★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

ime Monae and the Weeknd's fanbases barely overlap at all.

Time to announce the joint tour!

co-sign m@tt

i dont dislike this but there arent nearly enough hooks

what the shit is the new video

she's not with me any more so she deserves to die?

blogs calling him a "major badass" for it?

what is wrong with people and in particular this creepy beta basquiat-wannabe cunt

what I'm gathering from the general response to this is that I will hate myself for liking this once I start listening to the lyrics

if you just watch the new video it could well cure you of the liking part

true, but OTOH I still think "Kim" is a top 3 (if not the best) Eminem song

Ha that video. It's the candid portrayal of everything that is inherently shitty about The Weeknd we've been waiting for.

Wow, the YouTube comments thread on that video :/

Finally, a video where the dude from the Counting Crows murders a woman

http://ts3.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.4553577035596702&pid=15.1

Why did people take his thematic material so much at face value? We all agree that it's horrifying stuff... but to me it just played like a horror movie where the character he plays is trapped in this torturous hedonistic Hell rather than any sort of glorification of that lifestyle.

I'm also pretty bummed people ragged on his sound palette here - I thought it was great. What's wrong with the gaudy maximalist sound he mined? It's hardly subtle but he's not exactly going for a nuanced look at gender identity. I think I read someone comparing the title track to John Carpenter, which is such a great comparison I think - Carpenter's someone who just owns gaudiness and this album to me does the same. The lurid overproduction was leaps more interesting than the stuff he released on Trilogy. But then again, this is coming from a big fan of HIStory-era MJ.

Hope dude keeps doing what he's doing in spite of the acclaim vacuum.

Why did people take his thematic material so much at face value? We all agree that it's horrifying stuff... but to me it just played like a horror movie where the character he plays is trapped in this torturous hedonistic Hell rather than any sort of glorification of that lifestyle.

that's...pretty much the consensus take on his stuff

im all in on in vein, great song

I guess I see a bit of a double standard in that people have been far more offended by this album than they ever would by a lurid horror movie. I think it also bugs me that people like Kanye continue to succeed by being actually misogynistic, while people like Abel who, IMO, skewer people like Kanye quite viciously, somehow end up with the disapproval of the critical establishment. I really do think people see him as someone who actually lives this life, and that it affects the way critics perceive him.

i mean...if you think he's a moralist who's purely creating a hedonistic strawman character that does things he never does, yeah, that is not generally how people see him.

I wouldn't go so far as moralist, but I definitely think his "IRL" identity probably has very little to do with his stage character. From his Wikipedia "career beginnings":

In Toronto, Tesfaye met producer Jeremy Rose, who had an idea for a dark R&B musical project called "The Weekend".

Seems pretty carefully planned and constructed to me.

And I have no idea whether he's a moralist or not. Based on the story of him ripping the Barrow sample, he seems like he might not be the most pleasant guy to work with. He seems to have upset a lot of people he's worked with. His split with that producer seemed pretty nasty.

All that aside, the work speaks for itself, and to me it's just way, way, way too gaudy to be taken as anything but a pastiche of that lifestyle. The fact that the album is a moral desolation doesn't mean it's *immoral* like a lot of the criticisms seem to hint at. Wolf of Wall Street is a comparable example of ludicrous depravity. Sorry about all the film comps but I can't think of any musical contemporaries who do such similar themes.

Don't really think it matters whether or not he lives up to the image presented (were critics really hung up on this?) when that image isn't all that interesting or engaging to begin with. I mean carefully planned and deliberate? Yes, but well constructed? I'd say the trilogy was well put together as a whole but thematically you'll love it or leave it (or love it for novelty then quickly get bored as it goes nowhere).

If you make 40 odd songs about the same shit + vague, self referential lyrics, people are going to start drawing connections and speaking to depth that isn't really there.

tsroboto, did you listen to Kiss Land?! For all the times that Trilogy left things a little too wispy, Kiss Land compensated by basically beating us over the head with the grotesque. I would also level the "not engaging" criticism at Trilogy, but Kiss Land was a pretty tremendous departure from that formula.

Yeah, a fair number of times. Problem is you're right he doubled down, but on something I don't feel there was much to in the first place. He fleshed out the skeleton but with more bones. He'd mined that theme for all it was worth in the Trilogy. Plus I wouldn't call more vividly grotesque nihilism a tremendous departure from grotesque nihilism.

I don't think his theme is necessarily nihilistic. There's too much sadness on his tracks for it to be nihilistic in the same way as, say, the YG stuff is. I also felt the Trilogy left a lot to be said. Sure, he spent a lot of tracks singing about creepy sex, but in too much of a distant way to be engaging to me.

