The Weeknd

Abel Makkonen Tesfaye (አበል መኮነን ተስፋዬ; born February 16, 1990), known professionally as the Weeknd, is a Canadian singer and songwriter.

He is known for his unconventional music production, artistic reinventions, and signature use of the falsetto register.

Abel Makkonen Tesfaye was born on February 16, 1990, in Toronto, Ontario.

The only child of Ethiopian Amhara immigrants Makkonen Tesfaye and Samrawit Hailu, who separated shortly after his birth, he was raised in the district of Scarborough by his mother and grandmother.

He has described this period as being like the 1995 film Kids "without the AIDS", as they lived a hedonistic lifestyle.

He has also experienced homelessness and was incarcerated on several occasions during this time, which encouraged him to "smarten up, to focus".

During this time, Tesfaye frequently engaged in drug use, including substances such as ketamine, cocaine, MDMA, magic mushrooms, and cough syrup, stating that drugs were a "crutch" for him when he wrote music.

In 2009, Tesfaye expressed his interest in music when he began anonymously releasing music on YouTube.

Two years later, he co-founded the record label XO and released the mixtapes House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence, which gained recognition for his unique style of contemporary and alternative R&B and the mystique surrounding his identity.

In August 2009, Tesfaye began anonymously releasing music on YouTube.

The following year, he met Jeremy Rose, a producer who had an idea for a dark contemporary R&B project.

After initially trying to pitch the idea to musician Curtis Santiago, Rose played one of his instrumentals for Tesfaye, who freestyle rapped over it.

Rose produced three tracks–"What You Need", "Loft Music" and "The Party & The After Party"—along with others that featured Tesfaye's vocals, but were eventually abandoned.

Rose allowed Tesfaye to retain the produced tracks under the condition that he would receive credit for his contributions.

In December 2010, Tesfaye uploaded "What You Need", "Loft Music" and "The Morning" to YouTube under the username "xoxxxoooxo".

His identity remained undisclosed initially.

These songs gained attention online and were later acknowledged in a blog post by the rapper Drake.

In 2012, Tesfaye signed with Republic Records and re-issued the mixtapes for his compilation album Trilogy.

He explored the dark wave genre for his debut studio album Kiss Land (2013), which debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200.

After its release, Tesfaye began contributing to film soundtracks.

His acclaimed 2014 single "Earned It" from Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song.

Tesfaye earned critical and commercial success with his pop-leaning second album, Beauty Behind the Madness (2015), which reached number one in the US, contained the US Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping singles "Can't Feel My Face" and "The Hills," and won the Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album in addition to a nomination for Album of the Year.

He has an estranged relationship with his father, telling Rolling Stone in 2015 that, "I saw him vaguely when I was six, and then again when I was eleven or twelve, and he had a new family and kids. I don't even know where he lived [...] I'd see him for, like, a night. I'm sure he's a great guy. I never judged him. He wasn't abusive, he wasn't an alcoholic, he wasn't an asshole. He just wasn't there".

Tesfaye was raised as an Ethiopian Orthodox.

He is proficient in Amharic, his native language acquired from his grandmother.

He attained fluency in French by attending a French immersion school.

He was further educated at West Hill Collegiate Institute and Birchmount Park Collegiate Institute.

When he was seventeen, Tesfaye dropped out of school and relocated to an apartment in the neighbourhood of Parkdale with two friends, one of whom is La Mar Taylor—his best friend and now creative director.

His trap-infused third album, Starboy (2016), also saw commercial success.

It included the US number-one eponymous lead single (featuring Daft Punk) and "Die for You", earning it the Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album.

Tesfaye returned to alternative R&B with his debut extended play, My Dear Melancholy (2018), which contained the US top-ten single "Call Out My Name".

He explored new wave and dream pop with his fourth studio album, After Hours (2020), which featured the chart record-setting single "Blinding Lights" along with two US number-one singles, "Heartless" and "Save Your Tears".

Tesfaye began exploring dance-pop, leading to his fifth album, Dawn FM (2022), which included the US top-ten single "Take My Breath".

In 2023, he co-created and starred in the drama series The Idol, which was critically panned, although its accompanying soundtrack found modest commercial success.

One of the world's best-selling music artists with over 75 million records sold, Tesfaye holds several streaming and Billboard chart records.

He is the first Canadian artist to earn four diamond-certified singles from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and is the first artist to simultaneously hold the top three spots on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.

"Blinding Lights" became the most-streamed song in Spotify history, the best-performing song in the Billboard Hot 100's history and the longest-charting song by a solo artist on the Billboard Hot 100.

Tesfaye was listed by Time as one of the world's most influential people in 2020 and was dubbed the "world's most popular artist" by Guinness World Records in 2023.

An advocate for racial equality and food security, he was appointed a World Food Programme Goodwill Ambassador in 2021.

His accolades include four Grammy Awards, 20 Billboard Music Awards, 22 Juno Awards, six American Music Awards, two MTV Video Music Awards, a Latin Grammy Award and nominations for an Academy Award and a Primetime Emmy Award.