★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

yea def its not commercial at all

track two all of a sudden becomes a very synthetic version of big bad voodoo daddy or some neo-swing/lounge shit, like…

lol agree w/ this tho not a gl

shameless is good also

wow album is terrible

dunno whose idea this was but man alive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuV_O1vaLVQ

lmao at dude on the floor sobbing

o my holy god

"someday my son you will be briefly noticed for being emotionally overwhelmed by lana del rey's guest verse and immortalized on film, how do u feel"

(tbf lana's verse is good, prisoner is a decent song)

can i post on this shitty m board again yet

lol no sry

only part of the way thru but so far this stuff doesn't sound much like his older stuff at all? you guys are weird

big bad voodoo daddy is a stretch imo...its a pop record

'in the night' is a lil more ... idk billy idol than michael jackson but its good

there's def an element of teenager putting on dad's clothes about it though.

this is def a corporate pop record in all its roided out glory, for good & ill, but its such a vast improvement over weeknd's usual schtick i'm probably overrating it to a degree. still, about what i expected

idk deej this is pretty dull

think the biggest issue is that dude needs to pick a style and his throwing shit at the wall approach is a transparent tailspin and not in an interesting way. the MJ ripoffs work, the old weeknd schtick (for better or worse) works for what he seems to want to portray himself as (a douchebag) but like, power ballads? acoustic slow jams? ed sheeran features? that's not iiiiiiiit

I mean w/e though if I want to listen to a dude whose sadness and anger are tailspinning into (and amplifying pre-existing) misogyny set to music that's actually interesting I'll just put monster or beastmode or 56 nights o ds2 on again for the 9,000th time this week/month

*or

good to see you again deej btw

idk if i'd classify "real life" as a power ballad

my main issue with this record and him in general forever i guess is that he seems barely engaged with anything musical going on around his voice

like some of the textures on this record are really pretty and interesting but the singer they revolve around is so inert and detached and capable of like three toplines

there's a talkbox guitar solo on one track, a track that already makes no sense for him bc its an...acoustic ballad

i hate this

best part of the record imo

this isn't as good as it could have been /was suggested by 'cant feel my face' but

there are easy 4-5 songs i f/w and that could grow to more depending on how present that is in the culture imo

songs that are, off the bat, great: the three singles, + 'tell your friends' and 'as you are'

i'm undecided but leaning towards posi on 'in the night' ... sounds like a forgotten '80s pop record by a band that you don't really think is that good and then you hear it on the radio & ur like, oh yeah this was cool.

softening on the opening track, 'acquainted' and 'shameless' don't have a problem with ballads if well-written .... 'dark times' and 'angel' are uphill for me tbh...undecided on 'prisoner' and 'losers'

like some of the textures on this record are really pretty and interesting but the singer they revolve around is so inert and detached and capable of like three toplines

― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Sunday, August 23, 2015 1:01 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i dont think he's the one who wrote any of these toplines!

but yeah this is what i mean by saying it sounds like he's trying on his dad's suits to see how they fit...there's a little bit of seams showing in his sell-out moves here. can't tell if i'm noticing bc 'that's the narrative' or if its bc he's just 'not that talented' but either way this is the best of his releases imo

nb ive been a day-1 hater so grain of salt

there is something so grammy thirsty about this tho lol

i mean that in the way that the grammys actually work, not the way we wish they did / think the should

pressed play and smhd within 30 seconds at strawberry letter 23 interpolation. i cba with this album

i dont think he's the one who wrote any of these toplines!

meant more like..... vocally and emotionally capable

i dont think he's the one who wrote any of these toplines!

― mods = chickenshit idiots (D-40), Sunday, August 23, 2015 5:52 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

got proof for that or are you just vaguely insinuating he has a ghostwriter, because based on the credits and on interviews ("When he saw the lyrics that were sent to him, he found them to be tepid. He rewrote his verse, recorded it and sent it back." -- nyt) he did

No proof except that this album clearly had cowriters

And lyrics are not the same as top line melodies ! I have no problem believing he wrote his own lyrics

pressed play and smhd within 30 seconds at strawberry letter 23 interpolation. i cba with this album

― r|t|c, Sunday, August 23, 2015 6:36 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Do u like any of the singles

Feel like the novelty of actually enjoying a weeknd song is still impressing me too much. But tbf it is a huge record too. His whole cult is so trash, kudos to him for transcending it IMO

I feel the same about "Can't Feel My Face" and am not ready to like another song of his so soon.

well yeah this is it xp

i would appear to enjoy earned it, often, cfmf v much in the wild, know all the words get turnt up among fans etc, but internally there is no cosign, still a sense of derision in fact

kind of appropriate you'd have to say

would take a "can't feel my face/in the night" single, rest of the album kinda worthless in the shadow of those two, there should be way more martin/svensson jams on here

imo "dark times" is literally evil

i burst out in irl lol first time i listened to cfmf on the internet. the portentous build for that piss limp apologetic "ooh!" still gives me life every time, if in negative

always picture him recording it in the booth nervously glancing across to a lionel hutz type exec giving 2 thumbs up. (felt super gamed when the video seemed to implicitly acknowledge this shittiness)

harmonies later on make it tho

has he really transcended his cult? i thought (and the album agrees) that it had just reached critical mass, plus a little artificial kick

lolllll xpost

"As you are" and "tell my friends" are fire imho and better than "in the night"

has he really transcended his cult? i thought (and the album agrees) that it had just reached critical mass, plus a little artificial kick

― r|t|c, Sunday, August 23, 2015 1:10 PM (55 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permali

I mean...he was literally incapable of crafting a hit until this year

ha u of all people on earth with the hits line

i don't think there was a cult as such basically, he was popular as fuck v quickly m/l

the thing that always bugged me about him was that he was clearly incapable of writing hit records and all these ppl were riding for him as some kind of answer to a "weak state of r&b" that included certified g's like James Fauntleroy

was there honestly a "thank god for the weeknd bc modern rnb is weak" response when this dude blew up or is that just an imagined white hipster critic strawman? not a dig on you d40, tbh I didn't pay much attention to the weeknd when those first mix tapes and all the hype dropped so I don't really know, and it doesn't seem to be the case anymore at least?

was there honestly a "thank god for the weeknd bc modern rnb is weak" response when this dude blew up or is that just an imagined white hipster critic strawman?

― marcos, Sunday, August 23, 2015 10:50 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

holy fuck yes

I mean it's literally written into the ny times article that's set the table for all of these narratives

It's also in some sense true in that: the industry totally bottomed out around that time, everyone's shit was leaking like a seive, even r Kelly couldn't get an album out. So from the stance of, like, marketing, he was stepping into a void for r&b. Just not a musical one

feels like that void is a jeremih album, what a fucking shame that dude can't seem to get his ducks in a row

the weeknd's self-release strategy allowed him to saunter into a void that was created by major labels freaking out over the possibility of taking chances for the most part (ALL I WANT IS YOU being an exception here)

haven't listened to the leak yet, does he still sound like he'd be a depressingly terrible lay

oh absolutely