“You don’t know what’s in store,” The Weeknd breathily trills at the top of “High for This,” the opening track of his debut 2011 mixtape House of Balloons. “But you know what you’re here for.” It was a mating call and a warning in equal measure, a preview of the artist whose proclivities would soon break the R&B mold — and the music industry — wide open.
House of Balloons is made up of juxtaposing elements that seem as though they would collide in anyone else’s hands, but in The Weeknd’s, they blend so seamlessly you would think they were always meant to be together. The Toronto artist born Abel Tesfaye was well aware that sex and drugs usually make a good team with rock ’n’ roll. With House of Balloons, The Weeknd essentially said hold the rock ’n’ roll — allow me to fold R&B into the mix. And with that initiation came the forging of a new era.
Prior to The Weeknd’s arrival, R&B was glossy and relatively predictable. In the late aughts, stars like Beyoncé and Alicia Keys were crafting pop&B chart-toppers, while acts like Chris Brown and Trey Songz were making uptempo, club-ready records that appealed to a wide swath of audiences. Instead of following the crowd, Tesfaye subverted the expectations of listeners, which changed the game entirely. By blending indie rock, electronic, and pop elements with R&B, and injecting the experience with a dark, moody, and atmospheric approach, The Weeknd established a sound unlike anything else in the landscape.
The title track, “House of Balloons / Glass Table Girls,” is a primer in early Weeknd 101. A near-seven minute, two-part journey, the song invokes a party atmosphere at its start, but soon devolves into a debaucherous near-rap that centers on the illicit activities that accompany said gatherings. “The Party & The After Party,” another seven-minute two-parter, is similarly-themed, but based around a sped-up sample of Beach House’s 2006 song “Master of None.” At the 3-minute mark, the song transitions into a sparse backdrop, with Tesfaye providing husky vocalizations that fluctuate orgasmically. “They don’t want my love/ They just want my potential,” he purrs mid-verse, a set of lyrics that immediately became fodder for subtweets about situationships. His ability to match the environment, from energetically-heightened and overtly-sexual to coolly-ambient and unguardedly-intimate, instantly made The Weeknd stand out with this release 15 years ago.
Entering the business in a shroud of secrecy, The Weeknd was a mysterious figure by choice. “In the beginning, I was very insecure,” he told Complex in 2013. “I hated how I looked in pictures. I just fucking hated this shit, like, ‘Crop me out of this picture right now.’ I was very camera shy.”
“People like hot girls, so I put my music to hot girls and it just became a trend,” he continued. “The whole ‘enigmatic artist’ thing, I just ran with it.” It was a decision birthed from the times: Tumblr-coded black-and-white images of half-naked, waif-thin white women served as the album art, as well as the inspiration behind the tape’s YouTube thumbnails, which are still posted today.
Working with producers Doc McKinney, Illangelo, and Jeremy Rose, The Weeknd was able to manifest his very own style of R&B: concentrated yet meandering, vulnerable yet stony-hearted — carnal and self-destructive above all else. “The Morning” is fueled by warm guitar and balmy vocals from The Weeknd that lap like gentle waves on a beach for the first minute and a half. By the time the chorus is established — “All that money, the money she be folding/ Girl, put in work, girl, girl, put in work” — a cascade of snapping snares and booming bass kicks in, connecting the soundscape with Tesfaye’s singular voice.
