The Weeknd’s first two mixtapes were full-bodied marvels of highly sexualized understatement. And while Echoes of Silence doesn’t share House of Balloons’ out-of-nowhere punch, or the pervasive doom in “Thursday,” it boldly shouts that, after 27 songs in just 10 months, possibility’s still possible for Toronto’s Abel Tesfaye. If you thought he was getting comfortable in his new-Prince aesthetic, you won’t think so after his impeccable Michael Jackson cover “D.D,” his dovetail into français, or the menacing “XO/The Host” and “Initiation” combo, where I actually felt the room I was in fall out from under me. R&B may have met its match—and it may not even have been fully struck yet.
This article appears in Jan 19-25, 2012.