★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

this sounds a bit like george michael at the end

said it so many times but when i was a nipper, my metal and grunge lovin' friends used to call anyone who listened to dance or hiphop "ravers". i even got called a raver for saying i liked cypress hill. that was when we were 13-14 and young enough not to know better.

no one had a problem with whiney's anti-witch house crusade, iirc. is that just because the weeknd are more defensible than salem?

well... yes

For one thing, The Weeknd isn't completely unforgivably inept and awful on every conceivable level

i once met a man on the street

haha, local garda, i subconsciously wrote that in that style, didn't i?

time was, people liked things

I still like the three Weeknd songs I heard, but not enough to actively seek out more.

sure, but it seems like a lot of people arguing with lex in this thread don't even like the weeknd's actual music, and are just going on general principles of criticism & authenticity etc

the thing salem and the weeknd have in common is that they're essentially trying to fuse two or three quite disparate genres together, and purveyors/gatekeepers will often act in a very hostile way if said style or genre is diluted or compromised.

Death to false trip-hop.

this is an xpost and maybe the kind of thing we're all done thinking about here? sorry, please skip it if this is stupid:

- I liked that Lex's article really quickly turned around from the Weeknd and made a strong (positive) case for r&b he liked. I think it's sort of unfortunate that it required the "better than the Weeknd" peg for him to get the right space/attention to do that. And I think it's fairly sensible for a critic to use something people in a given circle are paying attention to (like the Weeknd) as a hook to try and steer them toward other things they might pay attention to. (Also on some level I admire Lex's willingness to be a little needling and bullying about the way he goes about that, something I just ... wouldn't be able to summon up, I don't think.)

- I am really NOT in favor of everyone politely liking everything, but I do find it interesting that a lot of pop politics are really based around what people feel like they should be curious and open-minded about and what they're not required to. I was going to post earlier that a lot of critics now talk about "indie" stuff exactly the way indie kids talked about pop in the 90s -- that this is the bland, predictable stuff that's somehow being spoon-fed by oversized media (top-40 radio or Pitchfork) to a sheeplike public that refuses to know better and be curious about something more interesting and vibrant. The stereotypical old-school indie kid's snottiness and dismissal and refusal to engage with what a smart person might get out of pop -- that's really hard for me to distinguish from, say, the way Lex talks about lots of indie sensibilities! It makes the claims that (a) I already understand everything I need to about this sensibility, and (b) it is patently terrible and people are being deliberately ignorant by engaging with it. (This slight reversal has occurred in critical circles despite things like pop and r&b still dominating mainstream media; it's just that there's now enough of an online/indie/crit substream to treat it like a pop hegemony or something.) Maybe I just had way too striking an experience, around age 20 or whatever, of realizing how much of the music I cordoned off as not-worth-bothering-with was actually great -- and maybe it's just that people's cordons for that seem to move according to fashions that are driven by stuff well beyond the state of the music itself -- but I personally cannot figure out how to hold them seriously anymore. But I'm glad other people do, because otherwise music and criticism and fandom wouldn't really work so well.

- I'd like to note for the record that when I first enjoyed the Weeknd I had not noticed the singer had an Ethiopian last name.

i'm still not clear on what the weeknd is fusing together

trip-hop, post-punk, R&B and reverb

nahhh

wld be unfortunate if "reverb" became its own genre

the thing salem and the weeknd have in common is that they're essentially trying to fuse two or three quite disparate genres together, and purveyors/gatekeepers will often act in a very hostile way if said style or genre is diluted or compromised.

It's kind of... not "dangerous", but misleading to conflate/ignore the segment of the population you're describing who don't mind if the style/genre is diluted or compromised if the end result is an enjoyable listen.

xp: it practically is; did you not ever hear that Creep record?

maybe I mean "echo"

no i don't think so?

song is the tits (and way better than The Weeknd)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAoBeVV-e8c

love that creep single. their next one features nina sky! an r&b/indie fusion i'm down with. i am really not against the idea people fusing different styles - just against the way a certain kind of fusion is so often held up as better than a non-fusion.

I'm sorta looking forward to the point where a bunch of related fusions -- the million different versions of "gothy r&b" and "screwed & gothed" and "dark/atmospheric smartypants metal" and "gothy lo-fi bedroom pop" that seem to be floating around -- possibly fuse together and concentrate on one good subgenre where everyone wears robes.

monk & bass

http://roadburn.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Sunn-01.jpg

churchstep

haha YES

maybe that's what my music project should be

a lot of critics now talk about "indie" stuff exactly the way indie kids talked about pop in the 90s -- that this is the bland, predictable stuff that's somehow being spoon-fed by oversized media (top-40 radio or Pitchfork) to a sheeplike public that refuses to know better and be curious about something more interesting and vibrant. The stereotypical old-school indie kid's snottiness and dismissal and refusal to engage with what a smart person might get out of pop -- that's really hard for me to distinguish from, say, the way Lex talks about lots of indie sensibilities! It makes the claims that

^^^once again the smartest man in the room, kids

a lot of critics now talk about "indie" stuff exactly the way indie kids talked about pop in the 90s

i don't really see that this is true - indie is still the default critical centre, maybe more than ever (see pazz & jop results for the past few years, chuck's essay about indie dominance the year before last, etc)

yeah tbf nabisco lex is still the exception to the rule & the rest of us who dont like weeknd are a lot of the ppl who didnt like similar moves from drake, an out & out pop star

a lot of critics now talk about "indie" stuff exactly the way indie kids talked about pop in the 90s -- that this is the bland, predictable stuff that's somehow being spoon-fed by oversized media (top-40 radio or Pitchfork) to a sheeplike public that refuses to know better and be curious about something more interesting and vibrant. The stereotypical old-school indie kid's snottiness and dismissal and refusal to engage with what a smart person might get out of pop -- that's really hard for me to distinguish from, say, the way Lex talks about lots of indie sensibilities!

I think it's actually quite difficult to engage with something you feel alienated by especially if you feel it's an all-pervasive cultural force that *gets in the way* of things. It's a similar attitude I see in people who hate football/soccer and find its culture difficult to avoid in things they like doing (in this analogy substitute "going to pubs" for "writing about music").

Like, when there's this perceived mandatory cultural centrepoint that people look at you as a weirdo for feeling left out by (pop music, indie bands, team sports) it's not surprising that people kick out against it, especially when it appears elsewhere. In the UK at least, lot of indie kid dislike for pop music was a political dislike as much as an aesthetic one, and maybe those concerns fade over time.

The stereotypical old-school indie kid's snottiness and dismissal and refusal to engage with what a smart person might get out of pop -- that's really hard for me to distinguish from, say, the way Lex talks about lots of indie sensibilities! It makes the claims that (a) I already understand everything I need to about this sensibility, and (b) it is patently terrible and people are being deliberately ignorant by engaging with it.

i was trying to say something like this upthread & i think the fundamentally tedious thing is that everyone just assumes that they 'get' what the weeknd are trying to do w/ these 'indie signifiers' or where they come from. this has been annoying me for a long time on ilx as some dude points out i was complaining abt it on the eoy threads a few months ago too this weird equivocation of like the national style a/v club indie & ppl trading lmtd run el tule noise pop cassettes. as if these two audiences are essentially the same - aesthetically/cultural/socioeconomically - & so its 'ok' or even 'useful' to talk abt 'indie signifiers' in a way that ignores everything abt the ppl actually consuming/creating 'indie'

ugh this thread is sorta the abyss to me & its gazing back w/ the subhuman glint of a british music critic but i think one of the (potentially) interesting things to talk abt is that the weeknd arent indie kids reaching out to 'indie' theyre r&b kids reaching out to 'chillwave' & its like... what do they think these sounds/textures/images are capable of conveying that mnstrm r&b isnt? but most of the critcism either wants 2 focus on why 'indie' audiences/critics like them & is that bad & blah blah blah

i mean i like dawn richards & kandi & ryan leslie a lot more than i like house of balloons & i think its a p big mistake to think that (as originally conceived) most wknd audience wouldnt already be listening to them... but unless you want 2 take the cynical tack of thinking they only do it 4 'buzz' consider what weeknd is saying abt themselves/ppl like themselves w/ these 'indie signifiers' abt how the conceive of their audience/how ppl actually live

when there's this perceived mandatory cultural centrepoint that people look at you as a weirdo for feeling left out by (pop music, indie bands, team sports) it's not surprising that people kick out against it,

OTM, this is mostly how I react to Top 40 and pro sports, I can't help it.

then again I don't even hear any "indie signifiers" in the Weeknd so I don't even understand what the big deal is. it just sounds like modern r&b to me.

theyre r&b kids reaching out to 'chillwave'

this seems a little closer to the truth, but R&B's pillaged from microtrends like that for ages, this is nothing new or reprehensible or whatever

Oh sorry, Lex, I'm definitely not saying that's a majority opinion or anything! Yes, indie is still definitely a center.* I'm just saying it's interesting that there's a largely enough indie-centered critical culture that it can have a good number of discontents (I just said "a lot"), who talk about what Pitchfork allegedly spoon-feeds the world the same way 80s/90s punks talked about top-40 radio. I'm not even saying that's entirely incorrect: The success of online indie press actually does make it so indie-rock albums are one of the easiest things to know about, whereas keeping up with, say, rap mixtapes or metal or small-scale r&b on YouTube videos actually involves the kind of geeky digging and sorting underground-rock dudes would have been doing two decades ago.

* I always thought -- and I assume this is non-controversial? -- that it's been ever-more-central in the US this decade PARTLY because it colonized written criticism back when that was the only available way to talk about indie stuff ... so when internet music-talk blew up, indie types already had a culture/scheme/language of small-scale written press. In ways pop/r&b didn't, because pop always had TV and radio. (Hip-hop had the same kind of by-necessity text-criticism thing for a long time! Except that it was ambitious and successful about crossing over into mass media, right in time for mass media to start falling apart.)

Matt, I definitely know what you mean about a mandatory/alienating center point -- though I have to note that this center point really, really varies depending on where you stand. Much as it's grown, there's still no real history of any indie "center" in the US. Hell, being alienated by mandatory centers is precisely why I grew up disliking hard rock and turned against hip-hop in my teens. The jangly British guitar bands I liked instead were a mandatory/alienating center for Lex. So if we all wind up discussing stuff in the same place, it becomes really hard for me, at least, to fix what the oppressive "center" is. I guess we locate what's oppressive around here, but I'm not sure how much that answers the question...

lamp & im not trying to troll or be difficult here but in that case isnt your argument just 'you guys dont 'get' it' & how is that any more legit than us saying, we get it but its beside the pt? i dunno for me the 'problem' i have w this basically crystalizd around what tim id'd as this feeling, rather than an interesting/novel take on R&B to be an obvious, gauche one

i mean i like dawn richards & kandi & ryan leslie a lot more than i like house of balloons & i think its a p big mistake to think that (as originally conceived) most wknd audience wouldnt already be listening to them... but unless you want 2 take the cynical tack of thinking they only do it 4 'buzz' consider what weeknd is saying abt themselves/ppl like themselves w/ these 'indie signifiers' abt how the conceive of their audience/how ppl actually live

― lol ok (Lamp), Friday, April 1, 2011 5:46 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark

fwiw im open to this idea as a thing -- we love R&B & want a tumblr version that will have an easier time getting booked at pfork, but 1) thats obv acknowledging that the reason teedra moses wont get booked at pfork fest and weeknd could is bcuz in between those 'already R&B fans' like sean f & indie fans who wont give weeknd the time of day are ppl who only give weeknd the time of day

2) the problem most ppl in this thread have isnt with an 'indie version' its an indie version that we think isnt v good -- like, why not make something that succeeds on both indie & R&B terms -- to me this stuff has zero chance of broaching a broad R&B audience -- its funny nabisco was talking about the exclusionariness of odd future on his tumblr the other day cuz while thats explicitly exclusive theres an exclusivity & differentiating going on when someone like the weeknd comes out & imo rejects the tenets of what makes R&B what it is but embraces the tenets of indie. im not sure i buy that thats this irreverent rule-breaking bcuz it seems so indie-friendly relative to R&B-friendly

lamp & im not trying to troll or be difficult here but in that case isnt your argument just 'you guys dont 'get' it' & how is that any more legit than us saying, we get it but its beside the pt?

