★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

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

and sorry one other point, using things you think are shit to say why thing x is great is the LAZIEST critical tool I can think of...

ronan, music criticism isn't just about assessing music in a vacuum, it's about engaging w/music crits elsewhere, music you don't necessarily like, connecting the dots and stuff. i mean your "why write negative music crit" line is completely baffling to me

and you keep reducing what i write - both generally and in that article - to the most simplistic argument! i'm not sure you've read any of it tbh!

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

it would have been dishonest w/r/t my experience of the album to do otherwise.

Not saying people who do the "this person transcends the confines of genre" approach are being dishonest, but it wouldn't be true to how I enjoy music (and would be both cynical and hypocritical of me besides) to take that line in order to get more hits.

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

― J0rdan S., Thursday, March 31, 2011 4:11 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

otm cool blog post

i couldn't tell which one was his

initials kg iirc

local garda pretty otm i think

lamp- 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

tim f - 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.

I have always been surprised by how little ppl in the real world know about or seem to reflect ideas in 'music writing' (in the broadest sense including every youtube comment, trope, zing etc.) because it made sense to me that they would have some vibrational level awareness. Likewise it seems intuitive that the discourse surrounding everything to do w/ music bleeds from the page into yr head - why wouldn't it? but really music writing and especially "the critical discourse" is just one social field among many. Engagement w/ it isn't exactly optional but still varies massively depending on geography&demographics, & there are so many other autonomous fields based around music out there -esp surrounding live music scenes- w/ their own space and power dynamics. it's so easy to overestimate consensus as everyone has so many blind spots, & i think what tim f is saying here is only really true w/in this narrow field.

once you zoom to the level of the weeknd tho, critical reception looms much larger over the listening experience, but its not surprising that lamp whose experience of the band predates the specific critical response & is probably largely mediated by other factors, wld roll his eyes at this. & fair enough, cuz critics are on some confucius-level overstating the significance of their own class.

I'm not sure about the purported ambition of deej&some dude to broaden this field really, because I'm not sure by broadening you dilute the influence of certain power dynamics - i.e. dominance of "pitchfork the aesthetic worldview & critical approach" - or just spread it. in which case you might just get more indie rnb. you can try and subvert the beast from the inside & obviously even shit like this thread mighty effec

Also contra garda I do think music critics map out & frame issues w/ vocab &c. in public, which is subtly v influential. I say that as someone who has very consciously rethought things after reading music writing about acts I never have or will hear, but

I have always been surprised by how little ppl in the real world know about or seem to reflect ideas in 'music writing'

i think quite the opposite! people generally want to feel like their taste is discerning & use critical language for that all the time. people use critics' language without even thinking about it.

xpost Apologies for a weird cut off sentence! I'll try and end it:

...you can try and subvert the beast from the inside & obviously even shit like this thread might effect the discourse w/in the Pitchfork Weltanschauung, but I'm not sure how effective the inside agents in this thread have been in pushing their stated cause.

yeah I'm saying my experience defied my expectations here... 'critical language' is a bit more slippery because its less exclusive to 'music writing' field... depending on what language yr talking about I guess.

ronan, music criticism isn't just about assessing music in a vacuum, it's about engaging w/music crits elsewhere, music you don't necessarily like, connecting the dots and stuff. i mean your "why write negative music crit" line is completely baffling to me

if the engagement is for positive reasons or even accurate/valid then fine, but i don't think even you think there is a genuine and worthwhile connection between the weeknd and the acts you cite, there's merely a spiteful one you created yourself, and simultaneously pretend to be annoyed by, even as you perpetuate it further in the name of a newspeg!

plus in an age where there is so much opinion about music, in endless forms, to cherry pick one or two and call it "engaging w music crits" and not just endless reaction is a bit ambitious in my view.

would much rather read more criticism in a vacuum and less "the hype says this and then i responded to that and this guy said this and before you think what someone will write tomorrow here's what i've written today"

maybe that's a personal choice but i'm sure i'm not the only one...

