The Weeknd

Early Life

Abel Makkonen Tesfaye was born on February 16 1990 to Samra and Makkonen Tesfaye. At an early age, Tesfaye’s parents split up forcing him to live with his grandma and mom. Abel, better known as The Weeknd began to throw his life away. After he got a taste of the real world, he started using drugs and drinking alcohol to hide his pain from his dad. He claimed that his dad wasn’t abusive or alcoholic, but he just wasn’t there for him. At age 11, he started smoking marijuana and started using even more drugs later on in his teenage life. Because he was only 11 years old, he often shoplifted from drugstores.

Moving on

He didn’t finish high school and left his hometown in 2007. As he left, he wrote his dropout status as, “left one weekend never came home” which inspired his stage name as The Weeknd.

New Begininngs

The Weeknd started his career in 2010, when he met Jeremy Rose. Jeremy Rose is an R&B singer. He met Tesfaye and played him his draft, when Tesfaye started freestyling on top of it. He wrote a couple of songs with Rose, which Rose eventually scrapped and gave ownership to Tesfaye. In December of the year, Tesfaye posted these songs with him rapping over anonymously. At this time, people only knew his stage name, The Weeknd, and not his true identity which is when the songs went viral online, making appearances on The New York Times and Pitchfork. Even famous rapper Drake retweeted the song which really gave him a headstart on his career in music. He eventually went on Twitter posting a few more samples, quoting, “a bunch of songs leaked by salty producers and found AFTER HOB dropped.” HOB stands for House of Balloons, his next big step into his career.

2011

Later in 2011, The Weeknd released his mixtape album, House of Balloons. House of Balloons was a HUGE hit being one of the nominees for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize. Although this is nothing compared to his achievements today, this is a huge step for The Weeknd; especially because this is his first album ever! He also added a few songs he had written with Jeremy Rose, but didn’t give him any credit. He made his first appearance on stage that same year in a Toronto NightClub, which was a headstart on his career because people now know his identity. He later on began touring in his city, when he had a pleasant surprise at his concert to see Drake in the audience! Drake met The Weeknd backstage, and The Weeknd accompanied Drake on his tours, freestyling lyrics to his songs which increased his chances at finally earning a signed record.

2012

The Weeknd now went from only touring in Toronto, to finally doing a nationwide tour in America, and also getting the chance to perform at the 2012 Coachella event. He expanded his tour all the way to Europe too, and got himself positive reviews from The New York Times, popstar Katy Perry, and english singer Florence Welch. He was doing so well, that only 2 months later, The Weeknd came out with his new album Balloon Trilogy. Balloon Trilogy got over 8 million downloads, making him even more popular within society. In September of the year, he got offered a recording contract with Republic Records where many current-day music stars are created. Singers like Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, Drake, Post Malone and tons of other stars are signed to Republic Records. Two months after being signed with the record label, The Weeknd came out with a compilation mixtape called Trilogy. This version of Balloon Trilogy actually featured Jeremy Rose as a producer and writer of a couple songs from House of Balloons which he wasn’t mentioned in from the original album. This was a huge moment for the artist, where Trilogy was ranked #4 on Billboard Hot 200 when only 86,000 copies of the album were sold. It also ranked #5 on the Canadian Albums Chart and was a platinum certified album by the Recording Industry Association of America. Lastly, a week later Trilogy was nominated for Sound of 2013 poll awards by BBC.

2013

Finally! The Weeknd revealed his debut studio album, Kiss Land featuring popular songs Kiss Land and Adaptations. It was even more successful with Live For featuring Drake. After the release, Kiss land was ranked #2 on Billboard Hot 200 at only 96,000 copies. Additionally, The Weeknd made tons of more achievements such as appearing on 6 of Justin Timberlake’s 20/20 Experience World Tours. He has also appeared on The Hunger Games’ soundtrack and Sia’s single Elastic Hearts.

2014

The Weeknd decided that his career needed a boost (which I don’t see a reason for), and he remixed the one and only Beyonce’s song, “Drunk in Love” except from the boy’s point of view. This was only a fraction of his big news for his fans, because later on he announced that he was going on his first headlining tour called “King of the Fall.” This year he also dueted a song with Ariana Grande, “Love Me Harder” which later on peaked at number 7 on Billboard Hot 100 and wrote an original song, “Earned It” which got it’s chance on the show, “50 Shades of Grey” (don’t recommend watching it:)) and was ranked number 3 on Billboard Hot 100 for original film music.

