Cinematic sonic production entrapped in a Michael Jackson starting something step, paired with Abel’s pungent, accurate lyricism and wordsmithship, just makes for a one-of-a-kind vibe, to kick the year off. It’s a good vibration to start off a year on, all things considered, with face masks being a sign of the times. It’s indeed refreshing to feel and be transported to a time merely by listening to a piece of music that yearns, is reborn and reincarnated of said different time, a time where music was specially made to be felt and most certainly a time where the worst flue known to man, could be easily subsided by some antibiotics or even aspirin, and you’re good to go. I mean given our world now, what’s not to miss about the olden 70s, the 80s, and the 90s. Heck, even the early 2000s. All of which obviously had its foundations set in the 50s and 60s.
The Weeknd’s an R&B Hip Hop artist, who weighs heavily on the rhythm and blues melodies with an inescapable hip hop cultural influence. He’s also one such an artist who’s delivered projects on the end that have been subject to various critical acclaim and opinion, albeit, he’s an R&B singer who composes music with dark undertones, in some cases his music has been characterized with themes of recklessness, long nights on substance, and love woes. As artists, the lines between our work and creations, and our actual lives tend to get blurred as often as a toddler in undies wets the bed. And so has been the case with Abel, as when one traces back to his older projects, the content of said records is remarkably congruent with what’s been said to have been going on in his life at the time, i.e moving out of his momma house and crashing friends’ couches, and the state of mind he was in with what was going on around him at the time. This is also the same guy whose vocal magnificence has earned him comparisons to the king of pop Michael Jackson, much to some groups of people’s dismay who feel he doesn’t measure up, and also much to other groups of people’s approval with Xs and Os in their eyes.
Dawn FM is a conceptual album that’s conveyed and jointed by Dawn FM a radio station that borders on mom-station(that-plays-the-golden-oldies) and a grisly old station stationed in some dusty old ghost town because the mere sound of the grisly borderline macabre DJ has frequencies that easily wipe you off the face of the earth, hence ghost town. Nothing feels dawny about this Dawn FM, because it’s like a Thriller music video, one minute you’re at the movies, next thing the dead are ruling, and you’re caught up in a zombie apocalypse and dear Abhero, mfana wako nigga, is also out to get you (as always), except this time, he’s like dead and out to get you, only to find out you’re actually dreaming, but then were you really though? Because that sly smirk mfana nigga gives to the camera at the end of the night whilst you’re trying to mentally compartmentalize suggests otherwise. My point is, Dawn FM is that radio station I imagine that just randomly tunes itself in the frequency of your car as you’re driving through a dead-end cul de sac of a haunted and abandoned ghost town.
You are now listening to 103.5 Dawn FM, you’ve been in the dark for a way too long, It’s time to walk into the light and accept your fate with open arms. Scared? Don’t worry we’ll be there to hold your hand and guide you through this painless transition.
What part of this doesn’t scream chain-saw-cutting-to-“free”-your-soul-“for-the-greater-good-of-humanity” in some godforsaken town where stranger things happening is the order of day.
The only upside of this dark channel which by irony is called Dawn FM, the light in this dawn tunnel is that, the DJ’s unsettling eerily toned voice is punctuated by records from Abel that momentarily clean the slate of your memory clean of all the horrors you’re made to feel from this dawn FM. But that’s just the radio station, the project as a whole, breathes and oozes of intricate, pacey cinema that doesn’t stop giving till it’s done. The album feels like a complete piece of work that transitions from one stitch into another in tandem securing the skeletal frame that is the project.
Tracks like Take My Breath open with a teasing number of guitar riffs over an up-paced backdrop beat that alludes to a progressive walking motion with each decibel oozing and breeding anticipation for about the first 85 seconds of the track, so much so that when a voice finally blares through the speakers we’re more than ready for it. The sonic production of the song blended with Weeknd’s malleable vocal range and style makes for a chart-topping movie soundtrack to a movie with the aesthetic of Undercover Brother and the garnish of a weird fusion of Michael’s Off the Wall and Thriller albums.
