CREDIT: XO
Starboy is a mixed bag of flashy lifestyles and bland b-sides.

The weekend never seems to be long enough. That brief reprieve from responsibility is often filled with fun and glistening laziness and it seems to just fly by. Unfortunately for Toronto singer The Weeknd, his latest album doesn’t have the same effect that his namesake does.

Starboy, released Nov. 25, comes in at a daunting 18 tracks, and I’m not talking about a deluxe edition, there are seriously 18 grueling songs on this 68-minute album.

The Weeknd has often been hailed as a trailblazer and a god in his own right among R&B circles but Starboy feels stale in comparison to last year’s leaps and bounds in Beauty Behind the Madness.

With so many amazing R&B and soul releases this year, lines like “too many people think they made me, well if they really made me then replace me” from highlight track “Sidewalks” seem to be treading on thin ice.

The overwhelming amount of filler tracks, coupled with mixed critical reception and a list of 21 producers on the album all come to contradict this boisterous bragging.

If it wasn’t enough to smear this self-confidence across our stereos, The Weeknd goes a step further in laughing about accolades like his Teen Choice and Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice nominations in another album highlight “Reminder”.

The Weeknd gets right to the point, singing, “I just won a new award for a kids show talking ‘bout a face numbing off a bag a blow, I’m like goddamn bitch I am not a Teen Choice”. It’s true that The Weeknd’s lyrics are extensively grounded in his lavish lifestyle of sex and drugs perhaps poorly suited for Nickelodeon’s fan base but it’s this kind of overconfidence that has to be snuffed out. This is the kind of overconfidence that left us with an album overwhelmingly dominated by b-sides. This is the kind of overconfidence that led to “Sidewalks” the collaboration with Kendrick Lamar where the Californian rapper outshines the entirety of Starboy in just under a minute.

Despite its shortcomings, Starboy shouldn’t be written off as an absolute failure. The first half of this album has been well received with tracks like “Starboy” ft. Daft Punk, “Party Monster” and “Rockin’” catching most of the praise. Had these tracks been dispersed more evenly throughout the album it might have been a more rewarding experience but by the time “Sidewalks” concludes there’s not much to look forward to aside from a final coda collaboration with Daft Punk on “I Feel It Coming”.

At the end of the day the five or six hits on Starboy make the album worth a listen but most listeners will have tuned out after “Sidewalks”. It’s a shame to see an otherwise enjoyable album sharing track time with so many duds, “All I Know ft. Future” being among the bottom of the barrel but if you have a craving for soul and R&B, Starboy will easily get you through exams. At a 68-minute running time, you could even put the album on repeat and barely notice when it starts over.

Rating: 3 out of 5