I’m sure we’ve all heard enough of The Weeknd‘s mammoth no. 1 single The Hills to last at least seven lifetimes. The young R&B/pop superstar has smashed the charts with his seductive hit, off recent album Beauty Behind The Madness.
We’d forgive you for proclaiming that you might never want to hear the track again. But I’ve got two good reasons for you to give it a couple more spins.
Reason 1: A newly remixed version is out featuring Eminem.
Reason 2: A newly remixed version is out featuring Nicki Minaj.
Both new versions are divinely wicked in their own ways.
Eminem’s signature aggression – delivered in a far more calculated and understated form level to what it used to be, but aggression nonetheless – complements the sexy rhythm and chorus in a way that raises the track from a late-night club banger to a hard-hitting, brilliant hip-hop offering. I’m so accustomed to Eminem talking about sex in a dark, comedic or threatening tone, it’s actually really amazing to hear him talking about in more of a Weeknd-esque manner. Angry, sure, but explicit in a dirty manner, as opposed to violent.
Minaj is a brilliant and thoroughly underused rapper. I was first introduced to her via her spitfire verse on Kanye’s Monster, and ever since, I’ve been desperately hanging on to the occasional rap verses she releases. Her take on the single probably fits the sound even better than Eminem, to be honest. It’s light and dirty – hopefully the first of many collaborations between the pair, who have both blurred the boundaries between R&B and pop superstardom.
Minaj also joined the Weekend on stage to perform the track on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Watch here.
For all his attempts at transforming into a pop star, these hip hop remixes are absolutely brilliant.
Stream it here via Spotify!
It’s hard to take a step without falling over The Weeknd right now. The breakout R&B-pop superstar of the year has led global chart domination with Beauty Behind The Madness, not to mention the flurry of singles and featured collaborations with is undoubtedly well deserved, the album was produced over almost two years- and has shown serious progression from Canada’s resident sad-boy.
Last week saw Tesfaye and co bring his seductive beats to London, where he headlined Apple Music Festival. He also took some time to visit the BBC Radio 1 studios to take part in their live performance series, Live Lounge. He performed a gorgeous, stripped down version of The Hills, his second single off the album.
It’s really cool when an artist shares such a varied version of the song to the one that audiences know and love. This rendition of the track is entirely different to the one on the album. It is raw, it’s pared back to nothing but the bare essentials: tender guitar strums, Tesfaye’s expressive, distinguished vocals. Now carrying a kind of haunting poignancy that wasn’t portrayed on the studio version, The Hills has been redesigned into something breathtaking.
Considering the feedback, you never know: he might release this is an alternate single.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk-nkj0UozM&w=560&h=315]
Drake has been more than fulfilling his contractual obligations to Apple’s Beats 1 Radio with his OVO Sound show, managing to drop new exclusives virtually every week. Drake has already provided us with the new Majid Jordan track My Love, not to mention two Meek Mill diss tracks (the subtle Charged Up and the not-so-subtle Back To Back). In the 5th instalment of OVO Sound, Drake freestyles over the beat of The Weeknd’s Tell Your Friends, the third track from Abel’s sophomore album Beauty Behind the Madness. It’s a natural marriage, with the sounds of the two Canadians blending seamlessly. It’s classic Drake – an ode to growing from relationships, “e-e-evolving” he croons. But the song might also be reference to new beau Serena Wlliams, as it does seem to address a very specific woman. “The balls in your court” and “your too famous to buy you purses” might be directly flagging the world number one tennis star. Tell Your Friends features smooth production from Kanye West and is a natural fit for Drake’s vocals. As the rider tells us, the track was recorded live from the Waldorf in Berlin. Apple are absolutely putting Drizzy to work.
Have a listen here:
Fashion and music have always had a special relationship – just ask Kanye. They often have crossovers, as they come together and give creativity a new meaning. Alexander Wang has seen the effect of celebrity from other campaigns, not to mention being name-dropped in a myriad hip hop tracks, so he’s gone and enlisted a whole bunch of them for his ‘Do Something’ campaign.
If you looked at the list of artists who have taken part in the campaign, you’d think you were looking at a festival line-up. And what a line-up it would be!
The campaign features Kanye West, Grimes, A$AP Rocky, Haim, Lykke Li, Angel Haze, the Weeknd, Pusha T, Alice Glass, Jhene Aiko, AlunaGeorge’s Aluna Francis, the Gossip’s Beth Ditto, the Kills’ Alison Mosshart and more, clad in black hoodies and and graphic tees posing in black and white photos.
