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The Weeknd · S5 E5
Tell Your Friends
Kanye West produces a Weeknd track. Two of music's biggest provocateurs in the same room
Kanye West calls Abel into a studio session in early 2015 with one instruction: bring something real. The beat Kanye puts on is sparse, cold, and wide open, and Abel fills it with the most autobiographical verse of his career.
The Weeknd, Tell Your Friends (2015). The video opens with Abel burying a body in the desert, and by the end you realize the body is his old self. It is the most literal representation of the BBTM thesis: killing the anonymous mixtape artist to become whatever comes next. Kanye's production makes the whole thing feel like a funeral march.
Tell Your Friends, The Weeknd (2015)
Kanye West produced this beat with a restraint that fans of Yeezus would not have expected: a slow, skeletal piano loop, cavernous reverb, and a bass that drops like a trapdoor. Abel uses the space to deliver one of his most narrative verses, referencing his come-up from Scarborough, the drugs, the women, and the fame in specific, unflinching detail. Listen for how his vocal delivery shifts between whispering and almost shouting, never settling into a comfortable register. The discomfort is engineered: Kanye and Abel wanted the listener off-balance for the entire track.
TAP TO REVEAL: What did Abel confess in the lyrics that shocked even his own team?
Two Provocateurs
Kanye West in 2015 was between Yeezus and The Life of Pablo, deep in his most controversial era. Abel was between anonymous internet ghost and global pop star. Putting them in the same studio was less a musical collaboration and more a collision of two artists who had built their careers on making people uncomfortable. The track reflects both personalities: Kanye's minimal architecture, Abel's maximal confession.
The Confessional
"Tell Your Friends" changed the way people talked about Abel. Before this track, the narrative was split: pop fans knew "Can't Feel My Face," underground fans knew the mixtapes. This song forced both audiences into the same room and made them sit with the full picture. You could not listen to "Tell Your Friends" and still pretend Abel was just a pop singer who made dark music for aesthetic reasons.
Dark Times ft. Ed Sheeran, The Weeknd
The most unexpected collaboration on BBTM. Abel and Ed Sheeran should not work on paper, but "Dark Times" finds common ground in shared vulnerability: two massive artists stripping away their public personas to write a song about regret. Where "Tell Your Friends" is confrontational, "Dark Times" is the quiet aftermath.
Dark Times ft. Ed Sheeran, The Weeknd (2015)
Abel and Ed trade perspectives on relationships that fell apart under the weight of fame. The lyrics carry a sincerity that neither artist is always known for, making it one of the most emotionally direct tracks on the album.
In the "Tell Your Friends" video, what does Abel bury in the desert?
BBTM has a Fifty Shades ballad, two number ones, a Kanye production, and an Ed Sheeran collaboration. But hidden inside the tracklist is a song with an '80s pop melody so bright it could be a Cyndi Lauper single, and underneath it Abel has buried the darkest story he has ever told.
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