6/7/2011, imma drop that body work / fuck my brains out double single (TERIUS NASH aka THE-DREAM, LOVE IV: anticipation and adoration)

this is getting exceedingly pedantic but yah your past record on the-dream singles impacts how seriously i take your evaluation on them going forward as im sure would be true for any of us

title of track 1 otm

this is getting exceedingly pedantic but yah your past record on the-dream singles impacts how seriously i take your evaluation on them going forward as im sure would be true for any of us

― D-40, Wednesday, August 31, 2011 4:29 PM (37 seconds ago) Bookmark

well this is certainly a pretty interesting thing to bring up?

lol i first heard of the dream through ikonika, reading an interview with her in the metro, she was naming her albums of the year and love vs money was one of them

lollll i remember talking to her ahead of this feature, she was all like "i don't know how to narrow down what i want to pick"

i'm with j0rdan on this but you probably shouldn't trust me about that either because i think the rawk outro in the pharrell track is hilarious? maybe next listen i will find it terrifying

but still i think it's a good record of exercises in mood

i say this with love and not in a dismissive or condescending way -- guys surely this can be taken to gchat

^

i like "wake me when it's over", this isn't the look i really want dream to be pursuing but as dream-doing-drake-doing-dream it's ok

"used to be"

his vocals on this kinda remind me of the least listenable parts of love king - no real form to the songwriting here at all or hook really, production is really weak too, who produced this? is this whole thing pure terius? *checks wikipedia*

i guess in feel "long gone" is supposed to be like the 1977 analog to LvM's title tracks or "abyss" on the last one - i've always felt kind of alone in saying these epic feeling joints were easily his weakest material - for me they seem to trade songcraft and other things dream really does well for "atmosphere" or whatever - mercifully this is short

ghetto starts real promising for me, it's got that percussion that reminds me of my favorite LOS-produced dream joints - verse is really lazy/weak, damn, none of this shit really goes anywhere - i do like the vocals though, it's got that light cadence and bounce that characterized the best stuff before this last album - oh man ok feeling this hook! ghetto! ghetto! it's reminding me of something totally obvious (a -dream song) but i'm a little drunk and can't place it atm. aaaaand big sean...big sean's verse was short thank god, whoa now he's interpolating beyonce's "dance for you", getting major points over here...uh ok he's basically just covering it...scene

"ghetto" kinda reminded me of mariah's "ribbon"?

this was good right up to the point where i queued in Danny Brown in the middle and then got hooked on it instead

"wedding crasher"

ok this is pretty much catnip for dream stans, has like 100 different signifiers that get us all worked up - this is like the "FILA" of this shit but without the great production unfortunately - yeah i mean i'm willing to partially take back what i said what i said to sarge earlier today, i mean idk how many times i'm gonna want to bump this shit because unlike a lot of dream songs/productions etc there doesnt seem to be a lot going on under the surface but it's a good listen the first time around to remind us of the things we like about terry

my download of this stopped halfway through and I haven't been motivated to re-download tbh

"rolex"

ugh this is another love king outtake-sounding joint - really hate that little vocal run he's been leaning on like listen to him singing "my nigga chris a(?) can't imagine what this is / can't wait til you get home nigga look how we liviiiin" ugh i mean who thinks this sounds good, come on son. this hook totally bites yelawolf's "trunk muzik"...yelawolf is a rapper, pretty good indication that biting his hook for an r&b song is a bad look - this casha chick seems pretty faceless, if ship thought that mariah album was her doing "dream karaoke" then he aint heard shit

:/

damn, i had hope.

also, something I've been thinking for a while now and kev's thoughts sort of reminded me of - the-dream isn't really that good of a producer, and I think you can definitely see a correlation between when he started self-producing his stuff and the relative decline in quality.

Love King was 90% self-produced, right? He produced FMBO/Body Work too.... I mean, he did produce my favorite song on LK (Sex Intelligent/Remix) and Tricky produced what everyone considers to be the worst song on the album ("Panties..."), but I think in general the Tricky/LOS production of the first two albums was a lot stronger.

yeah that's key.

