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

I'd take 1977 over this, I think.

1977 is teh worst

otm

Only if you have no soul. This is the worst:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LebahZpxtT4&hd=1

I find myself agreeing with the Pitchfork review - except for the part about Big Sean ruining Pussy - he's literally the best part of it, corn and all. Also, he's definitely overrating Michael but I don't blame him. I'd probably reach for something to overrate too.

no talk of the deluxe edition trax?

"divine" is actually alright
"y'all" is terrible and goes on for about a decade
"tron" remains worthless
"psycho" has really nice production, that pulsing bass and twinkling sound, could have been a super-cool film soundtrack thing except he really didn't bother to write a song

it's depressing having to come back to this though, better than i expected it may be but this is just not a good album by anyone's standards let alone terius's

"Y'All" is definitely a gold star candidate for worst The-Dream song ever

Yeah, "Y'All" is 1977-caliber bad.

I wonder if the response to this album would have been different if 1977 hadn't soured so many on The-Dream. I still think this album is solid, with a genuinely awesome stretch from "Turnt"-"Michael." It's a damn good album if you approach it with open ears, but a near-failure if you hold it to LK or LvM (which isn't really fair, imo, since he's going for something very different here).

i can assure you my ears are fully open evan

and no, this is not a radical attempted change of direction from LK or LvM, at all.

the anticipation is over, the adoration has begun

I mean, he's drastically scaled back the puffy, cotton-candy pop songs that used to be his calling card, and eventually became his crutch. That's a huge departure, right there. He's actively breaking from his signature sound.

I dunno, I don't think there's much of a correlation between what works and what doesn't and how close it is to his earlier albums.

On some level I can see why people might really be into 'Michael' but I don't find it convincing.

puffy, cotton-candy pop songs like "she needs my love" and "fancy" and "love vs money" and "right side of my brain" and "sweat it out"?

he's always had multiple signature styles, and IVP eschews some of them but none of it is a huge departure from things he's already tried

jesus fucking christ @ "y'all"

I mean, he's drastically scaled back the puffy, cotton-candy pop songs that used to be his calling card, and eventually became his crutch. That's a huge departure, right there. He's actively breaking from his signature sound.

― Evan R, Wednesday, May 29, 2013 6:13 PM (1 hour ago)

man i don't know. he's always done ballads - the slow descent into unlistenable atonality began on LK, and this is just a continuation of that. LK was a break from his earlier work, but this is just a fuller exploration of that sound and those moods

not sure i hear the atonality as much on LK.

i guess when i think about LK i keep flipping back to FILA and yamaha, both are totally "listenable" and "tonal" imo

even F U and love king i would describe as "puffy, cotton-candy pop songs"

well yeah all those songs you mentioned are good to great imo, and the former 2 were universally loved, at least here

i'm talking about songs like "february love" and the "sex intelligent"s - even without commenting on the quality of those songs, i think much of what evan sees as "new ground" on IV play is really just an update of some of those sounds

the idea that this album is unlistenable or something is truly ridiculous

parts of it are definitely bad. look at the first half of this - "high art", "equestrian", "pussy", "turnt" - you get excited to listen to those songs?

i think "equestrian" is a great song

like it's derivative of his stuff but just novel enough that it sounds inspired to me

high art, pussy and turnt are not good tho, yeah

But Ride is so much better.

Anyway, February Love and the Sex Intelligents are great and sound nothing like this. Even the drums on this album are getting on my nerves. Way too many insistent, sexless bass drum thuds. Where has the romance gone? The flirtation and superlatives and gaps? It's just so unsexy.

Love King is patchy as hell but doesn't need to be retrospectively damned by being compared to this clunker. It's far closer in quality to the first two than it is to this one.

I wonder if Terius has been left high and dry by a general sonic divergence of R&B and rap in the years since Love King came out - they were a lot closer in 2008 and that led to a middle ground that Terius could work in. Now when he gets drawn closer to hip-hop then the results are awful.

Also the "I make love to my girl then I get high with my n____s" bit is just weird, possibly because I've never really envisaged Terius as the sort of dude who has friends he hangs out with. Like I imagine him either hanging out with whoever he's fucking at the time or just sitting in a darkened room writing angry screeds at whoever he's no longer fucking.

the sex intelligents are two of terius' finest songs imo - the former has INCREDIBLE production, so many spacey details, it feels like the furthest outwards he's gone in terms of his big synthy epics, and the latter is peak terius braggadocio. "cuz there's another level / beyond that other level / he's on that plane level / and i'm space shuttle" is one of my favourite terius moments. there is nothing on that other level on IVP.

the thing is even at its worst LK felt like terius was trying to push further outwards at all times - you can hear the ambition in "february love" and "take care of me" even if they're not good at all. even "panties to the side" SOUNDS massive. and obv that pays off big time in its best moments. IVP is really a retreat from ambition - from the ridiculous wordplay, from the self-indulgent production tricks, from the teriusness of his solo career vis à vis his songwriting for others. it makes much more sense to imagine it as some lost early demos, as rtc did, than to talk about it breaking any new ground whatsoever. like, terius has always done stuff in this vein - characterising his previous stuff as JUST cotton-candy pop songs is so off-base, like maybe if you were only listening to the singles?

and the thing that really kills IVP for me is that terius performs them like they're demos! his delivery is so perfunctory - like cf "sex intelligent", those multi-layered baaaaabygiiiiiiirls, he's so committed to the song that it totally conceals the aimlessness. there's so little personality on IVP (Generic Asshole being fundamentally uninteresting).

also anyone expressing active enthusiasm for "equestrian" needs to raise their standards for real, that song is just nothing

I do find myself hoping that he wrote that song while watching the Olympics last year. He's probably got enough 'things I can ride' metaphors to sustain him for another ten albums at least.

Lex otm. (February Love is still great though.)

lol @ "the sex intelligents"

this album ain't serving bangers with creamy nash

was half-kinda-hoping someone would at least call me out for this :-(

Juut one "but my love keeps it poppin like the Taliban" on this album and I might have forgiven it.

*Just

would've been glass houses for me to say anything after my old 'nash bridges' comment

haha i never picked up on that, typical

jesus fucking christ @ "y'all"

― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Y'all is his worst song ever.
I miss Kill the Lights on this. That was a proper song.

i'm actually coming around on "loving you/crazy" - sort of a sonic sequel to "love vs money 1+2"

same although it feels so much sloppier

the back half of this has its moments - "loving you" and the second part of "new orleans" are good, and "self-conscious" has that signature terius bounce (but otherwise is sort of doomed by its formula) - but terius suites really work best in context, on the heels of his more conventional bangers early on. if the back half suites from LH and LvM are like a cigarette after sex, here it's like trying to smoke a cig after taking a dump

great long lex post ^^^

http://distilleryimage3.ak.instagram.com/8f3c63fec7bc11e2867a22000a9f1266_7.jpg
Com'on and Thirsty Whoreare sketchy but still better than anything on the album imo. Thirsty Whore sounds like an outtake from Love King and is all the better for it.

thirsty whore

Should have been a Thurston Moore diss of course. But still pretty great.

wait what is that?

Bonus track EP. Not sure who carries it.

dam, com'on is p good, luv the piano in the chorus

is kindof p un-dream like tho, is like singsongy

lol @

thirsty whore/how you doin?/hows that goin?

this is my liveblog of this ep btw