NE-YO v THE DREAM

NB ive listened to the first half of the record like ten times and the back just two or three. so i'll come around to it i'm sure

the Lil Jon collab SUCKS.

OUT: Album full of confessional jamz.
IN: Half-album confessional jamz song-cycles surrounded by sex jamz. (I like that in the end he's more concerned with his CDs not having scratches on them than actually having sex.)

xpost, that Lil Jon thing is just a bonus track, fwiw

weird that the lil jon song turned out to be so love/hate (heeyyy there)

i pretty much love it fwiw, i like that it's a strip club song that would be impossible to dance to - that's good weirdness imo

You've danced in a strip club?

ha i didn't feel like rewording the sentence but yall know what i mean

to answer the question: no

i dont hate it i just think it's pointless and ill probably delete it

the first four or five tracks are fantastic, but i havent really been able to fall for that sequence you guys specify up there, though i realize there is a lot going on so im hoping it'\'s a slow burner

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― moonship journey to 51 (k3vin k.), Sunday, March 8, 2009 2:13 PM Bookmark

yeah, I'm with you on this one

I already did delete the Lil Jon track. Total ass, that one.

the slow jamz on this one - "put it down", "sweat it out" and "kelly's 12 play" - are unfuckwithable imo

^seconded...and that leaves three singles (the first three songs, though "Put It Down" should totally be a single) and the song cycle thing, which is probably the only real hurdle to kind of wrap your brain around on on the album. But it's also the part I like best, a fairly coherent (continuous) story in which he goes through a quick rundown of male confessional tropes. After "Sweat It Out" the album (until "12 Play") is kind of a palindrome: song about sex that aims slightly longer-term, failure and self-hatred (angry version), gold-digger song (angry version), gold-digger song (nicer version), failure and self-hatred (nicer version), song about sex that aims slightly longer-term. Although when he says he needs to use the right side of his brain (pun on "correct"), he means that he needs to use the LEFT side of his brain.

It may just be the mp3s, but I think the album sounds a bit tinny, especially in the drums.

been thinking that too, think it's just the mp3s, esp cuz the two officially released singles sound pretty high qual

at the very least im holding out until tues to figure it out

The song cycle had me going :-0 for its entire length.

Is that a compliment?

Yes!

yknow those kinda films where the underdog schmuck hero goes on a life journey, wins the girl, gets rich, or whatever - and then they make a sequel, and you know what you think? well this album did that to me at first, with its banal retreads (even 'rockin that', vulgarised literally + artistically) and grimly disbursed star-studded victory lap cameos all the more charmless for toasting a bigtime success as luridly unconvincing as christina milian's married to the mob peroxide dyejob nestling expectantly on the-dream's shoulder.

but then strolls in 'sweat it out', still hardcore r kellyeoke (moreso than '12play') ('hairbraider' remix almost), yet quite brilliant either way; and you settle down, beginning to think dude ruling this record's world might be okay after all. from then on the thing's a treat, and while not wanting to take anything anyway from 'lvm pts 1&2' (portishead-ass machine guns! album of the year obv!! nah syke i'm kidding) (altho- no 'ditch that' on the album, jordan?- what is lvm but 'ditch that' in excelsis??) i'm really now coming to think that the beating heart of the album is actually 'fancy' thru to 'right side of my brain'. god that is the best 10 minutes EVER.

("and deserving... she's deserving" literally kills me, like this paused moment of clarity that hadn't occured to him yet, and then the music kindles and swells, running, playing, barely catching him plunging into doubletime rap doubletime heartbeat giddy certainty! 'right side' so so devastating after that - "you heart me, baby / then you... hardly, baby" ahh the realness)

after that yeah, i'm breaking it down into chunks so i havent gotten into the last couple tracks fully but i totally deleted the fuck outta that lil jon cut too for what it's worth.

