★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

that link of max's, ugh

lol I thought the Dirty Projectors fracas was mostly me (because I kind of ignored them when everyone cared and only weighed in when they made the 2009 top 10, also I am horribly self-involved)

goons like destroyer? i don't remember that either.

I think there have been a lot of interesting questions about taste asked in this thread that unfortunately have been steamrolled under all this 'pitchfork controls my life: yes or no?' bs.

how often do you conflate the two concerns tho even just itt? like i feel like part of the problem is ppl who cant divorce how the music is received by listeners w/ how its written abt by critics

w/e this thread is making me crazy you ppl will nvr learn & u just dont know how...

Here's a proposal—how about we call it "nappy-headed pop"?

Here's a proposal-DIE IN A FIRE

http://www.theawl.com/2011/03/you-say-hipster-rb-i-say-nappy-headed-pop-either-way-its-offensive

― max, Wednesday, March 30, 2011 6:06 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest

i'd never heard the drake interlude he mentions in that piece but omarion probably didn't do himself any favors w/ the whole gay thing by re-working "friendly skies" with drake

that article did remind me of the several pieces about new R&B singer Santogold that floated around early on

how often do you conflate the two concerns tho even just itt? like i feel like part of the problem is ppl who cant divorce how the music is received by listeners w/ how its written abt by critics

There's increasingly no great distinction though. Message boards are indicative of that. Even youtube comments. Most people are narrativising their taste in some form.

Anyway I don't know which posts of mine you're thinking of here. I'm pretty sure the only references I've made to pitchfork in this thread have been to say that this is not about pitchfork, and moreover that the kind of "biases" we're talking about here aren't unique to indie but run in all directions.

you know the frattier version of this same phenomenon is like Mike Posner, who ALSO recorded his demo in his home (er, dorm room @ Duke). Like the real narrative of this whole thing is "ppl who are into R&B now doing the home recording stuff that indie ppl (and the critics who write about them) used to think was their sovereign territory (even though Gary Wilson exists).

Here's a proposal—how about we call it "nappy-headed pop"?

Here's a proposal-DIE IN A FIRE

― whelping at his sandpapery best (DJP), Wednesday, March 30, 2011 12:12 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark

ha i think you maybe posted this before finishing that article?

p sure djp would want the author of the article to die in a fire either way tbh

very accurate call by both of you

really don't get the love for this guy. singing is a performance and this dude really can't sell the lines; it seems unintentionally awkward when he sings "fucking" (and if it is intentionally ironic, then fuck him). And as for the "sound," I don't quite get what's so special about it. If i wanted to hear something that registered as "atmospheric," i'd turn to lots of UK producers (deadboy, burial, etc.)

i've spent the past week or so catching up on a lot of new music--inc. the k michelle single, "'til the end of time," dawn richard--so i def sympathize w/ you, lex--it's really frustrating to see people ignoring all of this awesome R&B and then declaring The Weeknd a savior--but the combative tone is prob not the right way of handling the situation. you should prob speak to the audience instead of yelling at them, e.g. instead of saying "screw you for liking the weeknd when you should be liking k michelle," you could write a piece about why the xx's embrace of modern r&b works for you while the weeknd's doesn't?

theawl writer handles the race issues so poorly that he sounds racist.

totally. i mean the "Either Way, It's Offensive" at the end of a headline is almost like saying one group should be just as offended by 'hipster' as another should be 'nappy-headed.'

imagine if vibe never went out of business i think the weeknd would be on their next cover

also, i mean

I'm no hipster, but if The Weeknd and Frank Ocean are getting mad love from people who consider themselves hipsters, then I suppose hipsters can call it whatever makes them feel comfortable. But as non-hipsters like to say, let's keep it all the way real.

hahaha

yeah the article is kinda cringeworthy in places

also both frank ocean & the weeknd are r&b -- he notes that frank samples mgmt & the eagles while ignoring the production from tricky & midi mafia as well as frank's whole background & also notes that weeknd samples beach house & siouxsie but not that they also sample aaliyah (also those samples make up like 10% of the whole album)

also now after reading it i don't get the whole tangent about drake & "friendly skies" -- someone mucking the original beat up a bit & then omarion singing over it doesn't exactly seem like an 'progression' imo

like... the part about how the new Chris Brown album isn't R&B but the new Raphael Saadiq retro rock album IS

good discussion all around guys when I was asleep, now

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?

― lurking off (lou), Thursday, March 31, 2011 12:05 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

elektrik red got an 8.2 from p4k, ok no bnm but what ya gonna do. glad to see the p4k effect really worked there. also elektrick red blow http://teslastaging.com/forums/images/smilies/Gestures/userArmsCrossed.gif and I don't know why everybody went gaga over them

::faints::

;)

q: do you really think the people in david eddings' world of bay area gangster rap dudes really read the reviews, or do they just look at the scores

I'm not actually serious about that q btw, just wanted to use the phrase 'david eddings' world of bay area gangster rap dudes'

i've gotten great feedback from artists and fans when writing about underground/regional rap but then i generally don't write anywhere that has number ratings so maybe if there was a score that would be all that mattered

tbh the score on a PF review says about as much to me as whether the review has top billing on the front page or is the 3rd or 4th review down or whatever. it's as much about the implied editorial priority it's getting as whether it's actually good or what the reviewer thinks.

elektrik red got an 8.2 from p4k, ok no bnm but what ya gonna do. glad to see the p4k effect really worked there.

