This is a “tape” I been listening to a lot since it came out late last month.
TheWeeknd.
Who: The 20-year-old singer-songwriter (real name: Abel Tesfaye) from Toronto is on the forefront of an idiosyncratic new cut of R&B. Thanks in part to support from fellow Toronto native Drake, he’s been in heavy rotation since the March 21st release of his mixtape debut House of Balloons.
here’s a review from RollingStone:
Sounds Like: The Weeknd layers House of Balloons with samples (Siouxsie and the Banshees’s 1980 “Happy House,” Beach House‘s 2006 “Master of None”), electronic synths and hip-hop references, accompanied by Frank Ocean from Odd Future and How To Dress Well. There are also traces of The-Dream, Drake and Aaliyah throughout.
Girls, Girls, Girls: With its late-Nineties Timbaland feel (listen to Missy Elliott’s “Friendly Skies”), “What You Need” is the most seductive song on the mixtape. It opens with, “baby, now hold me close” – a line from Aaliyah’s 2001 “Rock the Boat.” The Weeknd proceeds to lure, singing, “I’m going to give you what you feign / I’m the drug in your veins / Just fight through your pain / He’s what you want / I’m what you need.” But on many of Balloons’ tracks The Weeknd entices and explores women, what they bring and what they leave. He sings of women that long to be held and women he longs to hold – but they never seem to be one and the same.
Famous Friends: Chaos erupted on March 6th when Drake tweeted a line from The Weeknd’s “Wicked Game” and linked to the song on his site, October’s Very Own. Ever since, Drake’s been sporadically tweeting lyrics from House of Balloons – which makes sense, since The Weeknd is almost like an emotionally magnified version of Drake. That said, The Weeknd quickly shot down rumors that producer who works close to Drake, Noah “40″ Shebib, worked on House of Balloons: “40 did not produce anything on this tape… Shout outs to 40 though!”, he wrote on Twitter. And although rumors still circulate, The Weeknd is not signed to a label, as he alludes to on the track “Loft Music”: “I’m raw motherfucker, I’m raw,” he sings.
You can download the mixtape/album by clicking on the album pic above, or visit his site.
The-Weeknd.com
Twitter.com/theweeknd
Facebook.com/theweeknd
right now The Morning gets the most spins for me
and another review:
The Weeknd arrived as if out of nowhere, with no tags or bio attached to them–a mysterious R&B group that we knew were from Toronto and, judging from Abel Tesfaye’s self-detesting, melancholic lyrics, we could assume were getting over recent heartbreak. Thanks to Toronto’s biggest sensation, Drake, who posted a few of their tracks on his OVO blog, the Weeknd exploded into the blogosphere, garnering the respect of self-indulgent hipsters, mainstream R&B fanatics, and indie kids alike. It’s rare for the r&b genre to be labeled unique or unorthodox these days, unless you’re How to Dress Well, but with the Weeknd’s debut mixtape, House of Balloons, they bring to the table the most interesting, depressing, and drug-infested R&B record in years.
The Weeknd’s originality reaches far beyond the nature of their dope, electronically infused, bass-heavy beats, merging the hip-hop genre with the current sampling fixation that so many underground DJ’s employ these days, whether Hard Mix or James Blake. The spaced-out, heavy synthesizer resonance that Drake fixates on is there as well on tracks like “The Party and the After Party” and “The Morning”. Though the production from Don McKinney and Illangelo is sufficient enough to keep House of Balloons on repeat, it’s Tesfaye’s lyrics that help separate the Weeknd from other contemporary R&B outfits. The drug discourse is ample, with opener “High For This” introducing the party lifestyle Tesfaye partakes in and “House of Balloons – Glass Table Girls” referencing cocaine on oh so many occasions. What makes The Weeknd so painstakingly real are the issues Tesfaye is discussing here. He’s not praising drugs like so many other artists in his genre do; he’s telling us the opposing side that no one dares mention: the overdoses, the cravings, the gloomy emptiness that ensues.
Halfway through House of Balloons sits what most are referring to as the album’s centerpiece, the hard-hitting “Wicked Games”; this song alone is worthy of making you feel remorseful. “Bring the love baby, I can bring the shame/Bring the drugs baby, I can bring the pain.” Tesfaye is aching for love here, even if it isn’t real love, and that takes a lot of guts to proclaim for someone who’s so new to the music scene. In an R&B market that is overly generic and dull, The Weeknd have brought something much more, something much needed: something real. Kudos.
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