The Weeknd

The Weeknd is like the Harriet Tubman of OVO. After helping create a new sound and my favorite Drake album “Take Care”, he realized that he was worth more than a potential owl tattoo and a pat on the back from Drake. Through his own cunning and sheer determination, he escaped the OVO sweatshop with the overseer known as Drake and lived to tell the tale. He tried to take PartyNextDoor and DVSN with him, but they didn’t know they were slaves to OVO. He ran off on Drake and built a career all his own with nothing besides cocaine and heartbreak. You can tell that I Love Makonnen thought he would make the same moves but unfortunately, he watched his biggest single become another one of Drake’s. The Weeknd climbed out of the prison like Bruce Wayne in Rises and immediately got to work. Abel is one of the few artists who can announce music and completely shift everyone's mood. He’s like a summer thunderstorm when you’re at Six Flags, all you can do is stop and wait for him to pass before you walk through a much damper world. The Weeknd really is just like a storm except instead of Thunder strikes you hear strange yodeling. The minute you start press play on a Weeknd song things just get Dark and stay there; he's like the Winter Solstice. He’s comparable to the Night King from Game Of Thrones if instead of killing the living to create skeleton monsters, he just made you want to do drugs and have unprotected sex with strangers who take their Instagram photos exclusively with the X-Pro II filter. It goes without saying that people LOVE The Weeknd the way they love their antidepressants. I never got into him because I was well adjusted and was going through a legendary dry spell, so I had no chance to have depressing sex. However, I’ve since caught up and lived a semi sad couple of years, so when I saw that he had a tape literally called “My Dear Melancholy” coming out, I was ready to prepare myself for the pain. I put on a faded black hoodie on over a slightly less faded black tee and a new dad hat (the saddest outfit) and pressed play.

Abel Tesfaye truly had an entrance into the music world like no other. He was newly twenty one-years-old when he dropped House Of Balloons and immediately became someone to watch, standing next to Drake while he was become a star without his own light dimming. That year also saw the releases of Thursday and Echoes Of Silence, which culminated with the compilation album Trilogy in 2012. The tapes were three separate releases, but all fell under the same umbrella, and so his official debut album was going to be considered at least his sophomore effort by most. Kiss Land came in 2013 and The Weeknd described it as a “horror movie”. It was growth, but in the same lane as those mixtapes in that it was dark and uninviting on the surface, with a lot of the content influenced by drugs and the downsides of the singer’s new life, a magnifying glass on the gloomier side of things. He toured the album and opened for Justin Timberlake on his tour, all the while working on album number two.

Kiss Land marks Abel Makkonen Tesfaye's first major label debut, following three mixtapes packaged as Trilogy released by Republic that contained some of the most influential and gripping R&B of the new decade. Though the pace is slower, songwriting thinner and vision more bloodshot, the debut allows listeners to refamiliarize themselves with The Weeknd's aesthetic, which was striking and singular, to begin with. The Canadian soul stirrer provides an eclectic soundtrack for the bedroom as well as a glimpse at how he may be coping with the exposure he's received since his major label debut/mixtape compilation, Trilogy has captured the public eye. Though he sings about what comes with the good life -- girls, money, and fame -- but He digs deeper and finds a stark, cutting frankness about popularity and its disadvantages; he sets his lyrics to soundscapes that evoke this world of loveless sexual exploits, rough comedowns, and existential dissatisfaction. Musically, The Weeknd is still on his grind with Kiss Land, and he says it is like a horror movie.

The first time I came across The Weekend’s album was in 2017, but I was well aware of his existence in 2015 with his hit singles “The Hills” and “Earned It” and really loved both of them. I was a single being then and guess I was a bit lonely at that point so I could at least relate with the lyrics from the song; a little bit of playboy back then, so the songs helped in my efforts to increase the game. “The Hills” was a turning point in sound revolution; prior to the song, the sounds that interested people then came from the likes of Miguel and Frank Ocean, this new type of sound said both of them back to the backseat while we enjoyed his soulful voice, deep lyrics alongside enjoyable composition and the way he flipped the beat was very interesting as it was rare in the R&B genre. The Weeknd did the beat flip easily, like he was born to do it, and it reminded me of Timbaland and Justin Timberlake doing an entire album with beat flips, FutureSex / LoveSounds. The songs were not strong enough to sway me into finding out more about him, he was just an artiste that was good, but I didn’t believe he was worth my attention; One Hit or One Album wonder I thought. It was on a wet day in 2017, when a course mate of mine came visiting to use my iTunes to transfer some songs from my library and his (music were on his flash drive). He asked if I had The Weeknd, and I replied with sure. Showed him my The Weeknd catalogue, which included “The Hills”, “Earned It”, and “The Hills Remix (feat. Eminem)”. He looked up at me with my eyes glassy with pride, it was then I saw the disappointment on his face as he shook his head and said “You are miss out on a lot fam. Let me catch you up to speed with his album.” He then proceeded to gift me The Weekend’s Beauty Behind The Madness and the rest is history. It has garnered a combined playtime of 1005 from then till date, what an album.

Salvador Dali, Vincent van Gogh, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Prince and many, many more in the history of art have had a certain degree of madness. Well, what society understands as madness, because they are not prepared to understand how it is that so many beautiful works of art are generated. They are capable of marveling and admiring everything created by these great artists, but they cannot understand why those men and women touched by something divine behave differently than established by the ties of society. However, for many artists that is the state of the soul in which creativity, inspiration, beauty, high consciousness and what many know as augmented reality that is so fashionable in film works and that offer us a different perspective of what we do every day and that we are not aware of all that is hidden behind those acts. Why do I mention augmented reality in this? Because I think that in the minds of many artists this already existed from time immemorial, but only until today and with the help of all the amazing technological advances, some directors and creatives have been able to show it in video and sound, which is shocking, that's why I add it among all the altered senses that musicians, painters, poets, dancers, writers, directors, even some scientists and all those who have artistic expressions in their work and everyday life have. Art is the word that encloses all the above, having that gift is what generates that supposed madness of some in the eyes of a society that, while appreciating what they do, does not understand and sometimes turns against them. The insanity that has sometimes been a source of mockery and contempt, of persecution and violence, of incomprehension and intolerance. But one thing I'm sure: the world would be much better if we were all a little crazy like all those who have given us masterpieces that will remain for eternity unless those who claim not to be crazy destroy them with their ignorance. It is a primary need of the artist to make those who see and hear understand that behind all that seems strange or different a magical vision of things and an imagination that sometimes leads them to anticipate the time they are living. But, above all, the artist strives to bring people a picture of the moment that the people of his time are going through to create awareness, to point out what in their eyes is wrong, to help them be happy, to share sadness, anguish, to make life more beautiful, to teach how to express oneself to those who are curious or suspect that they also inhabit that madman, but do not know how to let it out. If we call this madness, welcome be Beauty Behind the Madness by The Weeknd.

Formative memories for me were helping out at photo shoots, sometimes paid, but mostly for the love or to connect with artists starting out in fashion or music. The Weeknd’s music is usually a great mood setter, because what lots of people don’t know is that activities like these need some spirit, theme, vibe, backing soundtrack - the alternative is deathly silence, boredom and lots of awkwardness (in nine out of ten cases, everyone is meeting each other for the first time, until you start making real connections). So many of the models will have no experience, and after the makeup, the touch ups, the waiting, morale can evaporate unless you have some common ground musically. Beauty Behind the Madness, I have always felt, fills the void with something atmospheric and cinematic, something that can provoke new ideas in the moment, yet without calling too much attention to itself and interrupting everyone’s thought process.