaged w/ that audience feel free to talk abt 'indie' signifiers & audience & aesthetic makes it feel like indie is the standard? even as they rail against it? like this uncritical acceptance of some universal indieness borders on 'whiteness isnt a culture its just life' shit & mirrors the worst kind of unthinking genre tokenism that 2001 ilm cried itself to sleep over

the majority of hits for trey songz are links to videos, music, and news about tours. looks like theres one piece of criticism in the seattle PI thats been republished from blogcritics.org

Well it's the same pattern over and over, right? Everyone decries the straightjacket put on them by their elders so they spend their time and energy ripping it apart so they can sew the components into a slightly snugger straightjacket for their kids.

like indie is this language you all grew up speaking so of course your fluent & we have to police all the others genres to make sure they arent picking up indie words & indie grammar & p4k is just making everyone speak indie its colonialism but this genres already have their own language p4k is just talking abt them in indie

idk im terrible at metaphors

idk what the hell u are even talking abt any more

marsha ambrosius has 2 hits in a search of nytimes
the weeknd has 0

marsha ambrosius has 2 hits (from this year; 5 overall) in a search of village voice
the weeknd also has 2 hits, one of which is a passing mention by whiney in a rock critic quiz

DJP your family sounds fucked up

haha

rolling stone: 1 result for "the weeknd"; 0 for "marsha ambrosius"

give it a month

washington post: 1 profile of marsha ambrosius; 1 capsule review of the weeknd (alongside a capsule review of mindless behavior)

based on my not-at-all-scientific survey of google results i think the guardian is doing more to push the weeknd than pitchfork is

apropos of nothing but i cant stand saying 'ambrosius' out loud, makes me feel seasick

ILM: 0 threads about "I Hope She Cheats On Your With A Basketball Player", 3 threads about OJ Da Juiceman "basketball player" freestyle

i mean i just dont see anything you say was being true & i guess its all pointless bcuz i cant really prove that sitting here in my office on my laptop but: there is no discourse. or there are a thousand different discourses & a thousand different outlets & a thousand new ways of hearing & caring abt music. & so many of them exist outside of 'indie' & 'p4kworld' & its like these all dont count bcuz its not ppl you consider your peers or smthing idk

― spectrum dudes (Lamp), Wednesday, March 30, 2011 5:11 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the argument here isnt that worldstar's audience doesnt exist its that they have a legitimate perspective too & that recognizing that is the responsibility of a good cultural critic

looking forward to your 50 Tyson review dude

idk what the hell u are even talking abt any more

just because you kinda liked one ariel pink song doesnt mean u get an entire aesthetic this seems foundational a good cultural critic accepts their limitations

its ok to be wrong sometimes it doesnt mean u hav to think the weeknd is very good or cool

i shoulda stuck to associative youtube posting and gnomic subgabbenb quotations i shoulda been happy

ILM: 0 threads about "I Hope She Cheats On Your With A Basketball Player", 3 threads about OJ Da Juiceman "basketball player" freestyle

― some dude, Wednesday, March 30, 2011 1:20 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

dying

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

― some dude, Wednesday, March 30, 2011 5:27 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hey did you get around to listening to this mixtape yet or

i know that's a song title i was just joking around