![]() ![]() Though “Professional” lived up to this promise, the rest of Kiss Land was a testament to its difficulties. The promise wasn’t just that the Weeknd was signing on the dotted line, but also that he was going to, if he could, make wonderful songs about doing so. The first track on Kiss Land, his 2013 major-label debut, was accordingly titled “Professional.” The lyrics of “Professional” trace out an equation between the career trajectories of a high-end female sex worker and Tesfaye’s own: In the artist’s rendering, each one is a rise, fueled by eroticism, from the anonymity of the underground to wealth and fame. But if he was going to sign away his fate to a major label, he was going to do it in full knowledge of what that entailed. Having released three rapturously received album-quality mixtapes as a freelance artist in 2011, Abel Tesfaye has always known that there was an alternative to dealing with the music industry. The Weeknd has been going about his business in a sleek and punctual manner, and his professionalism has always been marked by an acute self-consciousness. Tryptophan, it turned out, worked just as well. ![]() The Weeknd likes to spike his music with mentions of various mood-altering substances: The implication is that the music, bedizened by drugs, is itself a drug, whether Adderall, Xanax, promethazine, or cocaine. Even the Thanksgiving-night release proved to be uncannily timely: To those too sullen about politics to talk at dinner, the music of Starboy would sound like that much more of a relief. Announced in late August with a late-November release date, the album was delivered right on time, and the three intervening months were punctuated by a steady series of sight-and-sound appetizers: new haircut, album art, lead single, music video for lead single, second lead single, SNL performance, bloody bank-heist music video for second lead single, tour announcement, MTV EMA performance, revelation of the full track list, two more lead singles, AMA performance, 12-minute video featuring a medley of songs from the album, Tonight Show performance. The speed, efficiency, and care that characterized the rollout for the Weeknd’s Starboy were especially welcome coming at the tail end of a year crammed with awkward, mistimed, and otherwise botched album launches from many other leading lights of pop music. ![]()
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