THE WEEKND

Kiss Land (XO/Republic)

7/20

So it turns out that Abel Tesfaye is the worst kind of creep. While The Weeknd’s brooding-yet-fragile-tortured-soul persona was coated in dense, then-original sounding production through most of his Trilogy series, with his fourth full length somethings gone awry. Kiss Land lewdly accounts for Tesfaye’s own hyper-accelerated journey into the sordid theme park of fame, where the rides are fast, devoid of emotion and leave you with a bad taste in your mouth. The production now seems overly sleek and painfully over-compressed. And then there are the lyrics. Eugh, the lyrics. Tesfaye tells you he wants to “domesticate you”, that you can “meet me in the room where the kisses aren’t free/ You gotta pay with your body.” Now it’s not like the mainstream hip hop/RnB sphere is the wisest point of reference for advice on gender relations, but it’s hard not to be especially creeped out by Tesfaye’s murky, manipulative, and unintentionally hilarious ‘sit down on the sofa baby, express yourself’ mentality. And so, within Kiss Land, Abel Tesfaye’s notorious lechery is no longer shrouded by semi-relatable, drug addled self-indulgence and tender bedroom producer mystique. Giving his grim depravity a glossy sheen, on Kiss Land he’s become RnB’s Patrick Bateman.

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Words: Anna Tehabsim