I think, for what it's worth, the inherent creepiness of fame, sex, and hedonism is a good theme to mine! It's certainly underrepresented in contemporary R&B. And I think it also provides a nice counterpoint to the (delightful) bullshit peddled by the R Kellies of the scene. It's fun to indulge in the whole freaky luxury sex fantasy, but I think it's also nice to view it from the sadder perspective the Weeknd offers.

we already had one Drake and that was more than enough

Yeah solipsistic would have been a better term, but even that sadness is very muted and in that sense I don't feel Kiss Land steps far away. We don't really learn much more about creepy sex now that its up close.

But did he really mine it? Is there enough irony here for it to be considered subversion? You're right in that there is room for exploration here but I don't think he's really done it to any meaningful degree. He's very thoroughly explored one angle of it, but if its supposed to be an obverse caricature of what the R Kellies are peddling its an extremely thin one to have stretched over 3 and a half hours.

satire is only meaningful if it can be distinguished from the real thing

feel like audience interpretation is a big factor in this too and in my experience half of weeknd stans take this very, very seriously and the other half just think of it as sex music

ha that sounds about right

It's certainly underrepresented in contemporary R&B.

really????

maybe 10 years ago, but in recent years (and arguably before that, though perhaps not in the big pop singles) there's not really been a shortage of r&b artists being conflicted about luxury/fame/hedonism etc. a lot of it has been done rather better than the weeknd too

satire is only meaningful if it can be distinguished from the real thing

― The Reverend, Tuesday, March 25, 2014 1:24 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

there's not really been a shortage of r&b artists being conflicted about luxury/fame/hedonism etc.

This is certainly true but its hard to think of many that went as far as turning it into a consistently depressing horror show.

Is there enough irony here for it to be considered subversion?

It's less overt irony... the irony is there by necessary implication. I refuse to believe that anything that out-there is done without at least some self-awareness.

satire is only meaningful if it can be distinguished from the real thing

Sure, but the best satire cuts close to the bone, too. There's a reason why A Modest Proposal and UHF are considered to be on different levels.

New track:

https://soundcloud.com/theweekndxo/the-weeknd-often

One hell of a street team behind this shit, it's everywhere today

fuck this guy imo

and not in the way that he torturously sings about either

lol this is such garbage

~*~*~*~ no one is surprised ~*~*~*~

The "ooh yeah"s feel like self parody at this point.

this song is p good

it's hilarious how much his own fanbase hates him now. anything new comes out and it's "everything since House of Balloons has been trash" 24/7 on twitter.

Gotta justify past interest in trash I guess

"everything since House of Balloons has been trash"

this is m/l otm tho

i'm not saying they're wrong (although i could never really stomach the early stuff to begin with), i'm just saying even the stans have turned on him.

omg this song

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

I should listen to lyrics more often, I feel like I'm missing some great comedy

did he really just sing "she need to change bladder"

are we sure this isn't a Weird Al alias

via rapgenius:

[Verse 1]
I usually love sleeping all alone
This time around bring your friend with you
But we ain't really going to sleep at all
You ain't gonna catch me with them sneak pictures
In my city I'm a young god
That pussy kill be so vicious
My god white, he in my pocket
He get me redder than the devil 'til I go nauseous

[Hook]
She asked me if I do this every day, I said "Often"
Asked how many times she rode the wave, "Not so often"
Bitches down to do it either way, often
Baby I can make that pussy rain, often
Often, often, girl I do this often
Make that pussy poppin', do it how I want it
Often, often, girl I do this often
Make that pussy poppin', do it how I want it
Often

[Verse 2]
Infatuated by the fame status
She wanna ride inside the G-Class Grain, matted
I come around, she leave that nigga like he ain't matter
That girl been drinkin' all day, need to change bladder
She's just happy that the crew's back in town
She 'bout to go downtown for a whole hour
If I had her, you can have her, man it don't matter
I'm never sour, I'm just smokin' somethin' much louder

[Hook]

[Bridge]
Oooh, the sun's risin' up
The night's almost up
The night's almost done
But I see your eyes
You wanna go again
Girl, I'll go again
Girl, I'll go again

[Hook]

a song that cries out for line-by-line annotation if I've ever seen one

"Often"
"Not so often"

track isn't so bad if you jettison all the lyrics but jesus, this as poisonous a song as this year has to offer and that's keen competition

i guess if your pussy rain, it's time to change bladder