The Weeknd: Kiss Land (2LP, 5 year anniversary, limited edition) [REPUBLIC]

Why you'll love it

This limited 5 year anniversary edition spreads Kiss Land across two LPs in a deluxe gatefold sleeve with an outer box. The album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, selling 95,000 copies in its first week.

This edition

• 2LP set
• 5 year anniversary edition
• Limited edition
• Deluxe gatefold jacket
• Outer box
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

Most artists make their name with a debut album. Abel Tesfaye did it the other way round: three mixtapes made him a star out of Toronto, and Kiss Land, his first proper studio album, came after. He told Complex the record stood for life on tour, a world he'd built in his head, and that he wanted it to play like a horror movie, naming John Carpenter, Ridley Scott and Toronto's own David Cronenberg as touchstones.

DannyBoyStyles and DaHeala handled most of the production alongside Tesfaye himself, scaling the mixtape blueprint up into something widescreen and cinematic. The title track came first as a single, "Belong to the World" and "Love in the Sky" followed, and "Pretty" got him onto Letterman and Fallon. "Wanderlust" brings a bright, dance-floor pulse into the shadows, and Drake, an old collaborator, turns up as the one guest on "Live For." A 29-date North American theatre tour carried it through the fall of 2013.

Billboard called it "blissfully hi-fi headphone candy," and AllMusic heard a more personal, more human Weeknd than before. Tesfaye said the title came from a stray phrase he overheard in conversation, and that it sounded so ridiculous he had to use it. We've named playlists on flimsier grounds.

Also at Kops: more The Weeknd on vinyl · browse CDN Hip Hop

Tracklist

Listen

On XO / Republic, a reissue of the 2013 album.