★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

and thanks for linking those posts deej, I hope you can see why they're more interesting to read than stuff like

fwiw im saying this not as a music critic: this music is not good
― timbo slice (D-40), Friday, April 1, 2011 11:09 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

― dayo, Saturday, April 2, 2011 1:23 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

fwiw this was a reaction to the feeling i was getting that the anti- side was being represented as responding purely to the hype, thus all the 'oh jeez music critics itt' etc

Although I don't like Drake per se I find his vocal performance on "Aston Martin Music" much more unsettling and weirdly involving than the Weeknd's vocals, though I can't put my finger on why. At a guess, maybe it's because I get the sense Drake himself doesn't realise how odd he sounds.

― Tim F, Saturday, April 2, 2011 1:29 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

love 'aston martin music' btw

It's like Last Train To Paris in one track.

ewww please don't say that

one of the reasons that i got really excited by the early weeknd tracks was bcuz in loft music he signs 'im living for the present & the future dont exist' & i think thats a fundamentally impt force underlying 'chillwave' but here was someone expressing this in the context & language of what sounded like a dream track

& like sure there are r&b songs that deal w/ the same basic sentiment but not w/ the same sense of displacement & unknowable loss (to me). because traditional r&b doesnt really do displacement its often so rooted/present ime. i mean part of it is hes making the subtext of ~gratitious hedonism~ text - the early morning emptiness, the disconnection & i guess this is potentially lame or gauche idk

anyway I'll be game and try to shift this thread back to talk about the weeknd instead of p4k and screeds and all that

wicked games the vocals are better but the song has so many unnecessary 'fuckings' its distracting & lyrically corny in parts

― deej, Wednesday, March 16, 2011 12:34 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

lyrically corny R&B songs are par for the course, I thought? I think the cursing in this album isn't just mindlessly used - it's a signifier of this sort of wild false bravado that acts as a defense mechanism for the singer's insecurities, i.e. "the higher that I climb, the harder I'mma drop, these pussy-ass n*ggas hold on to their credit..."

i guess to me it just seems too close to actual R&B, not weird enough, to seem partic. novel. Burial im not a huge fan of but it at least has a beat style that exists outside of current R&B, this just sounds like an anonymous slow jam to me but w/ a plainer vocal performance

― D-40, Monday, March 21, 2011 10:38 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

I don't know if the music is trying to be out-and-out weird - as some dude pointed out early, there is an uncanny valley effect going on where it's just close enough to actual r&b to put you into that emotional mode of receiving/listening, but the actual emotional message is pretty different. also this uses the term 'actual R&B' which as has been pointed out itt has all sorts of problems w/r/t questions of authenticity & assumptions.

what matters imo is songwriting & this project has its moments --'the morning' is p great -- but some big misses too. that 'rock the boat' sampling one is generic as hell & the vocal effect is distancing. & the lyrics in the 2nd one, where he keeps saying 'motherfucker,' are really off putting & gimmicky. im kind of w/ lex here in that if you like this stuff, you should love the album tracks ("unfortunate" etc) on the last trey songz

― D-40, Tuesday, March 22, 2011 10:27 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

you'll be forgiven if 'pretty big misses' is not exactly enlightening. here you use 'generic as hell' but I don't know what you mean by that.

i listened to the entire thing on my way home & i think 'the morning' is the only song that really works well, because it actually bothers to have a worthwhile hook. they have some creative & interesting ideas to explore throughout -- i like the vocal sample, and later on the guitar-driven rhythm on 'the party & the afterparty.' for example. but yeah, for the most part the lyrics are stilted & awkward, the 'novel textures' arent nearly as novel as they think they are, the songwriting lacks hooks. this stuff imo doesnt function the way its intended most of the time.

― D-40, Wednesday, March 23, 2011 2:35 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

okay so here you think that the weeknd should have hooks - I disagree, I think there are hooks, but maybe the kind that take a couple of listens to get. what do you mean "function the way its intended to most of the time"? what do you think the music aims at doing?

also this uses the term 'actual R&B' which as has been pointed out itt has all sorts of problems w/r/t questions of authenticity & assumptions.

dayo not only is this pointless point-scoring, it's wrong. "Actual R&B" and "Real R&B" are not the same concepts. All deej meant was that the music didn't sound so unlike R&B the genre to automatically be considered something difference.

okay, I'll grant that - still, that's as much of a reaction against the characterization of the music by critics than it is about the music itself

Deej's point in that statement was that the sonic and aesthetic choices that the Weeknd makes might seem more interesting if they were more divorced from typical R&B. In the absence of that, it's hard not simply to rank the Weeknd against other vocalists, songwriters and producers in R&B and find the project middling or unremarkable as a result.

