Tesfaye often used drugs and abused illegal substances such as ketamine, cocaine, MDMA, magic mushrooms, and cough syrup. He has also experienced homelessness and was incarcerated on several occasions during this time, which encouraged him to "smarten up, to focus." He has described this period as being like the 1995 film Kids "without the AIDS", as they lived a hedonistic lifestyle. When he was 17, Tesfaye dropped out of school and moved to an apartment in the neighbourhood of Parkdale with two friends including his best friend and now creative director La Mar Taylor. He was further educated at West Hill Collegiate Institute and Birchmount Park Collegiate Institute. He later became fluent in French by attending a French-immersion school.
When asked whether or not he was still religious, he stated to Variety in 2020, "I dunno.everything is a test, and if you are religious or spiritual, you have to go through things." His native language is Amharic, which he learned through his grandmother. Tesfaye was raised as an Ethiopian Orthodox. He wasn't abusive, he wasn't an alcoholic, he wasn't an asshole. I don't even know where he lived - I'd see him for, like, a night. 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 11 or 12, and he had a new family and kids. He was brought up in the district of Scarborough by his mother and grandmother. He is the only child of Ethiopian immigrants Makkonen Tesfaye and Samrawit Hailu, who separated shortly after his birth. Early lifeĪbel Makkonen Tesfaye was born on February 16, 1990, in Toronto, Ontario. An advocate for racial equality and food security, he was appointed a World Food Programme Goodwill Ambassador in 2021. 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. "Blinding Lights" became the most-streamed song in Spotify history and the best-performing song in the Billboard Hot 100's history, as well as the longest charting song by a solo artist on the Billboard Hot 100. He is the first Canadian artist to earn four diamond-certified singles from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), as well as the first artist to simultaneously hold the top three spots on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.
#Echoes of silence series
In 2023, he co-created and starred in the drama series The Idol, which was critically panned.Īmong the world's best-selling music artists with over 75 million records sold, Tesfaye holds several streaming and Billboard chart records.
Dance-pop inspired his fifth album Dawn FM (2022), which included the US top-ten single " Take My Breath". Tesfaye explored new wave and dream pop with his critically-acclaimed fourth studio album After Hours (2020), which featured the chart record-setting single " Blinding Lights" and the US number-one singles " Heartless" and " Save Your Tears". His trap-infused third album Starboy (2016) saw similar commercial success and included the US number-one single of the same name and " Die for You", and won the Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album. 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 and was nominated for Album of the Year. After its release, Tesfaye began contributing to film soundtracks, with his acclaimed single " Earned It" from Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) winning the Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance, while also being nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. He explored dark wave in his debut studio album Kiss Land (2013), which debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200. In 2012, he signed with Republic Records and rereleased the mixtapes in the compilation album Trilogy. Two years later, he co-founded the XO record label and released the mixtapes House of Balloons, Thursday and Echoes of Silence, which gained recognition for his style of contemporary and alternative R&B and the mystique surrounding his identity. His accolades include 4 Grammy Awards, 20 Billboard Music Awards, 22 Juno Awards, 6 American Music Awards, 2 MTV Video Music Awards, a Latin Grammy Award, and nominations for an Academy Award and a Primetime Emmy Award.īorn and raised in Toronto, Tesfaye began his career in 2009 by anonymously releasing music on YouTube.
He is noted for his unconventional music production, artistic reinventions, and his signature use of the falsetto register. Abel Makkonen Tesfaye ( Amharic: አበል መኮነን ተስፋዬ born February 16, 1990), known professionally as the Weeknd, is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and record producer.
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