I hope I didn't come off like too much of an all-or-nothing R&B purist itt, funny thing is 2 of my favorite records of the last couple months, by White Life and Patrick Stump, are both basically white guys with rock backgrounds sort of doing their own twists on pop and R&B. Something like The Weeknd is much closer to current mainstream R&B but maybe the little differences produce kind of an uncanny valley effect, where I'm like this reminds me of The-Dream but is in no way preferable to The-Dream. Art/rock interpretations of R&B can be extremely hit and miss, but there's at least more chance of it feeling like its own distinct thing that doesn't remind me too much of something better I can turn on the radio and hear at any given minute.

yeah the most baffling assertion that has been made itt is that the weeknd is extremely distinct from current mainstream r&b

hey guys I'm going to quote ~at some length~ richard meltzer on robert christgau:

I now realize what he had in mind was simply topical news of the "trade," of a scene writ LARGE (but still of questionable existence) for which he relentlessly shilled, shills, will always shill (when you review everything, or pretend you do, without an external guarantor of the "fact" of such supposed mega-reality--even one as lame and noxious as the Stone--you would pretty much seem a freakin' FOOOOOOOOL, eh?). Whenever he spit the notion of journalism at me, I shot back with "Consult yourself," which he in turn pooh-poohed as "bourgeois individualism" or whatev--'twasn't "universal" enough for the bastard...fuck me.

Then as now, on the street as at motherfucking Yale, my fundamental concern was with truth, THE truth (hee haw), i.e., for starters: what you can be surest of. If we're talking records and bands and whatnot, all you c'n be anywhere NEAR sure of is the shadow of this shit in your own playpen. Which is no easy ride--mercy! To confront and interrogate your merry ass, you've gotta be objective, impersonal, you've gotta go straight at your own jugular--mix a metaphor--and take furious notes while the blood is still fresh. If the initial calculus ain't perfect, you're nowhere, and anywhere you proceed is triple nowhere.

yah some dude otm

where's the surboard dudes article ?

http://blatantineptitude.blogspot.com/2011/03/jj-abrams-ication-of-music-on-web.html

yah, that's a good piece

oh yeah, that was dope, i linked to it itt after seeing it on the vv thing

oh yeah i already read it, real good, on point.

there's merely a spiteful one you created yourself, and simultaneously pretend to be annoyed by, even as you perpetuate it further in the name of a newspeg!

oh fuck you

"spiteful"?

"pretend" to be annoyed by?

do me a fucking favour and stop being so fucking disingenuous

also can whichever of you are pretending to be "concerned fans" on my tumblr quit it

as i've said: the people who've cosigned my piece versus the people who've taken offense = TOTAL VINDICATION

what about the ppl itt who agree w your opinions overall but find your methodology for expressing them to be counterproductive

i mean its like, i can disagree w/ you up to a point, but then next time it'll be an artist who i think is doing something interesting, where it's far enough from R&B that it justifies itself, and then its like, well, at least i didnt cosign earlier

they too will be liquidated

i find "delicately picking one's way towards reasonableness" a horribly inhibiting way of writing, and one that's far too easily ignored. basically people need to punched in the face (figuratively) (well also literally but sadly geography prohibits this) with #realtalk

i don't get "counterproductive". i could write a nice article about the kandi album that isn't negative about anyone! it would a) not get commissioned b) even if it did it would get 1/100th of the readers that this did c) would do nothing to rectify the imbalance in the critical discourse that's what's pissing us off here

cf my sunny sweeney feature in last week's guardian that afaik three people read

its a rhetorical style, it doesnt mean your underlying points are any different, and a smart reader should be able to figure out the diff

this is more like an a-bomb to the face, where you're not afraid of what other ideas remain standing

this is more like an a-bomb to the face, where you're not afraid of what other ideas remain standing

that's the POINT

look indie kids are notoriously dense. they are not going to NOTICE anything less

fwiw i dont actually have as much of an issue with you using weeknd for a hook into writing about other stuff, in and of itself

personally i find it more damning when a writer can identify things that people like about something & talk about why it appeals, THEN lead into why this is, relative to the genre as a whole, a marginal accomplishment at best. i think its a more convincing case. otherwise people just assume you have an axe to grind & dismiss you

but i dunno i use ilx for me kneejerk "this suxxx" type reactions so i can think things thru & be more balanced when im writing for lots of people. i mean, i have friends who like this stuff (probably), and im not about to go punch them in the face about it

i don't really care what my friends like, i only really get annoyed when people whose job it is to "think about music" (or who obviously spend a lot of time doing that even if it isn't their job) make such a catastrophic error of thought

its also like, if you get all enraged abt it in the piece imo it comes off as 'doth protest too much' -- if its not a big deal, it deserves to be eye rolled & dismissed. i dunno i mean, to be clear, i dont think my rhetoric is perfect by any means. im just thinking thru how id write a piece like this / spitballin -- but like, a superiority "this is obviously not worth our time, here's what the real heads are here for" goes better when youre main tactic is arguing that 'real' R&B fans like this vs. that.

if you were trying to convince indie fans that their approach is backwards, i dont think you can couch the argument in 'real' vs 'fake' terms, because it just reinforces the divide. if you are trying to reinforce that divide, then its prob more convincing to just be all haughtily dismissive rather than confrontational i would think

idk