NE-YO v THE DREAM

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Christopher+Stewart

if anyone got any more of these lying around put em up put em up

haha of all that is still trumped by los' one background nugget, but nevermind eh

los da mystro possibly more key to dreamery than tricky at this point?

i almost started a love/hate songs produced by los vs love/hate songs produced by tricky poll but i think we have enough posts about that album

i would've voted for los though

"it's got that hard-to-pin-down "epic lullaby of the everyday" feeling he's good at ekeing out. "

I haven't heard the new song but this seems spot on w/r/t the-dream's charms. A lot of my favourite moments on the album are him hanging out with his girl, "talkin' bout dis/talkin' bout dat", mussing her make-up before they're about to go out ("you got you're hair did/I'm about to mess that shit up" being maybe my favourite line in a pop song this year), watching Oceans 11 before sex even (though this was probably included for rhyme scheme purposes only).

I'm actually a bit surprised at how the production credits breakdown on the album, though I guess you could say L.O.S. pretty much does all the prettiest tracks. Tricky Stewart covers more range I guess.

tricky does the bigger tracks - i prefer that.

rtc brought it up elsewhere, i forget where, but the-dream's rmx of shontelle's 't-shirt' is u&k.

ugh, wrong your/you're in my post, I hate that.

yeah, the shontelle remix is a good example of what tim's talking about, although personally i do find that affecting warmth far more easily perceived (imagined even, perhaps) in his collaborations (whether duetted or just songwritten) than it is during much of love/hate.

hay tim have u heard that 'touch my body' remix yet btw! i was kinda champing to go off on one about it but you're the only one that subscribes to my ostentatious newsletters tbh.

incidentally this is where you go "other duets?" and i cackle and do a big cloak move thing and then man like dbs scoots along with the zshares. probably.

haha i think i just wasted a full half hour sternly pondering the-dream, kill me! this is totally what gets my goat about this thread though - is it seriously only me that finds his appeal so complicated? did everyone pick it up and go "wau yes love it" first time they played it? cos it's not enough having al go "he's annoying!" and everyone else go "this is a great album!" and then 400 posts of the itchy & scratchy show when YOU'RE BOTH RIGHT AND IT GOES HAND IN HANDDDDD

rtc like him he was just having trouble writing about him

― deej, Thursday, 1 May 2008 20:17 (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this was some savage shit btw and i will kill u over it one day :(

is it seriously only me that finds his appeal so complicated?

yes.

fwiw, rtc, I spent a lot of time being all conflicted about this album before I finally gave in to it

i spent 0 seconds being conflicted about it

i remember reading on idolator about ppl hating the sentiments of his songs, but rtc do you find him annoying from an aesthetic standpoint or do you have issues w/ his subjects/morals/whatever? to me the songwriting here was always brilliant - "and i feel like an outward boxer in the very first round / tried to keep my guard up but she caught me and im goin down" is such a sweet (and fresh!) lyric. idk man to me he was always on point. i never had any reservations

ummm "out worked boxer" >_<

i guess to me the album sounded to me like the greatness and diversity of radio r&b of the past few years distilled into one album

yeah, a lot of my problem with it initially is dude is dick, but I learned to love his dickishness

i dont get how he is a dick

i wasn't really conflicted any further than that i slept on the album for ages cuz i hated 'falsetto' so much, and only checked it out after rich juzwiak put 'ditch that' and 'living a lie' on his fourfour mix. i still hate 'falsetto' and skip it every time though but its obnoxiousness doesn't really bleed into any of the other songs.

if anything i get where al's coming from a bit more - i dunno how good a songwriter the-dream really is, lines like "springtime summertime falltime winter" (and loads more across the album) do seem awfully hackish out of context, but he sells it on record.

man, "Falsetto" is the most classic slow jam from a record with several

it's the actual falsetto bit i can't listen to

it's a bit nails-on-blackboard

uptempo mix of 'falsetto' be miraculously great though.