Do Something is an organisation that focuses on young people and social change. They have a variety of campaigns that tackle different issues, such as back-to-school stress, cyberbullying and taking care of the environment. Wang’s campaign celebrated their 10th anniversary, while spreading awareness in light of the good things they do.
Check out some of the beautiful photos, shot by Steven Klein.
Visit the Alexander Wang Facebook page for a look at the rest.
Canadian alternative R&B singer The Weeknd (Abel Tesfaye) has enjoyed great success of late. His last three singles have all hit Top 5 on the Billboard Charts (with can’t Feel My Face reaching Number One) and he’s got a hotly anticipated sophomore album, Beauty Behind the Madness, set to drop this week. Ahead of that release, he’s come out with a video for not one, but two, of the tracks off the album.
The clip opens with the Kanye West co-produced Tell Your Friends and it has an air of No Country For Old Men desert surrealism about it. It shows Tesfaye burring himself alive in a sparse, dark landscape. Both the plastic wrapped burial victim and the murderer versions of Tesfaye sing and it’s particularly disturbing. Shortly after, he shoots dead the creepy dude from the Cant Feel My Face video. You know, the one who looks strangely like Bill Nighy if he had signed on to do another terrible vampire movie in which he was even more undead and sporting a nose ring.
Tesfaye promptly dances back to his car, where another one of his tracks Real Life is already playing on the radio for his drive off down the highway. The comparisons with David Lynch’s Lost Highway and the Kanye’s own Spike Jonez-co-directed video for Flashing Lights are already being drawn across music media outlets. The entire 4 minute clip was directed by Grant Singer and is a captivatingly creepy way to kick off The Weeknd’s Beauty Behind The Madness release week.
Aside from Kanye, the album features a number of other high profile collaborations, including Lana Del Rey and Max Martin – a new direction for the artist which has certainly resulted in a more mainstream (which is not to say lesser by any means) approach. Tesfaye spoke to Rolling Stone of the collaboration with Martin, saying that “At first I was kind of iffy about it… Five years ago? Definitely not. I was the young starving artist that wanted to do it all by myself.”
As a reminder that it is only seven days until the drop of his album Beauty Behind The Madness, Abel Tesfaye aka The Weeknd has released an 18 minute preview via Soundcloud.
7 MORE DAYS. LISTEN : https://t.co/q6gVWbKLas
— The Weeknd (@theweeknd) August 21, 2015
If you have listened to the radio even once recently you, have probably been blasted by the disco-centric club banger Can’t Feel My Face. The leak entitled Beauty Behind The Madness “The Leak” (likely a response to the album leaking illegally elsewhere) promises more of the same, sweet soul sedation with clips of songs fading in and out in a mash of R&B grooves. There is a taste of every track on the album, and it’s enough to assume that this is going to be the sultry bedroom soundtrack of the summer, considering the NSFW lyrics and auto-tuned pillow talk that would even leave Miguel a little hot under the collar.
Other previously released tracks on the album include Often and The Hills, but there is still plenty we haven’t heard with duets featuring Lana Del Rey and Ed Sheeran. Not to mention the Kanye West co-lab Tell All Your Friends.
Check out the full eighteen minutes below and mark your calendar for the official release on August 28.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/220297037″]
Whether or not you love the tidal wave of dreadlocks that sit atop the head of The Weeknd, you have got to hand it to him, he sure knows how to dominate the charts. Coming straight from the source of the worlds charty goodness, Billboard, The Weeknd is now the first artist in the Hot R&B Songs list history to command all three of the top spots. Can’t Feel My Face sits atop the charts, followed closely by The Hills, while the only song from the Toronto crooner that your mum knows, Earned It (Thanks Fifty Shades) is sitting pretty at #3.
The closest to achieving such a feat was Robin Thicke, with Blurred Lines and Give it 2 U occupying spots #1 and #2 back in 2013, so we can also applaud The Weeknd for knocking everyone’s favourite perverted singer off his perch just that little bit more. Part of the reason for this success comes from a massive increase in streaming for The Hills, which reached a new high of 11.8 million domestic streams within a week, elevating the track back into the top three.
This is only another feather in the cap of The Weeknd, who is already riding high following his mainstream success thanks to Fifty Shades of Grey, and his association with fellow Toronto native and self proclaimed ‘6 God’, Drake. Whilst the Hot R&B chart has only been in existence for three years, it does little to detract from the success that he is currently having as an artist, with fellow R&B heavyweights Miguel and Frank Ocean failing to achieve such a milestone. To top it all off, The Weeknd has just announced the title and album artwork for his upcoming project, which has already leapt into the first place on iTunes in terms of preorders.
