★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

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.

I think the above is right nabisco, but the question remains, "what is this music actually doing that is different?" (and i'm not saying that expecting the answer to be "nothing") - because a lot of the responses to the album I read praise aspects of the music that actually do seem like fairly regular qualities of R&B. I can understand why a person might like the Weeknd and dislike Trey Songz/Jeremih/etc but the difference between them (at least at the more atmospheric end of the latter group) is more subtle than it's mostly being presented. And when lots of people are saying they get an emotional resonance from the Weeknd that they don't or can't get from regular R&B, it's difficult not to conclude that a good deal of that is due to how those people perceive R&B, how they perceive whatever category they place the Weeknd in, why it is that they respond to the cues they do respond to.

I'm a broken record too at this point but my basic point is that this either/or approach of "either this music is entirely a bourdieu phenomenon or there's something in the music that is real and resonates with its particular audience" constructs a false dichotomy where the sounds we respond to have nothing to do with the social structures of taste in our head and vice versa, whereas in truth each creates and reinforces the other.

Re hating: I don't object to hate in music crit, I'm just no good at it myself, or haven't been inclined to express it for a long time. I tend to think the capacity to froth and rage as a critic is the flipside of being so absolutely committed to a particular idea of music that you'd defend that idea even if meant all other ideas died. Zeal, basically.

I just don't feel that passionately committed to any one idea of music such that I could write like that. The closest thing would be the way in which sometimes I feel like my ideas on 2-step and funky are like a representative of all my other ideas about anything (musically obv) - and surprise surprise that is where I'm most polemical (probably to lex's chagrin if anything).

Reasonableness in music criticism is less about reasonableness per se, I think, and more about that sense of "well, I hold all of these contradictory ideas about music in my head, sometimes I feel like jaxon and sometimes I feel like lex and sometimes I feel like deej and sometimes I feel like etc.etc." and trying to understand how all of these modes of listening are negotiated. So, while I'm not particularly motivated to listen to the Weeknd more than I already have, it still interests me to think about the issue of how they (and their audience) negotiate these conflicting modes of listening as well.

tim, what you're missing is there are people, like myself, who actually like both the weeknd and regular r&b.

ha i dont think hes talking about u tho, and you havent really said much beyond expressing your interest in what you think it does well, (i guess ambiance?) I mean, Rev likes it too iirc.

And my initial responses were in reaction to yours, just explaining where i thought it fell short compared to lots of stuff we agree on. But there's really not much else to say after we've presented our preferences -- the problems only come in when ppl start explaining their attraction to it in ways that strike me as lacking the listening experience you have or that seem to shortchange a lot of what other R&B does

tbf rev is the founder of a thread called itt: kinda out there, maybe kinda experimental, maybe kinda pretentious modern r&b -- in a way The Weeknd is just the latest in a long line of acts that strikes a chord w/ R&B fans who like hearing a something a little off-center from the genre's norms. and that's totally OK imo, most of the things being discussed in this thread are pretty specific to The Weeknd's music and/or press coverage that isn't true of most of the acts talked about in rev's thread.

ya, i started this thread lo-fi or outsider soul & funk and a ton of other experimental r'n'b threads. this one wasn't anything diff i guess. i know people have said this album is hookless, but most of my favorite albums *seemed* hookless at first. they take a while to sink in. i can def hum along to almost all the songs on this. i really like his melodies. i like the atmosphere. i like his voice. i could give a shit about the beachhouse samples because i still haven't heard beach house. i dig the happy house sample. that one def made me smile a ton when i first heard it. i dunno. like i said in the other thread, i've listened to nothign but r'n'b for 2 weeks straight and i def have a greater appreciation for what's out there right now (didnt' shy away from that stuff because it was r'n'b, just don't listen to modern music all that much), but it doesn't lessen what i feel for this record. different strokes. nbd

some ideas i have:

- the weeknd are essentially (or mb formally) r&b
- they are using the dissonance created by introducing aesthetic tropes from 'indie' or 'chillwave' to both comment on r&b & create a specific emotional range or atmosphere
- this is not unique or really weird
- this does not mean that there are no other ways of using the genre to occupy the same emotional range
- nor does it devalue other artists working w/in the genre
- the emotional qualities that 'chillwave' has, the aesthetic shorthand its developed, is a p natural one to pick up on
- if one of your primary goals is to portray a kind of hollowness or spiritual poverty or ennui undergirding your own life, it can be useful to use an 'outside' aesthetic language to make that point
- some audiences will only respond to the aesthetic language theyre familiar w/
- this isnt really a 'bad' thing
- none of this means u have to like the weeknd or think they are successful or w/e

I don't dislike the weeknd actually jaxon! And what seems typical of a large portion of an audience is never true of an entire audience. But nor have I simply imagined the preponderance of responses I described upthread.

It does seem a lamentable quality of ilm discussions that people find intolerable references to experiences of music that don't match their own.

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

hey deej, serious post this time, from what I read of your stuff on this thread, you've mostly just given these sort of personal pref value judgments - but you haven't really explained (maybe you have?) what exactly about the weeknd doesn't do it for you. afaict you just think they sound 'generic' but what does that mean? I think I'd better be able to understand your position if it was a little bit more staked out.

Umm that creep video upthread, despite being amazing to look at, sounded exactly like Salem removing the weeknd. Still enjoyed it though.

Remixing, not removing. Stupid phone

hey deej, serious post this time, from what I read of your stuff on this thread, you've mostly just given these sort of personal pref value judgments - but you haven't really explained (maybe you have?) what exactly about the weeknd doesn't do it for you. afaict you just think they sound 'generic' but what does that mean? I think I'd better be able to understand your position if it was a little bit more staked out.

― dayo, Saturday, April 2, 2011 12:37 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★
★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★
★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★
(starting w/ last para)
★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

not to be a dick but i think ive explained why this stuff doesnt work for me thru-out this thread

ok afaict you don't like it because it sounds generic and not "v novel and interesting"

what does that mean?

It does seem a lamentable quality of ilm discussions that people find intolerable references to experiences of music that don't match their own.

ok genuine lol

ok afaict you don't like it because it sounds generic and not "v novel and interesting"

what does that mean?

― dayo, Saturday, April 2, 2011 1:04 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

... are you reading what i linked? i said a lot moer than that...?

jesus the posts he just linked to have like 400 words of pretty descriptive feedback about the actual sound of the songs, you really gonna keep pulling teeth (xpost)