Drake and the Weeknd... enjoying themselves?

​​Sound of the City's year-end roundtable, with contributions from Tom Ewing, Eric Harvey, Maura Johnston, Nick Murray, and Katherine St. Asaph, continues. Follow along here.

Fellow roundtablers,

As we turn down the home stretch, I have to say this has all been awesome, and I'm a little sad that we'll soon have to wrap this up. That being said, I'm going to take advantage of that fact that neither Maura, Katherine, nor Tom will be able to respond to anything I say and talk a little about the Weeknd. In the words of Abel Tesfaye, you'll wanna be high for this.

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Shhh... He's thinking.

​Sound of the City's year-end roundtable, with contributions from Tom Ewing, Eric Harvey, Maura Johnston, Nick Murray, and Katherine St. Asaph, continues. Follow along here.

Look, it's what I've been dreading talking about all year! Anyway. For the past hour, Maura, I've tried to think of one—only one—perfect antidote track, or line even, by a woman to the pickup whines by Drake and those who'd love to be him. I haven't even come close. Nicki Minaj has little interest in this, which is absolutely her right but rules out the most obvious candidate. A few Rihanna shame-changers, like "Watch 'N' Learn"'s "don't ask me if you were the first to sleep here/ 'cause if he did, you wouldn't even be here," might work, but they're lost amid album filler, raunch and career churn. Laura Marling's "Sophia" would work if it had any genre relation whatsoever and if the point of the song wasn't "how and with whom I've moved on is none of your business"—the only safe response when being candid as a female writer almost automatically means people call you oversharing (imagine if Drake was a woman), but no good for countering. And more plausible answer songs like "212" have reaches, as Eric said, currently confined to music blogs and whatever came of Banks' day out with Kanye. JoJo's "Marvin's Room" remake doesn't even pinprick Drake's original hit if you go by audience—even discounting the implications of wanting a white pop singer like JoJo to dethrone a black R&B singer like Drake, which shouldn't be discounted.

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​Sound of the City's year-end roundtable, with contributions from Tom Ewing, Eric Harvey, Maura Johnston, Nick Murray, and Katherine St. Asaph, continues. Follow along here.

Hi again everyone,

Sure, there was lots of great music put out by women this year—my Pazz and Jop top tens will be stuffed with them. But does that make 2011 a Year of the Woman by any stretch? I'd argue no, and I suspect the guy who I overheard on the subway the other day, who was complaining that while he liked Lady Gaga going to a concert of hers would make him feel like less of a man, would agree with me; those people horrified by "Super Bass"'s showing on the Pitchfork singles list might as well. If anything what bothered me about the Year of the Bro (yes, I'm calling it this now) was the way that gender roles became more circumscribed, the way that people who called bullshit on misogyny and homophobia (OK, I'm mostly talking about Tyler here) were mocked in ways that Nick rightly pointed out were absolutely conservative, and the end result was little more than a lot of empty laughter and "objective" music-blog reports that implied an overtightened sphincter on one side.

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​Frank Ocean
Bowery Ballroom
Sunday, November 27

Better than: Canceling an hour before showtime.

This March, Frank Ocean released the free mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra on Tumblr, and it was subsequently passed around like a sex tape, picking up steam with every like, every reblog, every retweet, every "MUST LISTEN"-branded blog post. Immediately, Def Jam put out the Bat-Signal, a nationwide search for Annie, trying in vain to get this kid on the phone, desperate to give him a deal. An unnamed executive called someone in Los Angeles, who revealed that Frank Ocean was already signed to Def Jam, under the name Lonny Breaux. He'd been collecting dust on the label's shelf for a year and a half; frustrated, he put the music he'd made out himself. Def Jam had no idea that they already owned him.

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​Last night Frank Ocean was scheduled to play his first New York show at the Bowery Ballroom, but about an hour before the 9 p.m. scheduled showtime the word came down via his Tumblr: He was too sick to perform, having contracted some sort of illness in Los Angeles a few days ago that apparently hit full bloom just as he arrived in New York. (Although he apparently sounded fine on Saturday night when he kicked off his tour in his hometown of New Orleans. He covered Sade!) Ocean's statement in full, and a video from Saturday, after the jump.

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​The Odd Future associate/Jay and Kanye co-signed R&B singer is bringing his emo and blues to the Bowery Ballroom on November 6. Tickets are on sale now although they might not be for much longer now that word's out, so, if this is your thing, get clicking. UPDATE (5:42 p.m.): All gone! But don't worry, you can still get tickets to go see The Throne that night instead.

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​"Best Seller," the newest track from the rapidly ascending R&B singer-songwriter Frank Ocean, made its way online over the weekend. And as luck would have it, Watch The Throne, which features him on two tracks and will likely be a best seller of its own, finally landed on peoples' hard drives. So, hey, angle! "Best Seller" is more uptempo than Ocean's past offerings, with a plinky, airy feel that brings to mind Kanye West's "Heard 'Em Say" and R. Kelly's buried-but-great "Don't Let Go" and lyrics that seem to push against both the song's sonic accessibility and its creator's rising profile: "The publishers, they tryna call us/ They tryna meet us lately/ And I say "It's precious/ And it's private, sho' ain't for profit'/ And if they don't understand/ Baby, I ain't givin' a damn/ I'm tryna accept this, I'm sorry/ These chapters ain't for sale." Ah, sweet subversion. Listen below.

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​
The Throne (Watch The Throne listening session)
Hayden Planetarium
Monday, August 1

Better than: any listening session I've ever been to.

Album listening parties have almost always existed as excuses to drink on the record company's dwindling dime, the music itself largely ignored; background noise beneath layers of industry chit-chat, forgotten in an anonymous bar. The last two Def Jam/G.O.O.D. Music parties—this, and Big Sean's night at the Standard in June—have been something else: big-budget affairs where music is to be heard, visuals seen. You want to be social? Stay home.

No phones. No cameras. No electronics of any kind. No +1's. No ifs, ands, buts, or Tweets.

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​Frank Ocean's Nostalgia Lite—a reworked, Def Jam-distributed version of his mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra—was supposed to be released earlier this week, but the day came and went without anything officially sanctioned landing in those places where one can officially buy music, and with little explanation of when the R&B singer's maiden effort might actually become available. Today, however, the slinky "Thinking About You" hit the Internet, perhaps as a way of tiding people over. Over a blooming bed of synths, Ocean plays both sides of the cad/lover divide, alternating knowing nods to his possibly duplicitous nature with admissions that he's been thinking about a long-term future with his ladyfriend. And the way he stretches out his falsetto—into something straining, longing, gorgeous—makes plain the fact that his desires, while prone to shifting, are extremely strong. Clip below.

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As the Weeknd says, "XO till we overdose.."

​Two days ago, r&b changed again. On Sunday night, a Canadian collective called the Weeknd released their nine-song mixtape, House of Balloons, on their web site. Though they were quick to deny the direct involvement of Drake's sonic architect, Noah "40" Shebib, the apparitions in The Weeknd--no official members have yet come forward--have been heavily co-signed by the Toronto star. Why? Because they are Canadian countrymen? Because the Weeknd's spacious, moody r&b deconstruction further cements Drake and 40's reinvention of the genre? Is it just pure aesthetic appreciation? They're all probably true. What is irrefutable is the calculation that has thus far gone into this project.

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