Serious non-dick question: would any huge fans of the Weeknd describe their enjoyment of the music as being on any basis other than its chillwavey vibe?

wld be unfortunate if "reverb" became its own genre

― call all destroyer, Friday, April 1, 2011 7:01 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdajrGhBBIA

fair enough Tim - I do think this music is rewarding in and of itself and that even when compared with others in the same vibe (that trey songz song unfortunate, the jeremih album) it's not *that* much off in either direction to warrant being called 'middling' or 'unremarkable.'

I don't think I"ve ever consciously listened to chillwave, unless games counts? explaining my like for this as crossing the wires of R&B and chillwave appreesh might not be not OTM

if only we had a chillwave thread w/ an endlessly grating plaxico-penned thread title

oh wait

i know everybody else has already forgotten abt it but can we have one chillwave thread that isnt entirely ¡LOLwave! or w/e

fair enough Tim - I do think this music is rewarding in and of itself and that even when compared with others in the same vibe (that trey songz song unfortunate, the jeremih album) it's not *that* much off in either direction to warrant being called 'middling' or 'unremarkable.'

― dayo, Friday, April 1, 2011 10:26 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

how is not being that different or too far in one direction mutually exclusive with being described as middling?

well it seems that 'middling' was used in the sense that 'actual R&B' has been held up itt as being successful at what the weeknd fails at - I just want to suggest that the weeknd is a lateral move, and not really deserving of all the blowhard rhetoric itt (which I can't even tell if it's being aimed at critics or the weeknd themselves anymore)

No that's the wrong way about. Heaps of actual R&B is middling. It's in the nature of genres that this is the case. It simply wouldn't make sense to say that R&B as a genre is not middling.

I think you're erroneously assuming that Weeknd-sceptcs think all R&B is superior to the Weeknd (to be fair maybe Lex does).

tbf lex's guardian piece has hung heavy over this entire discussion! I would argue that the weeknd's outsider status magnifies whatever criticism is leveled at it so that a term like 'middling' does come to mean 'worse than actual R&B'

anyway, I do think that the weeknd do enough things differently from 'actual' R&B that they reserve a spot in my listening rotation, at least for now - and I was curious as to why deej thought they didn't.

for the record I am now listening to the trey songz anticipation tape more than the weeknd so congrats you assholes win

It's like Last Train To Paris in one track.

― Tim F, Friday, April 1, 2011 9:32 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ewww please don't say that

― sarraghmaclachlan (some dude), Friday, April 1, 2011 9:33 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i mean for the love of god

Haha, sorry.

i think the use of drake in "aston martin music" is slightly novel from a structural standpoint but i still don't really get what the point of it is

I only really ever 'noticed' chrisette michelle's part

well that's the chorus so yeah

yeah, but drake mirrors it right? I assume that's what tim f is talking about

oh wait they're two different parts. hmm

no disrespect because even though i've played the "whats the DEAL with all these music critics" card too many times to be funny itt, ive actually enjoyed a lot of the discussion here. but for real some dude's heavy engagement with this thread day after day while shamelessly admitting he only listened to "one or two songs on youtube" of the artist in question is without a doubt the funniest thing i've read on ILX this month INCLUDING shakey mo's statement that "real life lesbians aren't ever attractive by hetero standards"

I think you're erroneously assuming that Weeknd-sceptcs think all R&B is superior to the Weeknd (to be fair maybe Lex does).

haha obviously not. did you mean to spell "sceptcs" like that btw? i hope so.

i think this paragraph from this guardian blog gets to the heart of the matter (in the wrong way but yeah): http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/mar/30/new-band-holy-other

And make no mistake, Holy Other are engaged in a similar project to recontextualise R&B as How to Dress Well and the Weeknd (there's even a track called BoyziiMen). Now, we realise this is dipping our toes into the week's hottest water, so we'd just like to say, we loved Jam and Lewis productions for Alexander O'Neal in the 80s just as we've got all the time in the world for the latest exponents of that form of hi-tech R&B, but we can appreciate that, for some, contemporary soul, for all the studio gloss, is still too passionate, too damn soulful. We've seen one particular track (Timothy Bloom's Til The End of Time) recommended this week, but call us terminal miserablists phobic about fleshy reality, we don't want a soundtrack to adult lovemaking. That's precisely why How To, Holy Other and the Weeknd – and the Drake album, for that matter – are such a boon: it's soul deracinated, desexualised, enervated and etherealised, until there is nothing left but production and sorrow. It's unearthy/unearthly.