A tale by Quincy showcases an interlude from The Quincy Jones, and just as intimate as it sounds in introductory titling, is just as much at it is in actuality as not only the interlude sheds light on part of Quincy’s origin story with much candor and personal in the detail but also features idiosyncratic epithets of Quincy’s that make for a wholesome experience as once again as listeners and as the audience, we tether a connection to the source through frequencies.
“…it’s like raising kids, if you weren’t raised you don’t know how to raise, you know…”
Out of time, is a love record with the furnishings of a golden ballad track, a smooth, slick and sleek, sultry production varnished with Abel’s hearty lyrics and effortless flow that echoes sentiments of a pining lover lamenting on good times of a worn-out love affair. A lover who voices sentiments of longing and wanting, but is, unfortunately, “out of time”. Translated? He fucked up, and lost out on time he was supposed to be with you by being a jerk, but hey, at least he’s sorry and has coated the cupcake with a ton of sugar, enough to give you Diabetes. Here’s to a record that’s going to allow him back into her life, straight from Dawn FM. And that is how he got the girl.
If he mess up just a little, baby you know my line
If you don’t trust him a little, then come right back girl
Give me one chance, just a little
Baby I’ll treat you right
And I’ll love you like I should’a loved you all the time.
Despair not, my dear die-hard Weekend fan club members. For just as much as this project is romantic in its sentimental ideations of times of the past, it is so as well that tracks like Here we go again, serve as nostalgic joints of the record that are reminiscent of a version of Abel we know and love, the version of him that’s blatantly and painfully candid with his truth and version of events fused with a sound and creative direction he’s adorned and we’ve loved before. More so, the record endorsed with a heavy-hearted, laying-it-all-out verse from Tyler the Creator, just makes for an emotionally scantily clad record. Best friends is another track from the album, that shares the same conceptual sentiments of mine as Here we go again, as we’re getting more of the old Weeknd, but with a more experimental baseline in regard to the sonic production of the record. Even more, it’s another one of his smooth but sentimental tracks off the project as essentially he’s airing out his thoughts on a friendship gone sexual situation. Quite a modern problem to be dealing with, one that’s as messy as it is elusive, just concealed messiness threaded into the grey area of the ever so “black and white” arrangement.
You don’t wanna have sex as friends no more…
I don’t want to be responsible for your heart ‘cause I get clumsy and tear it apart
I love you so, but we can’t get too close, you’re my bestfriend oh, you’re my bestfriend
Ultimately, with Dawn FM, the Weeknd has sought to create a mosaic of a cinematic faceted project that captures your reflection exceptionally well given you shift it correctly towards the light. Translated? Whether you’re a half-assed-torn-lover who played hot potato with your lover’s heart, or you’re trying to avoid a friendship with benefits situation but you’ve already spilled the milk, whether you’re pining for a now married lover, you’ve had your breath knocked away, or you’re just out of time, and want to wallow away in the depths of your misery to the dawn frequencies of the FM garnished with the sad comedian Jim Carey’s creepily mellow toned unrecognizable voice-over exposing the horrors of the depressive fears and phantom regrets we endow, but deeply bury because denial is an easier feat compared to confrontation, because the negation of truth requires less effort than taking it head-on. Because ignorance is bliss. And so is Dawn FM.
You’re tuned to Dawn Fm, the middle of nowhere on your dial. So sit back and unpack. You may be here a while. Now that all future plans have been postponed, and it’s time to look back on the things you thought you owned. Do you remember them well? Were you high or just stoned? How many grudges did you take to your grave, when you weren’t liked or followed how did you behave? Was is often a dissonant chord you were strumming? Were you ever in tune, with the song life was humming?…. When you’re all out of time there’s nothing but space…God knows life is chaos, but he made one thing true. You gotta unwind your mind for your soul to align and dance till you find that divine blue. In other words… You gotta be heaven to be heaven.
