![the weekend starboy sexual the weekend starboy sexual](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/the-weeknd/images/1/18/The_Weeknd_Chapter_7.jpg)
(The timing and flow of its sequencing, actually, is quite impressive and almost score-like.) In just under an hour of run-time, The Weeknd paints himself to be an endlessly privileged person who is incredibly dissatisfied with his circumstances. But the album doesn’t sound haphazard, or come across as sonically or lyrically abrasive. His mind’s racing and the thoughts conflict. He’s in love and then he’s not and then he’s sad and then he’s euphoric.
![the weekend starboy sexual the weekend starboy sexual](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/s-ojGixxS1c/maxresdefault.jpg)
He craved newness, as was willing to forfeit all that he knew - people, places, dreams - for the possibility of what lived beyond him.Įscapist and melancholic as always, the After Hours iteration of the artist is a peculiar, emboldened character. But in his latest offering, After Hours, The Weeknd is in urgent need of shedding. In my writing at the time, I argued that Starboy-era Weeknd was slowly coming into his own self and identity, and that Melancholy,-era Weeknd was revealing a thinly concealed transitory phase. My second was on My Dear Melancholy, his half-hearted return to the atmospheric din that made him famous.
![the weekend starboy sexual the weekend starboy sexual](https://www.nickiswift.com/img/gallery/the-real-meaning-behind-the-weeknds-starboy/l-intro-1611960398.jpg)
My first take was during the Ethiopian-influenced, cross-bearing Starboy era. I’ve previously written about The Weeknd on two occasions. Similarly, amid the clamour and sensationalism of Walker’s work lives a sensitive, fragile question, and the title of Smith’s essay: what do we want history to do to us? For someone whose music is so present in its pain and pleasures, much of The Weeknd’s allure and notoriety - at the minimum, amongst fans - is rooted in nostalgia for HoB. Specifically, all roads lead back to House of Balloons, the seminal mixtape that changed music and Abel Tesfaye’s life. In the case of The Weeknd, not unlike Walker, his reputation precedes him the crafting of the persona is just as important as the work created under the name. To state the obvious: since his introduction in 2011, The Weeknd has perfected the sound of a generation of moody vocalists that can sometimes be categorized as R&B singers, but regularly diverge from its stylistic cues. In a statement to Apple Music about his fourth studio album, The Weeknd offered a quote that could be described as Walkerian: “You can find love, fear, friends, enemies, violence, dancing, sex, demons, angels, loneliness, and togetherness all in the After Hours of the night.” Alternatively, Spotify’s artist blurb paints Weeknd as an “alternative R&B enigma-turned-pop star… whose aching accounts of emotionally and physically toxic indulgences have translated to multi-platinum sales and Grammy recognition.”