  The Weeknd: A Pop Star for the Demon Hours Abel Tesfaye, aka the Weeknd, is doing something few people are letting themselves do right now. Something we've been avoiding for the past four or so months. It's thrilling, but a little dangerous even, considering how quickly the slippery slope could give way to an existential spiral. He's sitting alone in the Westwood condo where he's been holed up since March, imagining what he'd be doing right now, on a typical summer night on tour, in an alternate timeline. One that doesn't include a pandemic and varying degrees of lockdown and social isolation. He really shouldn't, but he's letting himself be seduced by the hypothetical.
It's 7:00 p.m. in L. A., where he is, but 10:00 p.m. on the East Coast, where, if it were normal times, he'd be making a stop on the tour for After Hours, his new album—which happened to drop on March 20, the same week the gates of hell fully swung open here on earth. If that hadn't happened, he'd be backstage, getting ready to perform before a twenty-thousand-person crowd at Boston's TD Garden. He'd have warmed up the band, and maybe now he'd be taking a preshow shot, or just swapping jokes with his crew right up until the moment the lights dimmed and he could hear the crowd, feel that little surge of energy he always gets right before he launches into the first song. He can't really describe it, but he's feeling it right now, like the tingle of a phantom limb. "I feel like my body was programmed and clocked to be onstage," he says with the wistfulness of someone describing mislaid plans with an ex. The show—the whole tour—was going to be bigger, grander, more ambitious than what he's done before. He and his team had imagined a theatrical experience, like a three-act play or a rock opera telling the story of the character from the "Blinding Lights" video, a bloodied, beat-up man in a sharp red jacket, desperately trying to fuck, drink, drug (maybe murder?) his way out of heartbreak and into emotional maturity. It would be a new iteration of the Weeknd, one that would take him into the second decade of his career. If the concept for Starboy, his last major tour, was all about interaction with the audience—as he puts it, "getting them to play along and sing along and jumping with them, you know, mosh pitting"—then this tour would be about distanced storytelling. Not intimacy with the crowd or letting the fans get close to him but letting them witness an experience he's created. Less symbiotic, more parasitic. "The audience wouldn't really exist to me," he says. "I'd be in my own world."
At least some part of Tesfaye's plan came to fruition. He's in his own world, just in an inherently disappointing expectations-versus-reality version of it. With nowhere to go tonight, he's hanging out on Zoom with me. He signals his entry with a tentative "hello" that floats up from behind all of the open tabs I have blocking the window (an aspirational shopping cart from the Need Supply sale, several articles about safe sex in the pandemic, Twitter, Billboard charts, Wikipedia pages, etc.).
A few clicks and there he is, just a black-T-shirted torso at a desk, his Afro still shaped up like he hasn't missed a barber appointment, a diamond stud glinting in each ear. (He's long since cut off the hair writers used to spend paragraphs breathlessly describing.) He's in early-evening L. A., and I'm in New York, a fact he apologizes for by making sure to close the blinds so I don't get jealous of the sunlight still streaming through his windows.
"I've been trying to figure this out for the last ten minutes," he says by way of greeting.
Hasn't he been living on Zoom like everyone else?
"Yes," he responds sheepishly, "but I usually have somebody just, like, set it up for me and I just come in. Today, I'm solo dolo."
All incoming information about Tesfaye, from his publicist, from every profile of him ever written, indicates that he is incredibly shy. (This is always revealed as though it's something that's never before been said about a famous person.) He emerged on the music scene as a shadowy figure, so good at obfuscation that people didn't know if the Weeknd was a solo artist, a group, or a computer projection. The debate over whether he really is just this shy or is committed to a bit and is actually some goofy, loudmouthed extrovert has been fodder for magazine profiles since he became famous—like really, really famous—sometime in 2015. Five years later, he's won Grammys and American Music Awards, he's headlined Coachella, he tours constantly. He goes to fashion-week parties and has had two high-profile, blog-analyzed romances, with a supermodel and a mega pop star. He's worth tens of millions of dollars. The Weeknd has taken on a life of its own; it's a character separate from the man who inhabits it. But the expectation is still a shy, taciturn Tesfaye. As his persona as a performer evolves, there's a growing disconnect between who he is onstage and in his music and what he lets fans see of his personal life. It's hard to tell if he's trapped himself in a creative prison or if he's created a handy line of defense for himself.
