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Musician The Weeknd arrives at the premiere of A24 Films “Amy” at ArcLight Cinemas on June 25, 2015, in Hollywood. Photo by Michael Buckner/Getty Images
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Let’s talk about The Weeknd

He cut his hair, his new song is fire and we ain’t ready

Clinton Yates @clintonyates
Topics:
Starboy The Weeknd Music All Day

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    5:35 PMAbęl Makkonen Tesfaye has a new song out and it’s fire. His new album Starboy comes out Nov. 25, but more importantly, he cut his hair. The look fell somewhere between signature and iconic on the importance scale and for him to abandon it at the peak of his powers is nothing short of a bold move.

    In the past five years, The Weeknd has gone from a mixtape mystery man to an instantly recognizable international superstar. His dreads were so visually specific to him that even if you only saw a silhouette, you’d know it was him. Now, it’s gone and he’s showing himself off to the world. He also apparently wiped his Instagram, which could mean any number of things, but we’re going to just wildly speculate that he’s trying to put something in his life behind him.

    https://twitter.com/lowlifeful/status/778629155499847680

    https://twitter.com/emmah0lic/status/779039364705902593

    The larger question here is: Does he lose some star power overall from this move? Like it or not — because of not only the politics of black hair, but also because it was so different from anyone we typically see in the limelight — his music speaks for itself, and paired with the look, he was a bona fide rock star.

    He hinted at this change recently in VMAN magazine, when he did an entire photo shoot with a hoody on. In the interview, he talked about his motivations on the new album. If we’re guessing, after his rather high-profile relationship with Bella Hadid went south, he needed a reset. If his song Starboy is any indication of where his head is, maybe he just wanted to be able to walk down the street without people bothering him, again. A hairstyle that the world can identify from a mile away doesn’t exactly allow for that.

    We’ll miss the hair, but we’ll also gladly take another fire album.

    Clinton Yates is a tastemaker at Andscape. He likes rap, rock, reggae, R&B and remixes — in that order.