★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

what? that doesnt make any sense as an analogy.

― arachno-misogynist (D-40), Thursday, June 16, 2011 6:45 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

i dunno, it made sense to me.

thing is, all art competes for critical and popular attention (and, not coincidentally, the money and social prestige that go with that attention). critics participate in this competition by feeding glamor points to their pet favorites, or trying to, and by attempting to construct and share a discourse that will favor the niches, artists and values to which they've sworn allegiance. i don't personally believe that anyone has any special right to public favor, but everyone is certainly welcome to broadcast the story they want heard. which i guess means it's cool for you to foment against team indie, but it's likewise cool for me to look askance at team playing in general.

wtf @ people writing/beefing about this terrible music

New industry description

you posted here now you're part of it too xpost

fucking right that's an xpost bucko

lol

i don't know that some hype cycles are more reasonably constructed than others. i suppose some are a product of money and marketing and others build from the ground up due to fan enthusiasm and word-of-mouth, but "reasonable" isn't the word i'd choose to distinguish between the two. maybe constructed vs. organic? but the line between the two is seldom 100& clear.

You're talking about pedigree when you should be talking about content. My definition of reasonability here is "the message promoted by the hype isn't totally ridiculous and incorrect besides."

For an example (and deconstruction) of an unreasonable hype cycle see Maura and Tom E's recent articles on critics' attempts to turn Adele into the saviour of "real music".

Typically hype cycles become unreasonable when they become about something broader/deeper than the music at hand: artist as the saviour of X or artist is bringing X to Y or artist boldly rejects Z.

Compare/contrast with how ILM tried to hype Electrik Red - which was basically "hey this is some really awesome R&B."

Heard this in room three at Fabric in the middle of an otherwise straight rnb and rap set and it was amazing, on that big sound system, how flat it sounded in comparison to everything else around it, no body or bounce to it.

Also overentitled dudes whining on are to my mind the single worst thing about contemporary rnb so props to The Weeknd for retaining that aspect and throwing everything else out of the window.

ypically hype cycles become unreasonable when they become about something broader/deeper than the music at hand: artist as the saviour of X or artist is bringing X to Y or artist boldly rejects Z.

Compare/contrast with how ILM tried to hype Electrik Red - which was basically "hey this is some really awesome R&B."

― Tim F, Friday, June 17, 2011 2:21 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

o god, hype is always about more than the music at hand. and electric red bit the dust cuz ultimately the music didn't move that many people (myself included).

see Maura and Tom E's recent articles on critics' attempts to turn Adele into the saviour of "real music".

why on earth would i want to do that? i get enough out of listening to music i actually like.

yeah, it's awful when there's no smoke to obscure the party xpost

o god, hype is always about more than the music at hand. and electric red bit the dust cuz ultimately the music didn't move that many people (myself included).

Doubt that many people heard the music in the first place.

despite the best efforts of...

p.s. electriK

So now the purpose of hype cycles is to make up as much bullshit as possible to trick gullible listeners to pay attention?

Erm, yes?

I mean, no one outside ILM and a couple of blogs bothered to hype Electrik Red at all from what I can see.

...the purpose of hype cycles is to make up as much bullshit as possible to trick gullible listeners to pay attention?

for the record, i did not say this [wink emoticon that i am not actually familiar with]

Yes but you implied that the proof is in the pudding - that weeknd hype is justified if it gets attention.

And of course the reason that ER hype didn't catch on is not b/c electrik red aren't good but because the notion of "a really great R&B album" without chart success or some tenuous hype hook doesn't appeal to people who aren't otherwise pretty invested in R&B.

are you saying that electrik red didn't catch on because they hadn't caught on? i mean, i agree, but...

^ dick

I'm saying that critics, bloggers etc are more inclined to pretend that non-superstar R&B doesn't exist than they are with other genres. A lot of people I know would be into Beyonce and/or The Weeknd but wouldn't even be aware of the existence of Keyshia Cole or Teairra Marie let alone Elektrik Red.

crap. machine shut down and dumped my wisdom.

anyway, my point is that the things that = "quality" in one niche or from one POV, don't necessarily mean much from another. and the weeknd obviously connect with a significant audience, no matter how trivial they might seem to you or i (and they do). i could rage against this if i saw myself as the champion of this or that scene, but i don't, so i don't. instead, i congratulate the weeknd on their success, and hope for something similar for the artists i actually care about.

^ includes at least one superfluous comma

It's not The Weeknd's "success" that irritates me though, it's bad writing. And it's more about how some critics like to set up the success (creatively) of one thing as being in contradistinction to stuff they don't really understand, and that bothers me heaps.

It happens in dance music more than in R&B. Which is one reason so many dance music listeners seek out The Weeknd - the critical tropes deployed are actually a bit closer to what i call "indie dance" than they are to indie rock per se.

i'm annoyed by bad/ignorant writing, too, but that sort of goes with any "novel" genre making its way into the mainstream. the psych noise & garage punk i normally engage with no less than the R&B & dance i'm peripherally curious abt. i guess i've learned to let it roll off my back.

can't speak to the relationship of dance listeners to pop R&B like the weekend, as i'm not really expert in either genre.