In an attempt to meet him where he's at, we've agreed to start off discussing the five songs that he thinks define him, like we're historians studying the past to provide insight into the clusterfuck of modern times.   The Stealthy Sneakers Hiding a Whole Lot of High-Tech Comfort Under the Hood About 10,000 years ago, in November of 2019, Jonathan Evans wrote about a pair of sneakers from the Swiss running experts at On. The choice of terms here is crucial. Because, as he learned a little more recently than he'd like to admit, these were not "running shoes," the preferred nomenclature for the footwear you lace up or strap on to pound the pavement with purpose. These were "sneakers," which you put on to just...do stuff. Evans was then, and remains to this day, excited the folks at On decided sneakers were part of their repertoire.
That's because he is now, as he was then, more of a "sneaker person," than a "running shoe person." Did quarantine present an unprecedented opportunity to change that, and become the kind of guy who casually logs his daily 5K before going about the rest of his business? Sure did! And did Evans, given this opportunity, elect to do anything of value with it? Sure didn't! Lucky for him, a couple months into our current state of affairs, On decided to launch the CloudNova, a sneaker that's made for casual daily wear but packs a bunch of On's running-inspired tech into to the package. Also, it looks cool as hell. And lucky for all of us, after initially selling out, you can currently get your hands on a pair again. We recommend you do.
 Trump Is Lashing Out at Bob Woodward Ahead of the Release of "Rage" Early on Saturday afternoon, while en route to Lake Charles, Louisiana, to survey damage caused by Hurricane Laura, President Trump took to Twitter to hate-tweet about the authors of recently published books related to his presidency. In a string of incoherent tweets, Trump stated that "the only way a person is able to write a book on me is if they agree that it will contain as much bad 'stuff' as possible, much of which is lies." He then cited "dumb warmongers like John Bolton" — Bolton previously served as a national security adviser to Trump— "social pretenders" like the legendary investigative journalist Bob Woodward, and his niece "who was rightfully shunned, scorned and mocked her entire life, and never even liked by her own very kind & caring grandfather," as examples of authors who were willing to include "bad stuff" and "lies." Here's what else he had to say about the legendary journalist.  Chadwick Boseman Told America's Greatest Stories: The Esquire Cover Story, Summer 2018 The world was shocked to learn of Chadwick Boseman's death on Friday night. After a four-year battle with colon cancer, the Black Panther star and real-life superhero died at the age of 43. In 2018, for the Summer issue of Esquire, Elvis Mitchell profiled the actor, and in the story, Boseman, speaks out on the watershed moment Black Panther presented for Hollywood and for himself. Plus, Chris Rock, Oprah Winfrey, Lena Waithe, and more reflected on what the stunning success of the first blockbuster black-superhero movie meant for America and the rest of the world. The story and Boseman's words are a reminder of what the actor stood for, and how he laid the groundwork for the future of Hollywood.
 David Arquette Doesn't Believe in Fear. That's Part of His Problem. David Arquette does not laugh so much as he percolates. He bubbles with the self-conscious giggle of the teenage stoner who's just had a good idea. It's charming and boyish, even on a guy pushing 50. The giggle is a relief to see and hear after having spent 90 minutes watching him get the absolute shit kicked out of him in his new documentary. This weekend sees the release of You Cannot Kill David Arquette, a documentary about Arquette's return to the world of professional wrestling nearly 20 years after having won the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. It's brutal, it's often hard to watch, it's occasionally very bloody, and then he steps into the ring. Dave Holmes spoke to the actor about putting his body and life at risk for art, getting stabbed in the neck, the documentary, and the upcoming Scream 5.  The 22 Best Bomber Jackets to Buy Now and Wear With Everything This Fall Damn, man. When it comes to the bomber jacket where do we even begin? Sure, we could discuss the style's origins as a classic military silhouette issued to members of the U.S. Air Force in the '50s, or the way it was embraced by subcultures on the fringes of society a few decades later, or, hell, its associations with icons of the big screen in the broader popular psyche today. But you probably know all that by now. At the end of the day, the only thing you really need to know about the bomber jacket is that it just looks cool. Always has, always will. It's that simple, honestly. When the bomber jacket came roaring back into style in the mid 2010s (helped along, to no one's surprise, by a certain influential hip-hop personality) all the real heads that'd been fucking with it for years rolled their eyes and went back to the old-school Corvettes they were tinkering with in the back of their garages or something. It sure as hell doesn't take a certified style visionary to appreciate the jacket's timeless appeal, but Kanye's cosign didn't hurt. Ye's preferred jacket, from the legendary Alpha Industries—the brand behind the nylon MA-1 silhouette damn near synonymous with the style today—is still widely available, but the bomber's been a big deal long enough that your favorite designer's favorite designer almost certainly offers a take on the silhouette, too. Here are 22 to consider. And by consider we mean to buy immediately. Fall isn't that far away, and because stepping outside in a full fit is rare these days, you best come correct when doing so.
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Sunday, August 30, 2020
Our September Cover: The Weeknd on the Songs That Define Him
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