(altho- no 'ditch that' on the album, jordan?- what is lvm but 'ditch that' in excelsis??)

i don't think i said this

and re the beginning of the album, i like the three singles A LOT, but based on love/hate and this i think it's quite possible that the singles of each are almost like a different album to him. "shawty is a 10" and "i luv your girl" are outliers sonically on l/h and the three singles on love vs. money seem attuned to the style of the album, but it's kind of hard not to see the album as starting as an Album when "put it down" hits

so i don't think it's a coincidence that the three singles start the album off like "well here you go" and then thematically everything locks into place and it's kind of very space mountain from then on out

fwiw i was wary of something that sounds like "Ditch That" when I asked, and the title track (particularly part 2) is one of my favorite parts of the album, so I'm not complaining about Jordan's implication.

really 'fancy' is everything i expected of the dream - sung by diddy on last train to paris. (not just the sweeping drama but also the piano line giving off a thomas crown affair kinda continental balling vibe - 'sinnerman' was used in a uk advert for the eurostar as well i think! but anyway yeah whatever)

xp sure 'lvm' isnt as sonically i dunno, strutty (or whatever it is that bugs you about it) as 'ditch that' i'm saying it's got an implied thematic twinship is all.

otherwise not sure what malcolm gladwell is trying to say there, hold up while ima close read

i think he's so thematically focused (limited?) enough that if we get into 'twinship' of songs before you know it guy is going to be the octomom

It's nice ILX is providing content for Idolator.

i doubt that any idolator readers are gonna make it all the way down to when we start talking about love vs money

also too bad that this wasn't one of those joke poll w/ nate dogg thrown in

It's nice that ILX is still self-absorbed enough to think that discussion of a record that got 4 1/2 stars from Rolling Stones and will likely debut very high on Billboard can always be traced back to ILX.

(I mean I know there's a link back and all, but still)

haha "Rolling Stones" i'll shut up now

yeah ever since kanye's "my swagger's like mick jagger" line the stones have had a renewed interest in hip hop and r&b

There's a link back and the thrust of the post is: Isn't The Dream a lot like Ne-Yo??

yeah, but Ne-Yo (along with T-Pain) pretty much made The-Dream's entire career possible, so it's not a terribly rare or creative comparison.

shawty is a 10" and "i luv your girl" are outliers sonically on l/h and the three singles on love vs. money seem attuned to the style of the album,

no, i categorically disagree with that - for one, it was uncharted waters before l/h dropped (and kept falling for like a year), nothing sounded drastically different from the rest of the album whilst people were sinking into it. certainly not to the degree of any of lvm's three singles to date, which are stylistic shifts - the mariah sounds like mariah, the lil jon like lil jon, the kanye like post-'forever' thumbsucking music for colourful hoodies dudes (nah i dunno but i really got no love for that tune) and even 'rockin' is broader, more limelit than l/h material.

it may be more that something like 'put it down' (which is fine) has retrospectively solidified an idea of a classic dream sound.

that barthel review is good btw! i can count on the fingers of... a stump how many people have even vaguely confronted the-dream being something of a prick and maybe being of questionable natural talent, and how that colours his music. (not even positively or negatively speaking.)

based on dream and wayne, is it too soon to start theorizing that nivea is the anti-badu who turns any artist she links up with into a radio-killing pop star?

fwiw i still think the guy comes off as a prick and questionably talented even though i like a fair amount of his music now

ill buy questionably talented far more than dude is a prick, " i luv your girl" is the only truly prickish song i can think of off love/hate. there's a bunch of genuinely sweet songs on the album and i think "she needs my love" is largely allegorical.

as for his r. kelly-isms lyrically i think it's more of a matter of him taking a concept too far, like when he says "im gonna have you with my cup of coffee/ jump on it, jump on it" in 'luv songs' i think it's more a matter of trying to be clever (stretch this out to 'questionably talented' if youd like) than the guy saying that his girl is as important to him as breakfast

isn't it a bit more nuanced than that, though - his prickishness builds cumulatively, somewhere in the disparity between how he stunts (sometimes unpleasantly yeah; not just in 'i love ur girl' but the selfabsorbed rage of 'ditch that' and 'nikki'. also see interview above jeez) and the reality of his questionable talent.