But this is the precise point: it's not about the score that something gets on p4k, it's about the language and the arguments coralled in support of the music in question, and that's something not determined by p4k, but by an entire community and discourse within which p4k is only an influential contributor.

If I'd wanted electrik red to get the kind of audience reaction that weeknd have gotten I would have written a very different review, one which tried to set up electrik red as somehow being quite different to "run-of-the-mill" R&B, perhaps more comparable Santogold or M.I.A.

Instead my review talked about how Electrik Red exemplified what was great about R&B as a genre, and hey presto the review got absolutely no traction. I would guess that even if the review had been BNM'd it would have been greeted with a lot of headscratching.

By writing about ER in the way that I did I was effectively dooming my review to having zero effect on the group's standing among a crossover indie audience. That audience is not going to change its entire approach to R&B just because of a p4k review. Far too much credit is being given to p4k by both sides of this argument.

Instead my review talked about how Electrik Red exemplified what was great about R&B as a genre, and hey presto the review got absolutely no traction

yeah exactly - i really wish people would stop telling me/us to stop hating on the weeknd and just write about what we love maaaan. uhhh this is what i do like 90% of the time? you can't make a career out of just slagging shit off. but you really need to on occasion - the fact that apparently no one has actually read the thousands of words i've already written this year in praise of the music i love PROVES MY POINT

this is the sound of the world's tiniest violin playing

you can't make a career out of just slagging shit off

holla

Enter the nu-Millennial Chuck Eddy

oh yeah there was a "...much as i'd like to" i should have added

it really seems like people get totally offended by the IDEA of vitriol sometimes - i am not a fucking hippie ffs

anyway

LOL U GUYS READ PITCHFORK

― H3LP, Monday, March 28, 2011 11:23 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark

otm

I wasn't zinging everyone else when I said scott seward was my favorite kind of music critic last week, I honestly like his genuine enthusiasm for things he likes and his tendency to find the silver lining in things he doesn't like

but i love a good whiney takedown too

i don't read pitchfork apart from tom ewing's column

skot's tone is so real

and whenever tim or deej pimp a link to one of their reviews

this is the sound of the world's tiniest violin playing

― who is john nult? (dayo), Thursday, March 31, 2011 12:55 AM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i know ur just um zinging for fun but just in case this is also some kind of argument, telling people u disagree with that their position is complaining while implying that your complaining about their position isnt seems sorta hmmmmmmm

I'm not actually serious about that q btw, just wanted to use the phrase 'david eddings' world of bay area gangster rap dudes'

― who is john nult? (dayo), Thursday, March 31, 2011 12:19 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hope not cuz as i mentioned 'pitchfork' just stands for something, its not about what it actually *is* (& tim said as much better)

although im sure dude would read a review of his own album yeesh

*scribbles furiously in his arguments of david eddings notebook*

that village voice piece j0rdan posted linked to something i wrote and actually uses my real full name in the fucking article. if anyone is curious about THE_REAL_SURFBOARD_DUDES

not gona even skim this thread though

thanks for stopping by, surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally

surfboard dudes get writed up, totally

Instead my review talked about how Electrik Red exemplified what was great about R&B as a genre, and hey presto the review got absolutely no traction. I would guess that even if the review had been BNM'd it would have been greeted with a lot of headscratching.

but you made this choice for a reason presumably, Tim?

yeah exactly - i really wish people would stop telling me/us to stop hating on the weeknd and just write about what we love maaaan. uhhh this is what i do like 90% of the time? you can't make a career out of just slagging shit off. but you really need to on occasion - the fact that apparently no one has actually read the thousands of words i've already written this year in praise of the music i love PROVES MY POINT

the only point this proves is that it's incredibly difficult to write positively about music and make people listen. not least when you're a particularly specialist fan of a genre.

i have no sympathy for you though i'm afraid. yes people pay less attention to positivity, the lanugage is weaker and it's incredibly hard to provoke a reaction when you say something is really good. it challenges the writer about ten times more to write about why something is great. but THAT is the entire challenge of music writing.

and as for "making a career", well again not a lot of sympathy. if your argument boils down to "i have to make connections between indie flavours of the month and music i like so i can write paid articles" then that's pretty grim. what a way to live, no wonder you're so annoyed. it's the most unnatural way to listen to music i can think of.

but the fact underlying all of this is that you're not actually going to change people's minds as a critic, nobody is. amazingly other people besides ourselves aren't so dumb that they read pitchfork like the bible and instantly like whatever's there, and just the same, they won't read anyone else's writing and be swayed very much by it.

you're right, far less people have read your positive stuff this year and probably will. because you write about music that is less popular. credit yourself for taking the time to do that and don't expect the vast majority of people to care. enjoy it when other fans do.

it's worth nothing that surfboards dude totally's blog post is the most interesting thing that i've read about the weeknd