After months of crappy image-projecting unofficial music videos, you know that The Weeknd needed to come correct when Abel and crew finally released their first official music video. The epic Haile Selassie-referencing sci-fi future Ethiopian video for ‘The Knowing’ can be taken as a statement of intent for The Weeknd’s ambition rather than mere promo video. At over seven minutes long, the Mikael Columbu directed video is weighed down by its own grandeur and doesn’t really help the artist further the controlled and obfuscated-image they’ve cultivated for the project. There’s no getting to know Abel Tesfaye here, rather a lot of iconography and art, which is cool too. So it doesn’t further The Weeknd story, it just adds another arm to it.
Also, I don’t think the video and the song (the last cut from House Of Balloons) will win them a lot more new fans beyond the blogs and reblogs of people who are familiar with the source material in the first place. Would have loved a video for ‘The Morning’ or ‘The Party & The Afterparty’ but that’s just me and maybe this song was chosen precisely BECAUSE it didn’t have as many unofficial videos made for it as the others. Still one of the most interesting and exciting new artists of 2011.
Definitely watch it in HD.
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