...which ok yeah is bollocks tbf - he clearly is talented and always has been - "talent" meaning as shorthand for not only his at times craven debt (seriously, c'mon) to the likes of kells, or prince ('purple kisses', 'fast car'), or his own dodgy singing voice, but also how very awkwardly he inhabits the mantle of being a proper r&b solo artist public figure. cos let me state this plainly: the videos for 'i love your girl' and 'rockin' are the most painful annihilations of a supposed stardom ever - dream is appalling, pathetic, nonexistent. (jeezy stealing the show with a totally irrelevant obama spiel - before the song even starts!! lolz!)

but then at the same time this is all part of the attraction too, because he is an underdog in the vein of all your t-pain sad panda interlopers and sundry karoke autotuners, and we feel for him somehow, precisely because he isn't some superbeing, and shit is real. i kinda see him like an r&b mr magoo actually! and finally yeah, cos he does write some sweet songs.

yeah it's kind of funny how all his videos have crazy hot girls and really colorful, eye-catching lighting, and he's always dressed up real slick and trendy, but you still can't avoid this really awkward-looking dude half-assedly dancing at the center of it all

i mean it says it all that a song as (relatively) low key as "I Luv Your Girl" has a video with strobe lights and dancing as over the top as Usher's "Yeah!"

right, yeah. i mean the other interesting thing about the mr magoo vibe is - does he realise? can he even afford to? i suppose he doesnt have to any longer now everyone's (stars not crits)(altho!) on his bandwagon. upthread brainwasher asks what does he mean when dream says he's the american dream, and we know what he means? and it's a great question! what indeed.

it occurred to me particularly when reverend and lex i think (soz if not) were adoringly going off on one about a even vaguer erykah badu reference to the american dream and how it rocked their minds - like god, how much more interesting that question is aimed towards the-dream rather than some paranoid neo-hippy!

i really don't get how the-dream is particularly prickish. i mean he's not mr polite ne-yo, but he really doesn't come off as any more obnoxious than most

XP also wrt one of the songs that didnt make 'love vs money', can't recall the name now. something about losing an american dream prom queen, or something, and it's almost like an allegory for fame.

no hate for badu here btw, but yknow, sometimes, it's a bit, underwater stoveTOP

youre really blowing my mind over here

Is that a compliment?

― The Screaming Lobster of Challops (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 9 March 2009 14:00 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yes!

― Tim F, Monday, 9 March 2009 14:29 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah that kanye song isnt growing on me well at all. kinda limp

i dunno im really glad rtc is into this because im feelin a real strong pull to react negatively to all this like ive got brainwasher 'man where have you people been' disease. maybe undeserved ... not snobbery cuz all i wanted to do w/ the first one was convince everyone how great it was ... undeserved 'i told u so' more like. but hey

'fancy' is amazing. thats probably the best. i definitely prefer the last half of the album to the first(& yeah fuck the lil jon track obv).

& definitely disagree with j0rdan about shawty is the shit being an outlier -- that track is totally w/in the vibe of the record!! extra-strong emotional push. like rtc said its more a contextual thing

i do think 'i luv your girl' & 'livin a lie' are the main ones that lay outside the median the-dream track

yeah, but aren't the ppl who're talking about this now, the same people who repped for Love/Hate (on this thread, not RS I mean)

there are a lot more ppl talking about this one & gettin all "good thing i found out about this album from the ilm year end poll!!!"-non R&B fans

theres nothing wrong with that, im just being immature

the album always had a ton of auteurist appeal to people who don't really pay attention to the genre as a whole, doesn't really matter when those people pick up on it or why