The Weeknd has finally followed up his trilogy.  This Canadian R&B artist was born February 16, 1990 in Scarborough, Ontario.  Abel Tesfaye has built a large following for his stage name “The Weeknd” after his “Trilogy” albums hit (House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence).  He has followed it up with “Kiss Land.” 
If you haven’t heard of The Weeknd, you’re missing out. His sounds and beats flow throughout this album, making time seem to fly by. If you dig deep into his lyrics, they will shock you.  In his own words, Tesfaye says that “Kiss Land symbolizes the tour life, but it’s a world that I created in my head. …When I think about Kiss Land, I think about a terrifying place.  It’s a place I’ve never been to before that I’m very unfamiliar with.  Kiss Land is like a horror movie.”  This world is full of outlandish things, and it creates “an environment that’s just honest fear.”  He cultivates this sense of horror throughout his album.  From the references of madness and losing his old self, to the screams, Kiss Land will take over your mind and cause you to feel everything he is feeling.
One of the tracks that caught my attention was “Adaptation.”  It brings an embodiment of the concept of honest fear that he was creating throughout the album.  He has adapted to his life on tour, and he has grown accustomed to girls trying to get him for the fame and nothing else.  He also gave up a girl that may have been the one.  This adaptation has caused him to become what he has always hated, shown in the lyric: “now my madness is the only love I let myself embrace, I could’ve stayed.”
Another song to listen to is “Belong to the World.” At this point in the album he is completely dead inside and he surrounds himself by girls who are the same.  He is beginning to enjoy the time he has with this new girl who is dead like him, until the time he paid for is up. He has failed to resist what he has become and he is falling victim to the life on tour, allowing it to change who he is.  This is making the thing he is most afraid of become a reality.
He ends his album with “Tears in the Rain,” realizing that everything he has feared happening has transpired.  The lyric “so now that she’s gone, embrace all that comes, and die with a smile” tells of how he let the girl of his dreams slip away as he indulges in his lifestyle as The Weeknd; using drugs, womanizing, and creating a fake happiness for himself.  He goes on to say “she has no recollection, of the life she had without me, she let it slip away” bringing the women he loves into his lifestyle, into the reality he fears.  He just sat there and watched her change into what he had become, instead of letting her go and live the life of true happiness that he wishes he still had. 
The album gets you to feel the pains of becoming dead to the world of fear that you created for yourself, falling deeper and deeper into that reality, so far that you begin to draw your loved ones into the nightmare with you.  The world can be what you make of it, and this album takes a new turn on what life can be, showing how easy it can be turned into a horrible thing as Tesfaye tries to further his career.