The purpose built next generation interstellar Dawn Richard thread

rtc otm that the sunny weather did it no favours either which was the one positive of last night's inexplicable rainstorm

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 4 April 2012 07:02 (7 hours ago) Bookmark

i once got caught in a torrential storm with 'make love to you' off lovelovevshatelove on and it was so perfect and overwhelmingly romantic i still sometimes think about it

like if a bad bitch had cropped up at that exact moment i would have walked away from everything and spent my every last penny whisking her off off on a plane somewhere vibe

She's certainly less um approachable than she was on #A Tell-Tale Heart for the most part. There's nothing as breezy as "Biggest Fan" or "Hey" for instance.

This ain't a problem for me perhaps because I've already primed myself for Dawn so much I'm happy to take her in full forbidding stone edifice as last remnant of a vanished alien civilisation mode.

xp underrated jam anyway, even in clement weather

yeah it's more the darkness on tell-tale heart is more, idk if ~relatable~ is le mot juste but a sense of something overwrought and ultimately monstrous bloodily at stake than armor on's more transcendent virtues

This is easily my favourite DDM-related release.

no offence but you have hardly distinguished yourself on matters ddm tbf

well maybe you have actually but not in a good way

xp underrated jam anyway, even in clement weather

― r|t|c, Wednesday, April 4, 2012 6:27 AM Bookmark

otm

yeah that's not saying much coming from someone who was not a 'ass on the floor' partisan! xxp

The original SMFU just clicked with me. It's still not as awesome as the Remix, but still.

Feelings!

(Hah I don't actually like DDM at all but really like both Dawn releases, her own aesthetic is distinct enough that I barely make the DDM connection any more)

Hah I don't actually like DDM at all

http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd246/dc19124/snoop.gif

btw

http://www.factmag.com/2012/04/07/dawn-richard-armor-on/

a-yo

niiiiiice

Yeah that was totally awesome!!!

Rev is getting really trigger happy with the snoop.gif.

Nothing snoop.gif worthy about not vein able to stomach Diddy's atrocious rapping imo

imo if you don't like DDM what board are you even posting on

nice review btw rev

k3v otm

DDM songs work because of, not in spite of, diddy's rapping

Nothing snoop.gif worthy about not vein able to stomach Diddy's atrocious rapping imo

― Evan R
http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxozkjOUlo1r97gceo1_500.gif

SMOKE WEED LISTEN TO SADE

btw

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2012/04/dawn_richard_kalenna_dirty_money.php

(lol at me and rev having a mindmeld on the phrase 'greek chorus')

nice

lol at "For the album's fervent cult of patient motherfuckers"

thumbs up 4 the piece shipz

Great piece; and a good gateway to the joys of Dawn Richard for people who aren't already on the DDM train (i.e non-ilxors)

hey bigger fanbases have been built on smaller foundations than an album that almost went gold

That was great too sd

Loving this stream of excellent journalism on Dawn!

i really hope we can actually get some traction going on dawn and kalenna. i've had a few too many experiences of trying to talk about r&b to other music critics and when i bring up dawn and kalenna it's like they don't even hear the names, and then they say "so! the weeknd!"

and then i stab them

I think one of the potentials with Dawn is that her genre dabbling does provide an "in" for stabworthy people - you can sell it as "not just R&B" in a similar fashion to how The Weeknd or even The-Dream are sold to that kind of audience.

Although of course in truth what Dawn does with drum & bass, house, etc. is to make it function precisely as R&B sui generis and par excellence (though of course her own individualised take on it). So it's not meaningfully different from a 2002 tune with a pseudo-dancehall beat or a tabla.

One of the things I tried to do in my own review (i'm not sure how successfully) is to try express both the above points while not making them contradict each other, so each audience gets the point I want them to get. The difficulty with this is that 9 out of 10 readers only pick up on these things if you beat them over the head with it, so the more likely outcome is to end up falling between two stools.

