Sex, Drugs and R&B: Inside the Weeknd's Dark Twisted Fantasy
October 27, 2015 5:41 AM   Subscribe

When he first started recording as the Weeknd, Tesfaye was an unlikely star. "I was everything an R&B singer wasn't," he says. "I wasn't in shape. I wasn't a pretty boy. I was awkward as fuck. I didn't like the way I looked in pictures — when I saw myself on a digital camera, I was like, 'Eesh.'" Instead of his face, his album art and videos featured black-and-white photos of artful nudes — a topless girl in a bathtub, a woman's ass in a party dress. The aesthetic was American Apparel-style hipster catnip, right down to the Helvetica font.
posted by ellieBOA (11 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
I like the Weeknd's sound, and hope pop stardom is good for Abel. I also hope to hear more lyrics like "Did you have to go and tell your friends about the way I got you screaming my name?" because that is a fantastic backdoor brag in a fake-angry wrapper.

Also thanks to the reporter for asking about "Initiation", but I wish Abel had a more plausible response.
posted by George Malloy at 7:15 AM on October 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


I went nuts over "The Hills" 'cause it felt like Bright Eyes plus hip-hop (old intense Bright Eyes, like "Lover I Don't Have To Love"), and I was surprised (and delighted) to realize that "Can't Feel My Face" was the same artist. I had no idea about his backstory; this Rolling Stone article was a great read. Oh, Taylor Swift.
posted by redsparkler at 11:09 AM on October 27, 2015


Or Nah.

Also the dude looks like a pineapple.

That said, House of Balloons / Glass Table Girls is a good track.
posted by yeahwhatever at 11:55 AM on October 27, 2015


Oh yeah, the tracks he's on with Juicy J tracks are good too.

To be honest, I was really surprised when Apple picked up him to perform at their events. Like seriously, have you guys listened to his lyrics? I pretty much exclusively listen to thematically awful hiphop and some of Abel's lyrics are horrible, even with my incredibly low standards.

I would never consider playing some of the music I like for people I didn't know, but apparently if you slow it down and change the beat it becomes ok?
posted by yeahwhatever at 12:03 PM on October 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


I really really liked HOB when it came out, and was surprised it took him this long to reach a wider audience. Wicked Games is a really great song; creepy, well produced, catchy and--when it dropped--new sounding.

But I basically have to entirely tune out what he is singing about on nearly every damn song. It's too much work to ignore how repulsive most of his lyrics are (and, like yeahwhatever, I listen primarily to rap that most on metafilter would likely find totally indefensible), and I found his lack of awareness in the RS piece pretty disturbing. I would be more comfortable with it if he didn't defend it as 'all consent', because that indicates to me that he really does not know or care a lick about consent. In fact, I found that whole RS article to be pretty horrendous across the board, and I thought Able came across as very very gross.

At some point, the sort of odd charm that was there in hearing a guy with clearly bottomed-out self esteem sing passionately about drugs and sex and partying vanished, and it just became a creepy fucker singing about basically raping women and how tortured he was, and I just can't stomach it much anymore. Plus, if there's anyone whose early work proves he does not need Max fucking Martin to write something infectious, it's Tesfaye. I Can't Feel My Face sounds, to me, like a Weeknd song with a Martin bridge and groove thrust upon it unwillingly.
posted by still bill at 1:17 PM on October 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


In fact, I found that whole RS article to be pretty horrendous across the board, and I thought Able came across as very very gross.

I'm also a huge fan of that first mixtape but he does seem to answer the lingering question - does he... mean it? - with a yes here. I thought he came across just fine in the rest of the article but then you wouldn't really expect otherwise since it's not interrogating his worldview.
posted by atoxyl at 2:13 PM on October 27, 2015


I pretty much exclusively listen to thematically awful hiphop and some of Abel's lyrics are horrible, even with my incredibly low standards.

It's interesting that you both say this because I'd say a lot of rap is way more blatantly contemptuous of women than The Weeknd - but he has this low-key predatory vibe that is more disturbing in a way.
posted by atoxyl at 2:23 PM on October 27, 2015


I disagree about the blatantly contemptuous part. After thinking about this some more:

Most rap that at least I listen to, women are described as a side benefit that comes with power/money/fame/ etc. This is of course not justifying this position, just describing how I see it. The thematic focus of the records throughout is the power, money, and fame.

With Abel's lyrics, the women are the focus. As a result, instead of calling a woman a bitch because it fit the rhyme pattern let's say, it seems like he spends significant effort coming up with new and more horrible ways to describe the things he sings about.

Said another way, if you took the misogyny out of most hiphop that we're talking about here, you'd still be left with the boasting, the money, the cars, the fake crack selling, and the violence. If you take the women out of The Weeknd's tracks, I don't really know what's left.
posted by yeahwhatever at 2:37 PM on October 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Yeah, I mean, lots of the rap I listen to displays some really horrible attitudes toward women. But there's something about Abel's response in this article that just seems somehow more gross, because it seems like he has thought about it, and concluded that what he's saying is fine. Also, for myriad reasons, I don't take about 50% of the rap I listen to seriously, because it's just goofy braggadocio stuff, but the Weeknd shit is so earnest in so many ways. It really is pretty creepy. And to clarify, I gravitate more toward stuff that at least considers and is reflexive about this stuff, but that's a thin sliver of the rap landscape.

I mean, Future (easy analog, because of the intense mix of self loathing and drugs/partying/boasting) says some foul shit about women, but he doesn't talk about rape and assault in the way Tesfaye does here and in his catalog. Even Rick Ross eventually just took the L, apologized and distanced himself from his gross rape lyric; what Tesfaye did--with a series of songs and lyrics and also this interview, not just a one off--is basically say 'yeah but no, it's cool though!'

On preview: also what yeahwhatever said. Weeknd stuff is pretty one dimensional, and that dimension seems to mostly be sexual assault.
posted by still bill at 2:42 PM on October 27, 2015


I was thinking of stuff like EFIL4ZAGGIN that really, really says "I hate women," or pimp rap, or Eminem/Odd Future cartoon violence. But we're on a similar page about why the Weeknd is actually creepier except maybe compared to the worst of that first category.
posted by atoxyl at 3:30 PM on October 27, 2015


Part of what I liked about The Hills was its unabashed, seemingly self-aware creepiness, so I tried to check out more of his work and came across articles like this and even grosser songs and decided "nope."

I still love The Hills as a song: the production on it, those perfectly utilized horror movie screams, the way the overall darkness of the music suggests that there's nothing to aspire to in the lyrics and the appealing contrast of Tesfaye's sweet, classic R&B voice with that darkness. Like, this is not a happy song, and it's not even really a sexy song. "I only love it when you touch me, not feel me," struck me as being one of the most sharply honest, self-aware things I'd ever heard in a song like this. When you combine it with "when I'm fucked up, that's the real me," the song as a whole seems to skip past any misogyny to settle squarely on self-loathing.
posted by yasaman at 5:32 PM on October 27, 2015


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