the party & the after party
revisiting the online musical landscape that birthed The Weeknd’s House of Balloons a decade ago
after taking a mini break for spring cleaning, i return with this retrospective look at music from 2011 (wild to believe that was a decade ago, when everything is timeless on the Internet). i’m looking specifically into that wave of music that spawned up online and flourished throughout the blogosphere. there was a distinct time when you couldn’t go on a Tumblr with autoplay and not hear “High for This” by The Weeknd or any given track from the rap collective Odd Future.
this week (march 21st) will mark the ten year anniversary of The Weeknd’s debut mixtape House of Balloons...where were you when you first heard this project? i remember downloading the mixtape and playing “The Party and the After Party” so much that the other songs had to grow on me (this is very common when i really love a song; it’s always been the Beach House “Master of None” sample for me!).
even listening to this mixtape in 2021, it has aged decently. House of Balloons was eventually released as the first part of a 3-disc album titled Trilogy, followed by two other mixtapes released in 2011 (Thursday and Echoes of Silence). the seamless play is very much still appreciated and i’m enjoying that there are some sonic elements i missed the first few times around.
i think that when The Weeknd broke through, he was curating a sound that many were thirsting for and therefore caused a bit of a cultural reset. the same could be said for Odd Future during that era. 2011 was also the year of:
“212” by Azealia Banks
“I Follow Rivers” by Lykke Li
“Yonkers” by Tyler, the Creator
nostalgia, ULTRA by Frank Ocean
James Blake’s self-titled debut
Cults’ self-titled album
findings c/o my Last.fm listening history
many of these musicians have now become amongst the most recognized and sought-after talent in their industry. but at the time, we were (are) still trying to make sense of the whole hipster thing that permeated every inch of entertainment ten years ago. that era of mashups, genrebending, and mysterious raunchiness. haziness & woozy aesthetics galore. people were widely tapping into the expanses of the interwebs (it was also the year that introduced us to The Internet).
regarding The Weeknd, many of us seemed to resonate with the fact that his persona was initially shrouded in mystery, with images of morose white women appearing on his cover art in spite of his prominent trap-tinged R&B falsetto. (sn: i remember this mystery was the same thing that intrigued me about Odd Future — i was once awoken in the middle of the night by my TV to witness a then-unknown Tyler, the Creator perform on mtvU’s Woodie Awards while wearing a bright green ski mask and growling into the microphone).
>>>fast forward 10 years
we’ve witnessed both Tyler, the Creator and The Weeknd (Abel Tesfaye) become more recognizable on the world’s largest stages, seamlessly shifting aesthetics and embodying performance art — with the latter even nabbing a spot performing at the Super Bowl this year.
in 2021, The Weeknd has also released a “best of” album titled The Highlights and made history with his track “Blinding Lights” becoming the first song to stay in the top 10 of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for over a year. it’s been very interesting to watch his trajectory and understand what exactly it was about his sound that allowed him to break the mainstream just a couple years after his debut.
when did you first discover The Weeknd? how has this music from 2011 aged in your mind?
I don’t remember when I first heard The Weeknd but oh man, 2011 music fills me with soooo much nostalgia. Most of it holds up really well for me. This piece makes me want to blast my playlists from around that time for the rest of the week lol