His emotional, plaintive lyrics often express feelings of hurt and deal with subject matter such as sex, drugs, and partying. Hermoine Hoby of The Guardian characterizes the Weeknd's songs as "narcotised-slow jams" and delineates their message as "partying is an existential experience, sex is fraught with alienation, and everything registers as unreal and unsettling.
Music journalists associate the Weeknd with PBR&B, an emerging wave of recording artists whose music expands on the sound and sensibility of R&B. Mistry writes that he "will be obsequiously praised as the future of R&B music – because [he] is a black singer, not because he’s making quantifiable, canonical R&B"
Other Artists Like The Weeknd
1) Massive Attack
Fans of the TV show House will recognize Massive Attack's "Teardrop On Fire" as the show's theme song. Hopefully, fans of the show were inspired to explore Massive Attack's music further, because what they'd find is one of the most innovative and influential catalogs of the '90s. Massive Attack paved the road for the trip hop genre.
The group crafted cinematic soundscapes, dropped in hip-hop drums, and laced it all with touching vocals."Weather Storm" is the sound of a hospital waiting room on a rainy night while waiting for a loved one to get out of surgery. Meanwhile, we're pretty sure "Exchange" is the song they play in the escalator up to heaven, or possibly Las Vegas.
2) JMSN
He's often dubbed "the white Weeknd." But while Weeknd is a relative newcomer, JMSN could be considered an industry veteran, one who's been kicking around since 2005. (Get familiar. JMSN dropped his first album in 2006, Love Arcade. Back then went by the name Snowhite, and toured with a band that also went by the name Love Arcade. After the band broke up, he reemerged as Christian TV, but he never saw the release of an actual album.
Since then, he split with his label, changed his name to JMSN, and dropped Priscilla. He dubbed the music "Hippie R&B" and won over critics with his pensive production. Granted, he did borrow some of his dark aesthetic from The Weeknd, but he's managed to build a whole new kind of buzz. He's working on an album with Ab-Soul called Unit 6, which we hope will help him shed the comparisons.
3) August Alsina
With The Weeknd firmly established as one of the most important voices in R&B today, we're still looking at the rising class of R&B stars. There are a few names that come to mind, but none more potent than August Alsina. Whereas a lot of Weeknd's appeal came from anonymity, the most interesting part about Alsina might be his backstory. He's lived quite a life already, and has dealt with a fair amount of death. To paraphrase Kanye, great art comes from great suffering, but also from great artists. Here's to hoping Alsina can fit the bill and become the next big R&B star. Time will tell.