Kalenna's probably a lost cause though - Chamber of Diaries is the kind of R&B that only gets critical traction if there's a hit (preferably a string of them). Not that I would object to "Matte Black Truck" being number one forever of course.

Tim, where is this review of yours?

Kalenna definitely is doomed to get less buzz in general but i hope peope itt aren't sleeping on her tape since DR's record dropped, "Poison" is so killer

I think it'll be up in a few days. Let's talk about the awesomeness of both rev and some dude instead.

Some dude totally spot on when he refers to Dawn's "heavily armored vulnerability". I think perhaps the most interesting aspect of the EP's uh "theme" is that the title "Armor On" is less about fortifying oneself for battle per se than it is about the possibility of being wounded - Dawn's "armor" is really scar tissue.

And yes "Poison" is great.

yeah i mean i make fun of the superhero/military stuff but i have come to respect the way it's woven into the whole thing and isn't just the repetitive employment of a cliched metaphor

I think the superman meme in particular does merit some fun-making. Especially the whole S on your/my chest thing.

I imagine one of Dawn or Kalenna jumping on this first and getting really mad each time the other tries to pass it off as her own.

lol it is so totally Dawn's

^^

also i think people into the new wave of **dark & moody* indie r&b or w/e could find something to like in dawn's stuff

lol it is so totally Dawn's

I'm inclined to agree of course.

It'd be more amusing though if Kalenna concocted it and then Dawn started using it (to the point of nearly building her entire persona around it) before she got a chance to.

I do wonder what they think of each other actually. Has there been anything juicy post DM breakup?

I think this board seriously underestimates what a tough sell Dawn Richard is to non-converts. On the surface, her resume looks pretty dire. Danity Kane was not a well-respected band, and the Diddy association is a turnoff to a lot of people who haven't actually heard the DDM album (or who only heard that one moronic Skylar Grey single)

xp Dawn (at least publicly) seems totally cool with whatever happened and Kalenna seems more bitter about it.

I think this board seriously underestimates what a tough sell Dawn Richard is to non-converts. On the surface, her resume looks pretty dire. Danity Kane was not a well-respected band, and the Diddy association is a turnoff to a lot of people who haven't actually heard the DDM album (or who only heard that one moronic Skylar Grey single)

― Evan R, Tuesday, 10 April 2012 3:15 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think anything can be spun.

Weeknd fans who want to embrace this can convince themselves that she is busting out of the constraints of major label R&B and that Diddy wasn't smart enough to realise her genius.

though if they didn't realise how LTTP was hugely sonically innovative...

if kalenna goes down the "go to work" route enough, that could sell her from a character (rather than beats) perspective in a similar way to how nicki and WAKA cross over to non-rap audiences. we'll see what her official material sounds like if/when it emerges. have to say i am slightly disappointed that dawn and kalenna don't even see each other as allies in the vaguest sense.

anyway yeah anything can be spun but apart from our own articles that doesn't seem to be happening on anything like last year's initial weeknd level. i blame whoever the fuck the tastemakers and gatekeepers actually are.

re: armour, what you all say is true of course but what i love about the way dawn uses that imagery is how armour is less of a protective necessity and more of a badge of honour, and a natural development of being in love; she makes becoming superhuman via the process of love sound like an organic process. there's def a religious association at work here - echoes of how the concept of armour is used in a scriptural sense.

Weeknd fans who want to embrace this can convince themselves that she is busting out of the constraints of major label R&B and that Diddy wasn't smart enough to realise her genius.

― Tim F, Tuesday, April 10, 2012 12:29 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

it's funny because that's totally going to be the narrative when it's really just that right or wrong she didn't want to sit and wait in line behind French Montana. it's kind of a shame that Bad Boy is so focused on rebuilding their rap roster right now because Diddy could've made Dawn and Janelle and Cassie the front line of an artsy R&B movement.