@Efe Ensar Koç

Discover new music from artists we think you'll like. Refreshed every Friday.

Nobody makes feeling bad sound as good as The Weeknd. Even the singer’s sunniest tracks (“Can’t Feel My Face”, “Starboy”) feel anchored by darkness—the sense that pleasure is pain and beauty decays and you can’t have the night without the morning after. The brainchild of Toronto singer Abel Tesfaye, the project took off in 2011 with a string of mixtapes that forged cavernous, falsetto-driven R&B with narratives drenched in drugs, sex and other regrettable decisions—a sound both sensuous and detached, feather-light and dead heavy. His music has become a symbol of hedonism pushed to bleak excess, with songs—“The Hills”, “Often”, “Earned It (Fifty Shades of Grey)”, “After Hours”—whose narrators can’t seem to say no even if they’ll hate themselves for it later. And though the sound has gotten a little brighter over time (“In Your Eyes”, “Take My Breath”), the prevailing mood remains heavy, even unsettling—the ride you want more of even when you’ve had too much.

Drake officially became the voice of a generation with 2011’s sumptuous <i>Take Care</i>, a career-defining magnum opus that earned a prized slot in Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums list. Was he an R&B singer who rapped or a rapper who sang? Was he really that sad, or just exploiting a cultural preference for male vulnerability? Adding to the slipperiness of it all, any given Drake project might incorporate dreamy house and club music into his comfort zone of rap, pop and R&B with equal conviction. Even after cementing his prowess as an MC many times over, Drake still retains the capacity to surprise. His 2015 earworm “Hotline Bling” radiated universal cool without breaking a sweat, while 2024’s “Push Ups” arrived during his fleeting beef with Kendrick Lamar yet applies lasting heat to its minimalistic prowl. Drake is now such a part of the firmament that his slightest move can trigger aftershocks far beyond his immediate reach.