Three days ago, the lusty, desperate voice of Abel Tesfaye--better known as The Weeknd--was revived in all our heads through the bare, sparse beauty of his new track, "Rolling Stone." Per usual, an intense focus on sex, drugs, and possession anchor the song. One moment Tesfaye sings, "I'm going to keep on smoking till I can't hit another note," and the next he begs, "Baby, love me before they all love me, until you won't love me, because I won't love me". The tiniest jangling sound, almost like jacks in a child's hand, provides a haunted, anxious heartbeat for Tesfaye's echo-heavy vocals: like the sleigh bells on Liz Phair's classic "Fuck and Run," it's this disembodied, but somehow very human, sound that blesses the song.
Beyond "Rolling Stone," there have also been a slew (6, to be exact) of unreleased tracks, all as gorgeous as, frankly, we now expect them to be, if Tesfaye is putting them out. Check those out below as well:
Quite often, maybe daily, excellent music is broadcasted into the world by the collective blog culture at-hand, a development in music journalism that has the capacity to instantly make a talented nobody an indie-world star, all on the basis of a few tracks posted to Soundcloud. We don't dislike that, and, anyway, it would be ludicrous at this point to deny that the blogosphere has usurped the place of tastemaker from Rolling Stone and its fellow print publications. The downside, to some people, is that instantaneous exposure can lead to an artist becoming a headliner overnight, then inescapable in his yearlong hype parade, and forgotten entirely after the New Year. We don't mind that. We think great music is great music, whether it lasts or it doesn't--but it is nice, from time to time, to come across artists that really shatter the jaded feeling that deep investment in music blogs tends to create: The Weeknd, whose first tracks, "What You Need," and "Wicked Games," dropped less than a month ago.
"What You Need" has its own, very NSFW video which, if the crew's twitter is to be believed, they weren't extremely fond of. But if you want a look anyway...
The Weeknd comes out of the gate like the best R&B group the 90's never produced, and the quality of their sound, and the maturity of their House of Balloons mixtape, is much more than our generation deserves. We say this in part because the 00's haven't cultivated the kind of musical landscape you'd expect this kind of extremely honest sound to come from. The Weeknd, a collaboration between vocalist Abel Tesfaye and producer Jeremy Rose, may seem in line with the love of R&B sampling that is currently at its apogee, but the sincerity of the their lyrics--memorably, "They want want I'm sitting on, they don't want my love," from "The Party & The After Party"--and their celebration of love over lust mark them in opposition to what is increasingly a culture whose foundation is constructed exclusively on sex and money. Their songs ache with a soulfulness I can't remember registering on my radar since, unlikely enough, Tracy Chapman, who I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out they admired. This is not only good music, but heralds the first bugle of a lo-fi hip hop outfit with the potential to transform and refine musical taste, as well as raise the bar at-large:
Big leaguers, watch the fuck out. And while you're looking over your shoulder, pounding The Weeknd's Soundcloud, perusing their official website (where you can pick up the House of Balloons mixtape FREE), and twatting at them via Twitter, remember to enjoy yourselves a little as The Weeknd's big takeover begins.
