Some Dope Dimes On Some Coke Lines

The Weeknd “Tell Your Friends”

I’ve had trouble connecting with The Weeknd in the past, in part because I don’t feel like I have a lot of room in my life for his whole “debauched misery in a brand-new luxury hotel” vibe, but mostly because I find his voice to be fairly anonymous and a lot of his songs rather flimsy. He’s getting around the latter problem by working with top writers and producers these days, and making a virtue of his lack of character by becoming the kind of R&B singer you can just plug into songs. That’s more or less what he’s doing in “Tell Your Friends,” which was mostly produced by Kanye West. This is a very Kanye sort of track, and sounds like it could’ve been a leftover from the My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy era. Weeknd is definitely being himself, in as much as his lyrics are so on-brand that they seem self-conscious, but he’s mostly just lounging around in the middle of an exceptionally well-made track. To his credit, he inhabits the song very well – it’s sorta like he’s a model, and he’s making some gorgeous designer clothes look really good. You put the same thing on some random person, and it’s just not the same.

Buy it from Amazon.