The Weeknd has one of the hottest songs of the summer with “Can’t Feel My Face,” but he’s letting you know in his own twisted way that he’s still Jenny from the Block (basically).
The soulful Kanye West-produced “Tell Your Friends,” whose music video the singer premiered today, reminds listeners that 25-year-old Abel Tesfaye is still the same guy who made bleak mixtapes about getting high and getting laid in 2011: “I’m still that n—a with the hair/ singing ’bout popping pills, f—ing b-itches,” he sings.
And he’s still making videos about his own destruction, too: just like the car crash in “The Hills” and the incinerating performance Tesfaye gives in “Can’t Feel My Face,” “Tell Your Friends” finds the Weeknd in a not-so-great place: getting buried alive. That’s heavy stuff coming from the guy with one of the most anticipated albums of the year, Beauty Behind the Madness, which drops this Friday.
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Write to Nolan Feeney at nolan.feeney@time.com