★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

ah what are u gonna do

i agreed the weeknd were fucking brill fwiw, couldnt be bovd

I went back to House of Balloons recently after not listening for a while and the consternation over this guy seems sillier than ever.

yeah its not really a big deal at all. it must have dropped on a slow music week ¯\(o_O)/¯

It's a good album, but feels kind of minor, I guess? But the hand-wringing it inspired on multiple fronts was ridiculous. I pretty much feel like if you hate the Weeknd, you should also hate Miguel.

Has Miguel been bigged up by Pitchfork?

Not afaict.

But who gives a fuck what Pitchfork thinks about an r&b act?

Not me. Some people seem to though.

Miguel can actually sing tho, Weeknd dude's voice is hella obnoxious

Miguel also isn't played at bars I go to and I don't have ppl all the time telling me if I like r&b I should really check out the weeknd

also I think the songs are legit bad and stilted still. This is a room to grow group at best

Lol I meant "miguel" again in my rhetorical ex

He doesn't have my favorite voice in the world, but I don't have anything against it, either. Miguel is a better singer tho.

xp Afaik no one I know IRL who isn't an ILX poster has any idea who the Weeknd is in my world of the subrbs.

"It's a good album, but feels kind of minor, I guess?" sums it up for me pretty perfectly

also: "in my world of bars i go to"

Miguel can actually sing tho, Weeknd dude's voice is hella obnoxious

This really.

in my world of software geeks and classical singers, I'm excited if someone knows who Beyonce is let alone The Weeknd

Could also mention miguel has hits so obv i'm not the only one who hears a diff

The point about my world of bars was that bars that don't normally play r&b suddenly would only play weeknd. annoying and dumb trend chasing imo

Well yeah, "All I Need Is You" and "Sure Thing" are better songs then anything the Weeknd is doing, but my point was that they are basically working in the same milieu, rather than any direct comparison.

About the most obscure music I've heard in a bar in this town is Vampire Weekend. :/

in my world of whatever the fuck it is i do, i've never heard anyone even MENTION weeknd IRL except for one of my assistants and this was yesterday.

Did they pronounce it "weakened"

more like "weaksauce"

no, just "weekend"
she was surprised drake was involved in any way.

Not buying the correlation between Miguel and The Weeknd. They occupy totally opposite emotional plains: Miguel's album is lovelorn and saccharine, where The Weeknd is harsh and spiteful. Two very different moods; it's very possible to feel one but not the other.

But who gives a fuck what Pitchfork thinks about an r&b act?

― 51 suggest gang (The Reverend), Thursday, June 16, 2011 8:44 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

1) :(

2) its not just pitchfork, i mean i get that u & forks dont have "cool" (note the scare quotes) friends but like, ok, from today's chicago reader, from its primary music critic:

"Much of the other 75 percent of my music listening has been taken up by the most fascinating R&B record since D'angelo's Voodoo. An album-length sneak preview of what pop radio will sound like in 2012."

like, lots & lots of people think this stuff! alt weeklys & magazine editors across the country imo

Yeah, I realize the discourse around it is p. obnoxious and all that, but given how misaligned it is with my experience of the record, I feel free to disregard it entirely.

that chicago reader quote is just... baffling

worried about 2012 if kids are listening to the weeknd. something really bad must have gone down.

i kind of agree w/ that part, in the sense that R&B is totally the 2011 chillwave

you know, i mean, indie w/ R&B affects

it cracks me up when critics go all Harold Camping with really short term predictions about THE FUTURE OF MUSIC -- like dude we'll know if you're wrong in 7 months!

so they play chillwave on pop radio now? well i give up and am going to watch matlock now

ha woops yeah i was just thinking, like, what indie kids will be like in 2012 -- pop radio already kinda sounds weeknd-ish whenever drake comes on

I don't know which leap of logic on this thread I find more offensive: The insinuation that all these people who are enjoying an R&B album somehow aren't fans of true R&B, or the misperception that The Weeknd is somehow primarily a creation of indie-rock culture enjoyed only by denizens of indie-rock culture. Most of the press/buzz I've seen for these guys has come from R&B and urban bloggers, and the handful of major R&B blogs I know of hype The Weeknd weekly. "Wicked Game" even closes the latest Future of R&B comp, and it's not like those things are loaded with "indie" R&B. They're pretty damn purist in their tastes.

(I'll concede that Chicago Reader blurb is pretty horrific though.)

i dont see whats 'offensive' here. most of the h8 on this thread is coming from self-described R&B fans.

i mean, id be ok with minor oddball R&B record if thats all it was, like, swade or something. but instead its treated like the best record since voodoo

it's been a couple months, let's do this entire thread over again

reader critics adding fuel to the fire

some dude otm

lol u were just cosigning one side of the argument!

i mean, id be ok with minor oddball R&B record if thats all it was, like, swade or something. but instead its treated like the best record since voodoo

― arachno-misogynist (D-40), Thursday, June 16, 2011 5:26 PM Bookmark

I just don't see how this detracts from it as the minor oddball r&b record that it is.

"the wrong people like it for the wrong reasons" = the lamest critical stance possible. if you like it, say you like it. if you hate it, that should be good enough.

"the wrong people like it for the wrong reasons" = the lamest critical stance possible. if you like it, say you like it. if you hate it, that should be good enough.

― And the piano, it sounds like a carnivore (contenderizer), Friday, June 17, 2011 12:36 AM (1 second ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yah context has no bearing whatsoever on how ppl receive things **rolls eyes thru back of skull, dies**

i def prefer RTC's hypersensitivity to context to the DEEP TASTE opposite

i mean, fwiw, my stance is that i wouldnt be offended if a lot of people thought 'hey this is a nice minor R&B record' even though i didnt much care for it -- i might even be more open to listening to some of the tracks i was "OK" with, and checking for the dude's new stuff

but when a lot of ppl go ape over something so obviously par-at-best, it does push me away from a record

taking context into account is completely cool. "rmde at herbs likin lame shit" = zzzzzzzzzzz

but we've had this fite like a billion times before. hi deej!

rmdeiboh,d