(almost as good as 'outward boxer', one of my fave wire songs.)

will answer reservation q's in a bit once i've reread everything i already said on rolling r&bs on the past - we do all so hate endlessly repeating ourselves round here, after all.

in the meantime, what are yall's thoughts on 'rocking that thang'? i look forward to seeing it on your 2010 lists.

yo rtc i remember empathizing with yr confusion -- i think i recognized immediately that it was great but what was weird was just that it was great in spite of his frequent corniness -- like there are some lyrics on this thing that would be huge clunkers on anyone else's record. def a 'more than the sum of its parts' experience

For a long time I've assumed it was "I feel like an out worked boxer on the very first round" but I had this mental CLICK last week and now I hear it is "I fell like an out worked boxer on the very first round."

I didn't find "Falsetto" obnoxious really, but (especially post-"Bed") in isolation it seemed like the schtickiness of his schtick was this perhaps ignominious distillation of all voluptuous sex-obssessed mid-noughties synthy slow jams, R Kelly X pixeldust with nowhere to go.

And then of course the album presents this as like a corner that you have to turn around to make it to the unexpected territory of "Nikki", "Luv Songs" et. al. Like he's orbiting the earth twice so that he can use that force of gravity to shoot off into space. In the context of the album "Falsetto" works really well, it's like the exhausted gooey centre of the "Fast Car" --> "Nikki" --> "She Needs My Love" journey.

Love/Hate has a booklet with the lyrics, and the lyrics read "And I feel like an out work boxer in the very first round."

"Fast Car" --> "Nikki" --> "She Needs My Love" --> "Falsetto" is so key to this album

it's like the exhausted gooey centre of the "Fast Car" --> "Nikki" --> "She Needs My Love"

i think this is the big key - the song is supposed to feel like this relieved release after the tension of the previous two. it's kind of palpable in how "falsetto" is so spacious musically as opposed to "nikki" and "she needs my love" which are pretty busy

that boxer lyric is why "playin in her hair" is my favorite on the album - that and the "can i get a ay? aayyyyy!" part

Ha that's like me and "I'm about to mess that shit up" in "Purple Kisses".

BTW "Rockin' That Thing" is brilliant heart-tugging mush (totally <3 the synth-horn sound he's rocking here), although the falsetto here is verging on Prince circa 1987 roleplaying and there's not a huge amount of his own personality coming through here.

Pat Benatar's "We Belong" came on afterwards on my iTunes and it totally worked.

^ overuse of "here".

My favorite part of the album is in "Fast Car", when he's going on about how sweet she is and how much he trusts her and how great she is, then disses her for the bad girl

the lil jon single is a big FAIL tho

yes. Very much so.

"My favorite part of the album is in "Fast Car", when he's going on about how sweet she is and how much he trusts her and how great she is, then disses her for the bad girl"

Compare/contrast with Ne-Yo's "What's The Matter", where he sensitively deconstructs this social phenomenon.

"Let Me See The Booty" >>>> "Rockin That Shit", which is nice enough but it's just a retread of the 1st album. "Right Side of Ya Brain" is the best track from this so far though.

i like "let me see the booty" outside of the context of the dream i just don't see how it would work on the album

Who cares about 'album context' this song is generic as Dick

i capitalized 'dick' bcuz i posted that from my phone

but yeah

this aint bad

heres a mix someone did of a bunch of dream songs http://www.zshare.net/audio/52990013e04c8348/ havent listened to it yet enjoyio

thnx ice craem

rockin that thang is so gr8, good way to end the mix

why did jim jones and ne-yo get into a fistfight

because Ne-Yo was with some Def Jam lackey who's the brother of one of Jay-Z's best friends, apparently.

"why did jim jones and ne-yo get into a fistfight"

I was hoping this was the first half of a joke.

love/hate song with mariah

feelin it

http://www.zshare.net/audio/53891333925f82cc/

my b - love vs money song with mariah duh

also album out feb 17

lol @ "who's been lovin you lately?/ who's been willing to go half on the baby?"

wtf is the immense synth riff from 'rockin that thang' reminding me of

'stripper love' is big too, and yeah def feeling this mimi.

this DRAEM/Mariah tune is dope