Welcome To The Other Side

The Weeknd “Life of the Party”

Rap and R&B songs weren’t always about ostentatious wealth and the hedonistic yet rigid mating rituals of “the club,” but after more than a decade of these ideas being the center of popular music, it’s easy to feel like it was ever thus. The Weeknd belongs to this tradition, but with two caveats: He writes about entering this world as an ambivalent outsider, and he presents even the elements he enjoys as sorta grotesque and soul-deadening. Everything we’re used to hearing as glamorous and sexy gets turned into a horror show. His two albums from this year are essentially the interior monologue of a guy who is trying to satisfy his desires and make use of his social capital while desperately trying to cling to his humanity, and the struggle can get pretty harrowing. This seems to be a thread in a lot of R&B and rap right now – you hear it in Kanye West, though he’s pretty far gone down his crazy rabbit hole, and you definitely hear it in Drake, though he’s so self-absorbed that he rarely includes the well-observed details of other characters and social dynamics that make The Weeknd’s music so rich and compelling.

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The-Dream featuring Big Sean “Ghetto”

Most of The-Dream’s 1977 – technically it’s a mixtape, but it’s as deliberately conceived and constructed as a proper album – finds the singer engaging in some rather bitter rants against his ex-wife. Most of the songs are like the musical equivalent of the crazy, gut-spilling emails you might find yourself writing in the middle of the night in a fit of intense emotion but should never ever ever ever actually send. The-Dream is consistently self-aggrandizing, but apparently has no concern for how he may be interpreted – one way or another, he’s clearly brave enough to be willing to come off like a petty, horrible person on record, because oh boy does he ever. Some of the tracks are a bit too toxic for my liking, but I am very fond of “Ghetto,” a track that grinds through a few different modes as the singer grapples with complicated, wildly conflicting emotions as he gets used to the idea of not having sex with his ex anymore. As on previous The-Dream songs, his excessive investment in his sexual prowess is fascinating – the bravado is so transparent, the raw desperation to assert his masculinity and eagerness to please is impossible to miss.

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