Album of the Week- After Hours

After dropping two singles at the tail end of last year, The Weeknd had people expecting and hoping for a great new album.  Well on March 20th The Weeknd decided to give just that with his sixth studio project, After Hours, that dropped after a two-year hiatus. I know so many people were expecting something great. I was hoping it would get the spirits up during this time…but that was not at all what happened.

The album was produced very well so I will give his producing team an A+ for how the synth-driven music itself sounds, but lyrically it was just very sad and did not help raise any kind of spirits. He went along and kept the more retro vibe like from Blinding Lights. What it lacked was the party vibe that I think that it could have pushed through the spring and been an album to take onto the summer with, but instead, we are left with something that I feel like makes me want to stay inside even more except for maybe a few which if you think about makes this an even better album.

If you are a die-hard fan of The Weeknd then you may very well think this is a great album because he slows the album 14 track-list and zero guest features down and pumps the breaks on the “party” culture and has more of a classic feel to it. Some people have said that After Hours is among some of his best work. A day before it dropped the album broke the record for the most global pre-adds for an album in Apple Music history, with over 1.02 million users pre-adding the album to their libraries. My biggest take away from the album was how good of a song Scared to Live is if you were looking for that song to put you in your feels it has to be that one. 

Review by: Darnell Crider-Harris