As the third installment of the After Hours series, The Weeknd has released his long-awaited project, “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” finishing the trilogy.

With this project, The Weeknd plans to “kill The Weeknd” as he’s using this record as a means to start a new chapter in his career. With this being the case, he does plan on creating and releasing music in the future, but under a different stage name than before. What this stage name is, we as the listeners have no idea. As we get through the record, you see that the album revolves around this “final farewell” to his career.

Starting things off, my absolute favorite song is easily “Reflections Laughing,” all thanks to The Weeknd and his vocals. From the addicting chorus, to the ever-so-short verse of his, everything he brings into the track is pure perfection. Even more so, the post-chorus is beyond immaculate. It’s literally just a few simple “Oh’s,” but it’s seriously the best vocals I’ve heard from an artist in quite some time. As we’ll get into later, Travis Scott also adds on to the song in some positive ways as well. 

Next, the very next track on the tracklist, “Enjoy the Show” is also one of my favorites off of the project. We get the usual vocals you come to a Weeknd album for, but at a slower pace than usual I’d say. Like I said in my previous reviews, I’m beginning to appreciate slower, melodic songs like this. With that, it’s no surprise that I’m a fan of the track. 

Finally, I thoroughly enjoyed “Timeless,” one of the lead singles for the record, alongside “Sao Paulo.” All throughout the track, The Weeknd and Playboi Carti, the featured artist, take turns being in the foreground and background of the track. In some areas, The Weeknd is singing while Playboi Carti supports him with adlibs. In other areas, the two switch spots while Playboi Carti raps and The Weeknd is sharing his vocals over the instrumental. I love this approach to tracks with features much more than an artist appearing for their verse, then being gone for the rest of the track. In that regard, it seems like they’re here to say something, then leave, as opposed to actually wanting to help the artist out on the track. 

Overall, I love what The Weeknd brought to this record. From his amazing vocals, to the creativity to shape certain tracks the way he does, he brings a lot to the table that I love.

Up next, we have a few key features from the record. 

First up, Travis Scott. He comes along on “Reflections Laughing.” Since we’re in a Travis Scott drought, I was longing for a feature like this. On top of that, the dynamic that The Weeknd and Travis Scott bring on each collaboration between the two is simply unmatched. On each of Travis Scott’s albums, he shares a track with The Weeknd, and it always is one of the best tracks off of the records. 

Another feature that I enjoyed a lot was the performance by Playboi Carti off of “Timeless.” As I said earlier, the way the two swap verses around is great. With that kind of way of doing things, it’s easy to enjoy it. Yet again, we’ve been in quite a Playboi Carti drought. Because of that, I wanted this track so much more than I would have if he’s been constantly pushing out music. 

With all of that being said, the few features I’ve picked out are wonderful. The extra features I haven’t included are also great though. 

My personal favorite thing to look at regarding music is production. Without great production on records, I think that an album can fail very easily. Afterall, it’s the thing that listeners hear in the forefront of music as a whole. I can personally get behind a track that has decent vocals and lyrics. However, if the production and instrumental as a whole sounds awful, I would not waste any time in turning the track off. With that being said, the album here does offer some good instrumentation. 

To list off a few, I really enjoyed the production of “Wake Me Up,” “Baptized in Fear,”“Reflections Laughing,” and “Enjoy The Show.” For the most part though, the production, while still decent, tends to blend in with other songs. You get what you expect when listening to a The Weeknd album, but it doesn’t deviate from that tradition that much. 

With that, there are great examples of instrumentation, but it doesn’t compare to the massive amount of tracks that sound uninspired on the record.

As for the replayability on this project, this bad boy is LONG. The record is a hefty 22 songs. This count of songs alone turns me away since most artists tend to only drop massive albums in order to get more plays overall. 

Even worse, the album is nearly an hour and a half long. I personally do not want to spend a feature-length film worth of time listening to an album, especially if it’s supposed to be cohesive. With the large length, it’s more possible for the album to become boring, or end up dragging half-way throughout the runtime. 

While most of the songs are great, I don’t see myself listening to the entire album over and over again because of the large runtime. With that being said, the replayability of the album is pretty bad.

Overall, while The Weeknd and the features he hand-picked did great, some aspects of the album fell short, like the production and replayability. I truly did try liking this record more than I do, but these areas that bring it down, bring it down a lot. 

With that being said, “Hurry Up Tomorrow” gets a 6 out of 10 from me.