★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

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

the question stands. just curious.

only listened to some individual songs on youtube, didn't compel me to want to download the entire full-length

cool, man.

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

― spectrum dudes (Lamp), Wednesday, 30 March 2011 17:40 (33 minutes ago) Permalink

what are you even responding to any more

bringing up ariel pink was in defense of the accusation, which was incorrect, that im a kneejerk pfork aesthetic hater. it had nothing to do w/ me claiming that i 'got an entire aesthetic' idk what that even refers to

looking forward to your 50 Tyson review dude

― some dude, Wednesday, March 30, 2011 5:38 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ariel pink >>>

im confused abt this idea that somehow bcuz indie is music that evolved out of critics, that means that non-indie listeners have no use for well-written and thoughtful music criticism. if u guys know of any such venues that dont hold indie central to their aesthetic worldview and actually have a readership of some kind & pay on time, plz let me know

like my take is we should be cognizent of this stuff bcuz the audience might not exist because they're not being written to, no that their not being written to because that audience doesnt care about well-written critcism

blargh poorly written.

my take is we should be cognizant of this stuff because fans of xyz might not read music writing because they dont see people writing to them, rather than because they have no interest in well-written music crit

i just look at whatever numerical score pfork gave something, check to see if there's a free mp3 download, then move on to the next review.

i realize the 'well-written' thing sounds pompous (& prob lol considering how my last posts) but i just mean that the aim of the crit is towards, like, 'serious critical writing' -- not trying to make any value statements abt the quality of my writing -- there are prob some R&B message board posts out there w/ more insight i dont doubt

wow i tried to read this whole thing while streaming the album, i really did.

this music is v. boring, forks "baby dreams" comment otm.

btw wicked games and gaudy side of town have a few things in common to my ears.

at this point I have no desire to hear the entire mixtape but the two-three songs I played off of Youtube were nice, plus I am always going to be pro-sampling of bands/songs I like

(& prob lol considering how my last posts)

lol wtf is wrong am i stroking or something

what you need is the only good track