It seems the entire universe it talking about Canadian R&B sensation The Weeknd. The past few weeks it seems I can’t go anywhere without someone asking me, “Hey have you heard about The Weeknd?!” So when DUMMY wrote a piece this morning on the artist’s brand new third mixtape Echoes Of Silence I figured it was time to dive in. I downloaded the album for free and was seriously impressed. My standout track has to be “Montreal”, but the entire album is quite something.
The Weeknd is the moniker of Ethiopian Canadian Abel Tesfaye (born February 16, 1990 in Scarborough, Ontario), and he released the first phase of his trilogy with the nine-song mixtape House of Balloons, on March 21, 2011. The second part was Thursday, released on August 18, 2011, followed by Echoes of Silence released yesterday on December 21, 2011. On June 16, 2011, House of Balloons was named as a long-listed nominee for Canada’s prestigious 2011 Polaris Music Prize. On July 6, it was announced that the album had moved on to the ten shortlisted nominees, but eventually lost to Arcade Fire‘s The Suburbs. Almost immediately after releasing Echoes last night, The Weeknd’s site crashed due to the overwhelming number of downloads. The Weeknd quickly provided a Hulkshare link to keep the album available while the official site was down. You can pick up all of The Weeknd’s music by visiting his website The-Weeknd.com.
My discovery of The Weeknd comes 24 hours after my discovery of my newest R&B obsession: Frank Ocean‘s amaaaaaaazing track “Novacane“. I can’t believe I’m just discovering this song now, because it was released several months ago. The song first appeared on Frank’s own mixtape release entitled Nostalgia, Ultra which debuted on February 18, 2011 via his own personal blog. Def Jam flipped over the album and eventually re-released it on July 26. You can pick up your own copy of his highly addictive track “Novacane” by visiting iTunes. You can also follow Frank Ocean on Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook.
NOTE: “Novacane” is NSFW
