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Echoes Of Silence

December 22, 2011 by · Comments Off on Echoes Of Silence 

Echoes Of Silence, It takes a lot of balls to open up an album (or in this case, mixtape) with a Michael Jackson cover, but Toronto’s R&B revolutionary the Weeknd (aka Abel Tesfaye) did just that, reworking of Dirty Diana (re-titled D.D.).

And the gamble pays off. It sounds boldly confident, and fits more smoothly into his rapidly growing catalogue than MJ’s original did on Bad.

Tesfaye has a right to make brash statements like this though – how many other artists in the history of pop music have succeeded in rewriting all the rules of the music industry game in the first year of their career?

If you’re just catching up with the story now, Echoes of Silence is the third mixtape of a trilogy that began with March’s House Of Balloons (currently seen on year-end top ten lists all over the world, including these two), continued with August’s more abstract and introspective Thursday, and concluded late last night with the upload of the impressively assertive Echoes of Silence.

We’re talking about a 21 year old singer who’s released three amazingly strong and uniquely futuristic R&B albums in the first year of his career, without the support of a label, barely any live gigs, and a complete refusal to do any press.

He’s been written about everywhere: as much in hip-hop magazines as indie blogs or established newspapers. He’s been called on to do remixes for Lady Gaga and Florence + the Machine, and sung many of the most memorable hooks on Drake’s chart-topping Take Care album.

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