The purpose built next generation interstellar Dawn Richard thread

"sounding like she's watching her lover's execution" from tim's bit there is spot on

grousing about the mastering quality of tell-tale heart always seemed like a failure of imagination when 'bulletproof' sounded so much as if dawn was pouring out her devotion to you holding a pillow over your head as your life ebbed away

lol

lol I didn't peg you for a lo-fi authenticist xp

that brandy track is one of my faves off of press play

it is my fave off press play full stop

1. last night 2. thought you said

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

btw it occurred to me last night how strange it is that no one's drawn a "i'll be missing you"-"coming home" link.

emotional puffy songs really are the best thing ever.

jaw is agape at that youtube btw

yeah the inadequacy of didy's emotional tenor in emotional puffy songs invites the listener to color in the lines with their own xp

otm!

I don't think that quite applies to "Coming Home" tho. He really does sell that one all the way.

erm if anyone has press play in 320 i would be v appreciative if you could let me know?

fucking hard drive crash leaving me without 90% of my music collection, i can't even bear to open the 90s r&b thread because of this. anyway press play is, remarkably, not on the internet :(

idk if mine is in 320

Armor On is on Spotify now

so... this is great, huh

btw it occurred to me last night how strange it is that no one's drawn a "i'll be missing you"-"coming home" link.

― The Reverend, Friday, April 13, 2012 11:55 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark

if my piece wasn't pegged to Dawn and Kalenna i probably would've gotten into my Sad Puffy timeline, post-J. Lo "I Need A Girl" weepers and all

I know it's a style but I do wish the autotune was dialed down on this

i don't think i even really noticed it just because it's so much less ubiquitous on Armor On than it was on Tell Tale Heart

armor on and the second half of chamber of diaries are still getting better and better for me - such rewarding listening

if my piece wasn't pegged to Dawn and Kalenna i probably would've gotten into my Sad Puffy timeline, post-J. Lo "I Need A Girl" weepers and all

― some dude, Tuesday, 17 April 2012 18:55 (42 minutes ago) Bookmark

yah i'd been musing over this myself in compiling 90s bad boy r&b remixes

like even in less specific terms though there's clearly a sense of grand dramatic sweep & attraction to melancholy in how the mary & faith albums were framed that's traceable all the way to ddm

We need a 90s Bad Boy R&B Remixes Poll.

you should put one together alex

not a quality judgement but i've listened to chambers way more than armor tbh. i like the messiness of it, it's engrossing

i like how even when she's reeling off some pretty iffy lines she's still got the presence to make them work - diddy should really have kept her on even if he wasnt fucking with artsy r&b

yeah i really wanted to write about Chambers partly because i felt it was unfairly getting the short end of the stick, however predictably, in this thread, when it's on it's really fucking good

chamber suffers praise-wise from not really clicking into gear until "matte black truck" but from there on in it REALLY clicks and rides through to its logical conclusion in a really engrossing way. it seems a much riskier proposition than armor on in some ways, kalenna really overtly relies on ~swag~ and just about pulls it off.

god i just realised how amazing the power-play and emotional conflict and lust/security confusion in the second verse of "matte black truck" is - like every line's meaning is undercut or switched up almost immediately - this song is the tru part 2 of "ass on the floor"

you the motherfucker i need
put it on me
i ain't got time for games
you gon put the freeze on me?
get on your knees
nigga put this ring on me

lol lex, recently it seems like every time you write something about lyrics and then post a snippet of what you're talking about, I wonder if you lost the c/p you meant and accidentally replaced it with some banal nonsense you intended to ridicule

That bit is pretty powerful in the song though Dan. If you haven't heard it you really should.

the biggest problem is that I remember to look for/check things out when I'm at work, where most of the sites that host mixtapes are blocked

oh god the video on Youtube has the horrible bedazzled lips thing going on, ugh

I dunno, "get on your knees" --> "put this ring on me" is slick!

I was sort of with Dan on the whole autotune thing but actually I've grown to love how it means her voice completely sinks into the warp and weft of each track, especially on the last couple of songs when you can't really tell how many Dawns there are singing over one another and which bit is Dawn and which bit is synth half the time.

don't suppose anyone ever came across a matte black truck NO DJ higher than 128/160?

the first sexual "put it on me" => the second demand for commitment "put this ring on me"
"freeze on me" as in freezing her out/giving her jewellery/giving her a ring
"get on your knees" as violent (sexual?) order then as (violent) demand for love, which sums up the way kalenna's approach to love is inextricably linked to displays of temper and violence and demonstrations of her power across the whole mixtape

I really haven't given the Kalenna mixtape fair time.

... okay listening to this now

I do like this song, but that quoted section is not particularly powerful or overwhelming to me? Furthermore, there doesn't actually seem to be any confusion or contradiction in that second verse; she basically is like "I want you like crazy, let's stop fucking around and get married so we can get back to fucking".

The more interesting thing to me is the declaration of strength through vulnerability; like, the whole song is a pleading "don't break up with me" monologue but everything still functions on her terms. She's deciding it's time for her to be vulnerable, she's willing to change if he changes, she can't fathom life without him so obviously he should marry her.

The song is summed up by:

I want you
You need me
So stay, baby

Everything else in the song speaks directly to this central thesis statement.

listen to "Poison," that's the standout imo

btw I like her voice a lot more than Dawn's partially because I feel like I can actually hear it rather than having it drowning in autotune (part of that is backing track arrangement smoothing out some of the edges autotune puts on vocals)

holy shit "Poison" is great btw

kind of also like the way the focus is so much on the cranking of wu-tang and keeping her cup filled up in "matte black truck" that even though it's just a threat in the song, kalenna's focus kind of wills it into existence, which foreshadows the entire final stretch of the mixtape in which she does get thrown over and fucked up

just relistened to 'matte black truck' and kalenna wasn't nearly as fierce as I remembered, or was made out to be itt

still a great song tho

the final stretch is "pain & alcohol"/"poison"/"the morning after"/"party & bullshit" dan - they're all amazing in quite similar ways, the first two are kind of secret powerballads and the last two spacey hermetically sealed trapped-in-your-own-head club joints

she sings the final section of "pain & alcohol" from beyond the grave, a trick i always appreciate

I mentioned this in my review, but I really like the way Dawn uses autotune. Just lots of layers of both natural and autotuned vocals that complement each other, like she's half feeling human and half tragic android trying to understand human emotion.

I pretty much think she's using it for better effect than anyone else tbh.

^^^

fierce is nowhere near the right word for "Matte Black Truck" IMO, I'd say she's closer to "imperious" than anything else

I really need to remember to go track these down when I get home

Also that stretch Lex just mentioned is def. my favourite stretch of Chamber of Diaries.

I didn't even realize dawn was autotuning!

listening to "the morning after" right now and it's just stunning - her UGHHHH after the popeye/spinach line, the "ayo technology" noises that pop up halfway through, the way it all pivots around her singing "i wanna feel like i've been with a rapper the morning after" in tones of anguish and desperation

and the way her voice suddenly switches from autotune in-the-club harshness to the sweetness of "hold on to my life" in "party & bullshit"

yeah, I totally didn't notice the autotune on Armor On... besides "Automatic," but it fits with the concept there.

WRT Chamber of DIaries, "Matte Black Truck" is far and away the best song... whereas Armor On is consistently stunning.