we can only hear music on our terms, really, & in forming your own value judgement it is beside the point. i mean i get that you dont think the weeknd is very good, this is a legit reaction, i dont really care abt it. but if youre trying to make some claim as a 'cultural critic' & examine the way taste is shaped/expressed than you shld probably be capable of accurately 'seeing' the 'forces on the ground' rather than just sorta blindly waving your hands at yr own prejudice

for example: youre claiming that to me this stuff has zero chance of broaching a broad R&B audience but assume (a) this is a bad thing and (b) not really examing why or what motivation the dudes behind the weeknd have for 'challenging' or 'rejecting' msntrm r&b audiences/tenets, considering they wld probably see themselves as part of that audience. i mean you still think the point is 'getting booked at p4k' ffs

also: ppl who only give weeknd the time of day is again the wrong audience to focus on & sorta narcissistic i guess, & your 'indie tenets' feels specious becuase what tenets what 'indie' what cultural space

also: ppl who only give weeknd the time of day is again the wrong audience to focus on & sorta narcissistic i guess

youve got this exactly backwards. who do u think is listening to this group

I'm guessing at least some of them are ppl who follow Drake

i want to dig into the rest of what youve posted but im at work & it will take some time -- hopefully ill get to it this evening but im not sure we're arguing what each other thinks were arguing

hahaha I just started reading Lex's piece and had no idea he quoted me re: Kandi

Having now read Lex's piece the only thing I take issue with is the "Only a fool..." line, mostly because it's unnecessarily alienating to the people the piece is allegedly pitched towards; people who've read the hype about The Weeknd. Nothing else in the piece is particularly objectionable.

ok a quick response to lamp, if i get what you're saying u are concerned w/ the 'indie'-centricity of what im saying -- i think tim addressed this but fwiw these values of 'worthiness' are really not limited to indie as a form & are something i argue w/ say hip hop heads or R&B heads about all the time -- that the priveleging of certain aesthetic maneauvers is a cross-genre phenomenon & has a lot of complicated ins & outs that are complicated by both racial & class lines. a lot of my tendencies in taste operate along the lines that 'dumb' music or simple non-'weird' music tends to be misunderstood by many of my well-educated peers (& this crosses racial/ethnic lines, although is complicated by them)

also how the hell can you define my work overall by a "negative agenda" given that i write positively about music i love at least 3/4 of the time?! but if you want pollyanna shit you can look elsewhere, b/c i do think that the music industry (by which i include the press and critical consensus) i often deeply rotten, and don't see why i shouldn't point this out

― lex pretend, Friday, April 1, 2011 12:32 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

lex you have to understand that a lot of the characterizations of you on this thread are based less on that one article or your freelancing output and more on your 5-6(?) years on ILM promoting the most persistently singleminded and exclusionary musical worldview of probably any poster besides Geir. obviously you're comfortable with your posting style and opinions and are prepared to tirelessly defend them for another x years, but please don't act shocked and disappointed when people see you the way you've conditioned them to see you over thousands and thousands of posts.

L O L

http://truantsblog.com/?p=10724

As much praise as both records received, it didn’t take too long before R&B skeptics and bitter souls started to tore these records apart for not living up to their definition of the genre. Both mixtapes have a darker layer to them than most contemporary R&B and what have you songs.

The youngins surely have a long way to go until delivering record like 12 Dreams but then again, singers like R.Kelly are at least thirty years of practice, ten lawsuits and millions of dollars ahead of them.

Frank Ocean kills it on aforementioned “Novocane” and “American Wedding”, and even samples MGMT’s “Electric Feel” (all tracks are produced by himself)

record like 12 pumps

As much praise as both records received, it didn’t take too long before R&B skeptics and bitter souls started to tore these records apart for not living up to their definition of the genre.

stack the deck much

Real quick: One of the reasons I wrote a column about this was seeing a few people (mostly on Twitter, not here) asking stuff like "why would anyone listen to Weeknd when it just sounds like bad INSERT R&B ARTIST," and in those few cases I think there is something they're not getting; they're hearing the group spend maybe half of its energy living up to a standard of "good r&b" and consider the other half boring/wasted/terrible, instead of noticing that the other half is doing specific stuff that's good and valuable to ... someone else. Which is totally fine: They don't have to absorb or relate to that sensibility if they don't feel like it! The things I'm really interested in are (a) denying that it's there (hence my broken-record "there are sonic reasons this appeals to X audience"), and (b) the fact that, right now, it feels very supportable and legitimate to take a stance where you're like "I don't need to understand anything about that boring stupid oppressive sensibility," in a way that would have been harder to pull off at various points in the past. (Which is why I brought up 80s/90s punk dudes, who could successfully and compellingly strike "I don't need to understand that boring stupid oppressive sensibility" poses about the pop charts.)

I'm still annoyed at the spelling of their group name.

Fuck 'em.