Much like his hair, this wave of success continues to rise (forgive the terrible puns I just really like his hair.)
Beauty Behind the Madness is set for an August 18 release. You can preorder it here.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqt8Z1k0oWQ]
One of 2015’s burgeoning artists, The Weeknd, finally has a name, the artwork and release date available for his forthcoming album.
Titled Beauty Behind the Madness, the album is slated for an August 28 release on iTunes. However, the release date has been disputed by the Weeknd himself, tweeting a while back, “information about my album date is false. i apologize to the fans for the inconvenience. XO” This is despite the release date clearly being stated as August 28 on the iTunes page for the album.
With three songs currently in the top 25 of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, and lead single Can’t Feel My Face already in the Top 10, The Weeknd, real name Abel Tesfaye, has successfully translated his usually darker style into a more radio friendly sound.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqt8Z1k0oWQ&w=560&h=315]
The song is produced by Max Martin, the Swedish songwriter responsible for such small hits as Hit Me Baby One More Time and Shake It Off, to name just a few. Allegedly written for Justin Timberlake, the song is a bonafide hit and has even been toted as the highly coveted “song of the summer”.
A follow-up to 2013’s Kiss Land, third album Beauty Behind the Madness makes a for a highly anticipated release, continuing his enormous success over the past few months, including a stand-out performance at Coachella and selling 2 million copies of the song Earned It, off the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waU75jdUnYw&w=560&h=315]
He also has a pretty full bill for the upcoming festival season, playing at Lollapalooza, the Hard Summer Music Festival, the Summer Set Music & Camping Festival and Seattle’s Bumbershoot Festival.
The Weeknd‘s new track has already been circulating the net for a few weeks. Finally, it’s now been officially debuted, with a premiere on iHeartRadio.
Can’t Feel My Face is the latest track from The Weeknd, one of his only new releases since his sensual Fifty Shades of Grey offering Earned It. Although it marks a slight departure in sound, it’s no less palatable.The record starts as a standard Weeknd track, replete with head over heels melodrama and glitzy falsetto as he laments “the death of me” at the hands of some fantasy lover. But the song quickly soars (at the 40-second mark) into an almost disco beat reminiscent of equal parts Michael Jackson and Bruno Mars a la Uptown Funk.
“I can’t feel my face when I’m with you,” he half-sings, half-groans, with a voice simply oozing with lust in the way that he does best. Repeated refrain “I love it” is executed with the Weeknd’s characteristic ad libs and lyrical precision over a bass-driven groove, hinting at a possibly more pop-driven direction for his new music and probably the influence of powerhouse producer Max Martin – the pop mastermind responsible for some of the most infectiously catchy Billboard No. 1’s, including hits from Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Taylor Swift, Jessie J, Katy Perry, Ellie Goulding and, well, you get the picture. To be precise, he’s had 54 songs in the Billboard top ten, which is more than both Madonna and Elvis. But I digress.
Having closed out Apple’s WWDC 2015, at which the shiny new streaming service Apple Music was unveiled (check out our coverage of that here,) The Weeknd wooed crowds with a stellar rendition of the fresh new single. It’s clear that The Weeknd has yet another hit on his hands, and we’re positive you’ll be funking to it all day long… It’s been a while since we had a full release from the sultry Canadian, so here’s hoping that a full release is in the works.
The Weeknd is continuing his assault on the mainstream and is starting to establish himself as a mainstay of the R&B world.
Having his steamy, sexy track, Earned It stuck in the head of every Fifty Shades of Grey fanatic has earned The Weeknd, born Abel Tesfaye, widespread acclaim and attention in 2015. The new video for The Hills is the latest in a string of new tracks from the Toronto native, and is keeping us fiending for even more. This new tune was first debuted as The Weeknd made appearances at festivals from SXSW to Coachella, and is riding a train of hype that is incredible for someone who has not released an album since the 2013 Kiss Land. The track itself had not been given an official release however until todays coupling with the music video. The Hills is a gloomy, spaced out track that is probably not the bedroom number that many are accustomed to, but there are all the signs of a sensual Weeknd tune, “I only love it when you touch me, not feel me/ when I’m fucked up, that’s the real me”.
The video itself is action packed, ablaze with fire, and shows that even a violent car crash will not stop The Weeknd from reaching an orgy with two beauties at the end of the video. Man, the things we do for love these days…
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzTuBuRdAyA]