The real name of the musician The Weeknd is Abel Makkonen Tesfaye. He was born and raised in Toronto, Canada’s largest metropolitan area. A third of the city’s population at that time consisted of immigrants, which were his parents – Makkonen and Saira Tesfaye. They moved to Toronto from civil war-torn Ethiopia back in the late 1980s.
The career of the singer
From childhood, the future artist was inspired by the work of Prince and R. Kelly, and he considered Michael Jackson his idol. Abel dreamed of devoting his life to creativity and becoming a famous performer as a teenager, but at first, he had little idea how to realize this idea. Abel tried to organize his group, and write music and lyrics, but all these attempts faded against the background of the fantastic success of Justin Bieber and other young musicians who topped the first lines of the world charts.
Starting to live independently, Abel tried to earn his bread and got a job as a sales assistant in a fashion store, and in the evenings he performed in nightclubs. At one of these parties, he met musician and producer Jeremy Rose, who became interested in the work of an aspiring musician and offered him cooperation. Together with Jeremy, Abel recorded three tracks in which Rose’s instrumental harmonized perfectly with Tesfaye’s clean melodic vocals.
In 2010 the project was named “The Weeknd”. Abel took such a pseudonym in memory of the period when he began an independent life and left school. According to the musician, then he “left one fine weekend and did not return home.” To avoid litigation with the Canadian band The Weekend, the artist deliberately omitted a letter in his pseudonym.
Collaboration with Rose promised to be quite successful, if not for the conflict of interest that soon arose between the performer and the producer. In December 2010, Abel refused to cooperate and under the nickname, The Weeknd independently posted on Youtube the tracks “What You Need”, “Loft Music” and “The Morning”. Gradually, the compositions began to gain views. The musician gained even more popularity after the already-held artist Drake shared his composition with subscribers.
In the winter of 2011, The Weeknd posted their debut album House of Balloons on YouTube, in which they collected the best of their tracks. When he returned, he recorded two more mixtapes “Thursday” and “Echoes of Silence”, which, along with the first, were included in the compilation “Trilogy” (2012). The singer’s corporate style was already clearly visible in it – pure angelic vocals combined with brutal cynical lyrics containing indecent hints. The main topics of the collection were depression, sex, and drugs. The Weeknd’s tracks began to go beyond the usual structure and timing, but fans were ecstatic.
Before the release of the album in 2012, Abel was shy of the attention of fans, but soon there was no trace of his former modesty. The Weeknd realized that he was on the right track and had very little time left to conquer the musical Olympus. To improve the quality of his performances, Tesfaye took up dancing, hired a vocal teacher, and often watched his concerts to correct mistakes and make the show even more spectacular in the future.
In 2012, having toured the United States on a large tour and attending several major European festivals, Abel began recording a full-length studio album. On September 10, 2013, the official presentation of the Kiss Land album took place, which fully met the expectations of The Weeknd fans and confidently entered the top five records of the outgoing year.
The popularity of Weeknd was also added by the composition “Devil May Cry”, which became the soundtrack to the fantastic action movie “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”. After the release of the film in 2013, many popular performers became interested in Abel’s work and began to offer him unusual collaborations. In late 2013 – early 2014, The Weeknd joined Justin Timberlake on his world tour, worked with Sia and Beyoncé, and also recorded a joint duet with Ariana Grande.
In December 2014, the song “Earned It” was presented to the public, which became the soundtrack to the popular melodrama “50 Shades of Gray” and won an Oscar as the best song for a film. She also got into the album “Beauty Behind the Madness”, which was released in the summer of 2015 and in record time became the leader of the charts in the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, and various countries. In December, the compilation was named the most listened-to album of 2015 and took the honorable fifth place in the ranking of Rolling Stone magazine.
The presentation of the legendary album “Starboy” took place in the fall of 2016. In his support, the musician shot a short film directed by Grant Singer. The audience reacted violently not only to the new musical material but also to the change in the artist’s image – Abel cut off his trademark dreadlocks, which have already become his hallmark.
In parallel, the performer continued to collaborate with other artists – his collaborations with Kanye West, Beyoncé, and the French band Daft Punk made a lot of noise in the music world, and The Weeknd’s creative duets with American rapper Future and singer Lana Del Rey were also successful.
In 2017, in the wake of The Weeknd’s success, it was announced that the artist was planning to take part in Rihanna’s world tour, but at the last moment, The Weeknd changed his mind and focused on recording another collection. Subsequently, he admitted that he lost a lot of money because of this but still considers his actions to be correct. The fact is that Abel was determined to become the biggest star on the planet, and for this, he needed a new album.