- damn right i'm gonna call you a terminal miserabilist phobic about fleshy reality
- if you can't deal with, or actively don't want, songs about making love, YOU DO NOT GET R&B and should stop commenting on it

Oh please

"you're not a true punk, you don't get it. I saw you last week and you had long hair!"

it's kind of like not wanting techno records to have 7-minute instrumentals with a 4x4 beat, or a rap record to have bragging on it, or a dubstep record to have so much bass on it

I found the Lester / Petridis comments on the Guardian podcast a little o_O.

There seems to be a reduction of Lex's article to 'we should all listen to more stuff like R. Kelly', then a jump to the idea that songs that sound like R. Kelly are all about fucking, then another jump to the idea that songs about fucking have no emotional complexity. While i'm perfectly willing to admit that some acts (including Kelly at times) do swim in some fairly shallow waters, it seems like a crazy thing to build your conception of a genre on. Not sure what to make of the fact they have no problems with black female sexuality in records but not with black male sexuality either. The whole thing's a can of worms.

I've got no problem with people loving The Weeknd and little problem with people who don't listen to R&B praising it as something fresh and new to their ears. Praising them while writing off mainstream R&B, based on what looks like a pretty flimsy understanding of the area, irks though.

what did they say on the podcast?

It's worth listening to the first five minutes when they're discussing Holy Other / The Weeknd / your article. The gist is that they understand where you're coming from but that the sexual content of the stuff you're talking about and the lack of the kind of depth they see in The Weeknd turns them off. They both agree that they've got no problem with female R&B singers making explicit records but not males ones.

idk, maybe i'm reading too much into the comments or mischaracterising what they meant. It's a touchy area and it's probably best that you judge for yourself.

it's kind of like not wanting techno records to have 7-minute instrumentals with a 4x4 beat, or a rap record to have bragging on it, or a dubstep record to have so much bass on it

Do not see why this is a problem though. Isn't this how new and interesting styles are founded? By fucking with the parameters? Fusing ideas together? By adding and subtracting?

Why should we even compare things like the weeknd to og r'n'b anyway? It's like arguing the difference between David Guetta and The Field (to pick two random examples).

Don't have a horse in this particular race, but....

Do not see why this is a problem though. Isn't this how new and interesting styles are founded? By fucking with the parameters? Fusing ideas together? By adding and subtracting?

its the inference that whichever genre in question is lacking in some way. The analogy i might use is - I go to Hungary on holiday and while I thought the language was kind of ok, i think i could show them some better ways to speak Hungarian.

Also while interesting and great music has been made at the borders of genres and by mixing things up - in my view this is more likely to come from artists pushing out from their genre rather than magpie artists pinching from it (though of course this is subjective and there is nothing wrong with appropriating from without)

inherent conservatism within any genre also (or it ceases to have meaning as a genre) - suspicion of outsiders coming to my town telling me how we could be doing things so much better, if it was so good where you were why didn't you stay there

^^exactly

u gotta know the box inside out in order to think outside it, basically (this is what timbaland did so well in the 90s)

The giveaway word in colby's post is 'better'. Who's to say that one way of approaching music is inherently 'better' than another? I don't think even The Weeknd are claiming their brand of r'n'b-informed chillwave is better than the regular stuff.
Continuing with the language analogy, you could argue that whole languages were based primarily on the clashing of two separate cultures, beginning as pidgins where neither party knew each other's language very well and communicated with hand signals and a few borrowings, progressing to Creoles and patois and then fully formed languages such as Afrikaans.
All the same, it seems as though The Weeknd do know r'n'b inside out, but they also know electro and chillwave etc and have decided to follow an alternative path. Why is this so bad an wrong?
I'm listening to this properly or the first time now and I absolutely don't understand the complaints people have about this. It does have hooks, it is fairly original, it doesn't really betray whatever r'n'b tropes people seem so desperate to cling to either. I just can't see why this is so unacceptable to people?

I think the argument about 'better' is that this is getting attention in certain circles, with the word 'better' kind of implied. ie - if a particular outlet doesn't talk much about a particular genre of music, then talks a lot about a record while framing it in terms of the genre they don't usually cover - then 'better' is implied no?

Tho you could frame 'better' as 'more suited to the audience being written for'

The "xyz its okay to like" is a well worn theme...is this an example of it?