"silly" (introducing casha) (lol)

ok this is the cover one, right? was about to say how it sounded really out of character for dreamer. anyway casha actually sounds human on this one, pretty solid - might have to listen to that original

brainwasher i'll address that post after i finish listening to this

can't believe y'all never heard that smh

ok cool

"1977"

this is another one of those one or two songs he puts out on every album (except his first!) that just aims way too fuckin high imo, i mean i can't tell if it's just that he doesn't have the voice to pull it off or if it's just lame straight up - it's probably a mix of the two tbh. production is really ugly and difficult to listen to on this, lot of syncopated percussion that isn't doing it for me at all, don't know what instrument is making that moaning drone sound in the background but it's awful

"wish you were mine"

tracks like this just make me want to put on love/hate to make sure this is the same artist i fell in love with 3.5 years ago, i mean what is this bullshit? i have nothing to say about this

"this shit real nigga"

well dream flows better than big sean at the very least - oh there's a grocery bag, nice. anyway this isn't a terrible rap song actually, the hook is weak but i actually don't hate the production, did pharrell do this? i'm running out of liveblog passion at this point tbh. oh cool, a guitar solo *rmde*

wedding crasher needed another pass through the production machine. its like almost great but he just won't shut up for 10 seconds.

"form of flattery"

i guess this is the closest we get to a "ballad" on this, remember when he used to run those? anyway production is super minimal with some sad strings, sounds like something off of that last james blackishaw album or something. the multitracked vocals around the chorus are actually kind of pleasant, not much else to say about this one

liveblog? more like LIVEFLOG

anyway brainwasher i've been kind of thinking about dream and his production since love king, i mean i think when "FILA" first leaked in advance (back when TI was on it) i said something about like "yeah LOS came to play here" or something before i found out after the album dropped that apparently that song was all dream - i mean in a way i get more excited about the production on dream songs than the vocals, or at least they're equal. so yeah but to see that dream got solo credit on that when he clearly aped a lot of earlier LOS joints (and did it well!) kinda muddied the waters for me a bit and turned my ideas about production on dream albums upside-down, i mean who knows to what degree dream contrubuted to those early joints that tricky or los got credit for when love king sounded so familiar in spots? the fact that the production on 1977 is mostly terrible kinda re-raises that question

yeah, clearly he learned things from tricky & LOS that have informed and influenced his own productions, but I think the difference is pretty noticeable. A lot of Terius' productions come off as flimsy to me, like they're missing the intricacy and incredible attention-to-detail that Tricky & LOS bring to the table. Even a song like "Sex Intelligent," which has a lot going on and some cool details in the background, isn't as full-sounding as something like "Put It Down" or "She Needs My Love." Not sure if I'm describing it well, but a lot of his newer stuff just falls flat to me and the production is 100% at fault here (he's obviously still an incredible songwriter when he's on - as Beyonce's 4 proved).

had trouble getting through all this. i really think, more than the production, the weak songwriting is what differentiates this from earlier stuff

this is getting exceedingly pedantic but yah your past record on the-dream singles impacts how seriously i take your evaluation on them going forward as im sure would be true for any of us

― D-40, Wednesday, August 31, 2011 10:29 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

title of track 1 otm

― uberweiss, Wednesday, August 31, 2011 10:30 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i loled

I LOVE THE WAY YOU SMELL

BUT YR ALWAYS ON SOME BULLSHIT

Liked it just fine.

otm

i just let it play three times in a row while lounging in my skivvies, catching up on reading some news + ilx threads

Also is it just me or is Terius's production sounding cheaper and cheaper these days? His work around 2007 had so much more depth and bite to it, now it all sounds so much more presetty. I really like Silly but those Toytown synths sounds ridiculous in the staccato lead-up to the chorus.

can't believe y'all never heard that smh

― the special technique of liveblogging (The Brainwasher), Thursday, September 1, 2011 12:27 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

NOW I'M ON A LOVE TRAIN
AND I HOPE I GET OFF COS I'M SURE THE NEXT STOP IS COCAINE
(OR SOME OTHER DRUG)

MrTeriusNash Terius Nash
Actually since I said I was retiring I made 1977 5 and Love IV 4. So like jordan I came back wearing the 45.

For the sake of my future fandom I may need to unfollow him.

Also is it just me or is Terius's production sounding cheaper and cheaper these days?

that studio video posted upthread was really interesting. on one hand it's really impressive that he's writing songs on the spot and making really quick decisions, and knocking out tracks in an hour per. on the other hand that doesn't leave much room for detail work/spending time on sounds/etc

a pretty modern methodology
not sure terius will be the finest practitioner, tho

i feel like there was something to his strength being the tension between tossed-off melodic instinct & labored-over, well-crafted track construction. now he's lost that balance

you feel he's lost it based on a free album?

not sure what the price has to do w/ it

nor did i imply that hes permanently lost it or w/e

although i wd say i am not hopeful

A lot probably hinges on how much Tricky and LOS involvement there is with Love IV

it's not a correlation that always holds up but i tend to have lower expectations for something an artist gives away free than a "proper" release - in the case of terius it seems it would obviously be kinda tossed off in comparison to normal

i find these days i don't have the time or energy to bother with "expectations" or predicting how good an album's gonna be anyway. it might be genius, it might not be, til it gets here it's all speculation.