Tesfaye’s journey from anonymous Tumblr-era superhero to legit pop star is as dazzling as it is baffling Uncut Gems, in all its lurid black-lit hostility, was a fascinating portal back to a time when even most of his biggest fans hadn’t yet seen even a picture of his face. Given Tesfaye’s ( and Lopatin’s) sordid history, you spend that whole lovely song braced for the sucker punch, the post-dubstep death drop, the trap door into abject darkness. In early March, the Weeknd served as the last musical guest on Saturday Night Live for quite a while, thoroughly enchanting host Daniel Craig and showcasing two far better tracks: the suspiciously propulsive synth-pop jam “Blinding Lights” and the even more suspicious prom-ready power ballad “Scared to Live,” backed onstage by Uncut Gems composer Daniel Lopatin. But the outlook for After Hours has since improved. Yeah, the “Heartless” video, which needs to calm down, didn’t help. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 despite opening with the boneheaded line “Never need a bitch / I’m what a bitch need” and sticking to the grim-lavish sonic formula so relentlessly that Slate chart guru Chris Molanphy dubbed the Weeknd “the 2010s’ answer to AC/DC.” Even dirty deeds done dirt cheap are subject to diminishing returns. The dour “Heartless” (heh), for example, emerged in December 2019 and almost immediately hit no. This is shelter-in-place music this is living-in-my-Maybach music.Īs with its three predecessors, the challenge facing this record is to keep that lucrative brand from hardening into schtick or self-parody the results thus far, based on early singles, are mixed. It’s not the catchiest genre name he’s ever inspired, but “self-quarantine R&B” still fits, given the miserable I-feel-so-alone-during-this-threesome isolation that powers his very particular brand of joyless, lawless, loveless, hopeless hedonism. The Weeknd’s fourth studio album, After Hours, is out Friday. That scene is startling, too, and doubly so given the fact that he’s standing there in broad daylight, smiling. And just one month after Tesfaye’s triumphant first appearance at Coachella in April 2012, crooning eerily rapturous Balloons leadoff track “High for This,” the crowd chanting every word right back at him.
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Which is to say 14 months after House of Balloons, the first of the Weeknd’s startling trio of free 2011 online mixtapes, changed the sound, or at least the perception, of 2010s R&B.
(“Go fuck the Weeknd, all right?” Sandler’s character will soon snarl at a lady friend, after attempting to beat up the Weeknd.)īased on the actual game footage of the Sixers-Celtics Eastern Conference semifinals, if we’re taking this movie’s chronology seriously-and fuck you if you’re not- Uncut Gems takes place in May 2012. He’s playing a surlier and seedier version of himself, maybe.
It’s just about midway through 2019 Oscar-darling-in-our-hearts Uncut Gems, and there sits the Toronto-born R&B lothario born Abel Tesfaye, mic in hand, petulantly awaiting his fuckin’ black light. Until he gets what he wants, nobody gets what he wants. I’m not performing until there’s fuckin’ black light on this fuckin’ stage.” Black! Light! Black! Light! the audience dutifully chants. “Where the fuck’s the black light?” demands the Weeknd, the woozy synthesizer smearing, the packed nightclub crowd whooping, the bottle-service sparklers blazing, the pained grimace on Adam Sandler’s face darkening.
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