To add to that - I agree that the weeknd is doing nothing wrong. Like anyone else he is making what he wants to make

And surely r'n'b fans should be rejoicing that the indies are deciding to cover the weeknd along with the staple animal collective and iron an wine albums. You can't call people who decide to dip their toes into r'n'b fools for investigating it via a more familiar gateway, and this is essentially a gateway album that could potentially get more people diving deeper into the genre. It seems hypocritical to say that indie kids ought to listen to r'n'b while simultaneously denying such paths.

The Guardian Music Podcast thing was awful. It was just this guy saying how he was repulsed by displays of black male sexuality on record, e.g. that Ginuwine being a hunk got in the way of Timbaland's productions ("there is nothing more unattractive than adult love-making"), and much prefers the Weeknd because it drains r&b of its sexuality, and is about being sad and lonely, "like Morrisey". Sounds like he's got issues tbqh.

Hmmm... That's a whole new tin of tuna right there. Also realising that my last post doesn't really address the issue of crits saying the weeknd are more worthy than other r'n'b acts, which is of course very small minded.

those guardian blog comments are legitimately bizarre

lol "production and sorrow"

^^^^ suggested new thread name

but for real some dude's heavy engagement with this thread day after day while shamelessly admitting he only listened to "one or two songs on youtube" of the artist in question is without a doubt the funniest thing i've read on ILX this month INCLUDING shakey mo's statement that "real life lesbians aren't ever attractive by hetero standards"

― gr8080, Saturday, April 2, 2011 1:55 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

pretty sure lots of people on ILM post to threads about albums they've only heard one or two songs from, dude, i'm sorry that concept is so ridiculous to you but it happens

lyrically corny R&B songs are par for the course, I thought? I think the cursing in this album isn't just mindlessly used - it's a signifier of this sort of wild false bravado that acts as a defense mechanism for the singer's insecurities, i.e. "the higher that I climb, the harder I'mma drop, these pussy-ass n*ggas hold on to their credit..."

theres corny as in, boy this guy gets to the point quickly, where it is a part of the persona & informs it, then there's the weeknd kind of corny, where it gives the feel of a guy trying to capture the *idea* of R&B vocalists but doesnt let those lyrics contribute towards any kind of greater persona. A comparison w/ the-dream is a good one; the-dreams lyrics can be goofy but you always get the idea that they are part of who he is on record. this guy it just feels like hes trying to abstract away & signify "R&B" but not much beyond that

I don't know if the music is trying to be out-and-out weird - as some dude pointed out early, there is an uncanny valley effect going on where it's just close enough to actual r&b to put you into that emotional mode of receiving/listening, but the actual emotional message is pretty different. also this uses the term 'actual R&B' which as has been pointed out itt has all sorts of problems w/r/t questions of authenticity & assumptions.

the first sentence is what i'm trying to say; im arguing that if it WAS weirder, i could excuse away where it comes up short more easily. tim already explained how 'actual R&B' in this context wasnt problematic

you'll be forgiven if 'pretty big misses' is not exactly enlightening. here you use 'generic as hell' but I don't know what you mean by that.

"pretty big misses" isnt meant to be enlightening, thats just a statement saying "i dont like many of these songs." "generic as hell" means, i already explained upthread why i think this doesnt work & now i'm reducing that to 'generic' so as to save space.

okay so here you think that the weeknd should have hooks - I disagree, I think there are hooks, but maybe the kind that take a couple of listens to get. what do you mean "function the way its intended to most of the time"? what do you think the music aims at doing?

saying it doesnt have hooks = the hooks it has arent every hook-y. It wouldn't need hooks if it made up for those in some other area, but a lot of my criticisms would be null if it did have some big hooks to latch onto. So I'm just covering another area here where I think it fails to live up to something that would make it engaging to me. The melodic hook in "The Morning" that runs through the song is the only one that strikes me particularly, and the singer, although I think he has a good vocal quality, doesnt do much with phrasing or melody on the record that i think is especially striking. By, "I don't think it functions the way its intended to most of the time" the short version is, a lot of this feels like an artist trying to accomplish something beyond his reach but instead of coming up with a strategy or a workaround, he just comes up short; instead of making up for his inability to do much with vocal phrasing by writing lyrics that might interest me, he writes ones that feel like cliches (albeit intentional ones), for example. It feels like the performance relies too heavily on the high-concept of 'looking at the party through smoke' w/out many of the songs' elements backing him up sufficiently.

just imo

for the record I am now listening to the trey songz anticipation tape more than the weeknd so congrats you assholes win

― gr8080, Saturday, April 2, 2011 2:59 AM (16 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

going to hang this post on my wall lol