"weeknd"

fuck, that's hard to type

..that sort of goes with any "novel" genre making its way into the mainstream.

shit, and that's idiotic. R&B is hardly a "novel" genre making it's way into the mainstream. i'm buying into the stupid "indie = mainstream" assumptions that frame this whole debate. rather, the weeknd are a weird/niche variation of R&GB making inroads into crit-friendly indie, itself a marginal niche. by which point the cross-pollination becomes so semiotically complex that it's impossible to say anything useful about it no matter where you're coming from.

you are insane fwiw fyi

Also overentitled dudes whining on are to my mind the single worst thing about contemporary rnb so props to The Weeknd for retaining that aspect and throwing everything else out of the window.

― Matt DC, Friday, June 17, 2011 9:27 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lmao'd hard

shit, and that's idiotic. R&B is hardly a "novel" genre making it's way into the mainstream. i'm buying into the stupid "indie = mainstream" assumptions that frame this whole debate.

― And the piano, it sounds like a carnivore (contenderizer), Friday, June 17, 2011 11:02 AM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

who is framing the debate this way?

is cont meant to be kinda like a weird misbegotten american remake of titchy, i'm tryna figure it out

if indie doesn't in some sense = mainstream, then there's no reason to object to indie's interest in & taste for anything. it's just just another niche scene taking tips from wherever.

ilx assumption typically seems to be that indie tastes and sensibilities are disproportionately represented in the critical dialogue, e.g., pitchfork, "NPR indie", indie dominance of many ostensibly generalist year-end lists, etc. lots of posters seem to see this sensibility as representative of a dumbed-down, incurious, critical mainstream. agree to an extent.

^ and this POV seems well-represented itt

It's def true sometimes, but in the Weeknd's case the influence of indie tastemakers is being neurotically overstated. This stuff was spreading like crazy across the Internet and in urban blogs well before indie-leaning publications began covering it. The group was finding an R&B audience even w/o the approval of the indie set, so it's silly to treat them like they're some sort of Pitchfork creation.

Evan the problem w indie discourse isn't who is perpetuating it -- I mean ppl hating itt write for pfork, and sean f, a weeknd fan, writes for pitchfork but was music editor at vibe. This is about peoples reasons for celebrating this stuff. It should go wout saying that there are lots of r&b fans who might be very "indie friendly" when it comes to certain values. What people say about this music is what we're judging, not what mag they write for

Contenderizer the first sentence you wrote is wrong. So are many others, but just start there

yeah but that's less true of them than, say, The Clipse, who had actual radio hits and a prominent mainstream profile before being reclaimed as a token urban act for critics, and the dialogue around them is still largely shaped by those Pitchforky associations. (xpost)

the world is about to feel something they never felt before

I can't get a handle on what cont. Is saying bcuz he makes semantic distinctions w words like "mainstream" that desperately need unpacking but that would encourage even more words

maybe if you were more patronizing and obnoxious it would clear things up?

This is about peoples reasons for celebrating this stuff.

True. And it's been a real failure of pro-Weeknd critics that they've lauded the band more for its novelty than its merits.

the dialogue around them is still largely shaped by those Pitchforky associations.

Also very true, though I do think we're overstating the importance of that dialogue, or at least overstating it as part of the band's broad allure.

I have a bunch of bro-ish friends who don't much read about music, they just sort d/l whatever mixtapes rap blogs recommend, and that's how they discovered (and fell hard for) The Weeknd. They don't know about (and certainly wouldn't care about) critical buzz or Beach House samples or whatever. They're definitely more the "Entourage" set than the Pitchfork set, which seems to be a case with a lot of Weeknd fans.

you know Drake?

(i joke, but my point is everyone knows that The Weeknd has also reached that kind of audience because of who their most famous fan is)

Wait forks who's being patronizing? Ppl in glass houses probably shouldn't throw stones at people actually talking about the subject at hand.

i like that you're okay with obnoxious.

Wait forks who's being patronizing? Ppl in glass houses probably shouldn't throw stones at people actually talking about the subject at hand.

― arachno-misogynist (D-40), Friday, June 17, 2011 3:16 PM (49 seconds ago) Bookmark

lol what does this even mean

Evan but those guys, like anyone else, want to think that theyre being discerning when they go for that stuff... The default assumption is probably similar yo the guy from the reader: this stuff is better than "typical r&b", the thinking mans slow jams, etc, wouldn't u say?

Some dude that means that I think it is hypocritical of forks to patronize me when hes not even participating in the conversation - i'm sorry he thinks i'm being obnoxious w contenderizer but i'm not sure what I said that isn't true about his posts itt

I don't have a vested interest here but I am pathologically compelled to point out that "obnoxious" and "true" are not concepts that are opposition to each other; for example, the statement I am making in this post is true, but it is also obnoxious of me to jump into what is look like yet another "pile onto deej for not recognizing how his online rhetoric comes across" extravaganza