2015

This year, The Weeknd achieved multiple achievements. He won the 2015 Centric Awards and even performed his hit song, “Earned It” with famous singer Alicia Keys. During this performance, he debuted his song, “The Hills” which is a very popular song today, played on playlists and more! Today, “The Hills” has more than 1 billion plays on Spotify, which pretty much meant it is a very popular song. It actually ranked #1 on Billboard Hot 100, and was certified a Diamond song by the RIAA. This year, he released another single, “Can’t Feel My Face” which has over 1 billion views on youtube. The song was so popular, that he even got to perform his song at the Apple Worldwide Development Conference. “Can't Feel My Face” started off at #24 on the Billboard Hot 100 and later on got to #1 on the Hot 100, making it his second #1 hit on the Hot 100. He was also the first artist to have his songs hold the top 3 spots on the Billboard Hot 100. “Can’t Feel My Face” became so successful that The Weeknd became one of Apple’s ‘Musical Faces.’ It seems that The Weeknd couldn’t become any more successful, but we couldn’t be even more wrong. On August 25 of the year, The Weeknd released his new album Beauty Behind The Madness featuring “Earned It”, “The Hills” and “Can’t Feel My Face.” As expected, the album got 412,000 copies within the first week! (Which was a record for him at the time!) The album reached top 10 in over 10 countries, and also reached #1 in countries like Norway and Australia. He promoted his album that summer by performing in the Lollapalooza and Bumbershoot Festival. He also started his biggest tour yet around the world lasting for almost an entire month. This album went worldwide and he ended up selling 1.5 million copies of the album that year. That September, The Weeknd became the first male R&B singer to hold the top 3 spots on the Billboard R&B Hot 100. Songs from the album featured big artists such as Travis Scott and Belly (although Belly kind of lost his fame now.) Lastly, this year he was featured on Saturday Night Live which was his first show as a guest star after performing ‘Love Me Harder’ with Ariana Grande.

The Hills

Can't Feel My Face

Love Me Harder

2016

While preparing for his newest album, The Weeknd started doing collaborations with many other artists. He also started doing collaborations with a french EM duo known as Daft Punk. That same day, fans also got to know about his collaboration with a norwegian DJ, Cashmere Cat. The next month, The Weeknd released the name of his third studio album. The name was Starboy. The album was released on November 25 2016, and fans went crazy! The title song which featured Daft Punk received Platinum Certification in countries all around the world. A week later, he came out with 3 more popular songs, ‘I Feel it Coming’ ft Daft Punk, ‘Party Monster’ and ‘False Alarm’. The Weeknd released a short movie named M A N I A, which told his life story and featured his popular songs.

2017

This year, he got himself featured on many artist’s songs. These artists include Future, Nav, Lana Del Ray, French Montana, Cashmere Cat, and Gucci Mane. He also won his first Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album with Starboy.

2018

In January, the Black Panther soundtrack was released. The soundtrack was made to be for Kendrick Lamar, but The Weeknd got a feature in one of the songs making this the second collaboration with Lamar and The Weeknd. (Lamar was also featured in ‘Sidewalks’ from Starboy.) In March of that year, you guessed it, The Weeknd revealed his extended play, My Dear Melancholy. This year he also released his first radio station on Apple’s Beats 1 called Memento Mori. Pretty dark name, right? Later that year, The Weeknd had his own compilation album The Weeknd in Japan which featured his best songs from each album.

2019

The artist started off the year with a collaboration with french producer, Gesaffelstein by singing in the producer’s second studio album. Later on in the spring, The Weeknd released his single, “Power is Power” with popstar SZA and rapper Travis Scott. The song was on the Game Of Thrones soundtrack. In November of the year, the artist released his fourth and most current studio album, ‘After Hours.’ The album literally made his life, where this is by far his most successful album. Blinding Lights was featured on this album, and is the fourth most streamed song on Spotify with more than two billion plays. Blinding Lights has been on the Billboard Hot 100 for more than a year! Blinding Lights has been on the top 5 chart for the longest time in history! It was on the top five for 43 weeks, which must mean the song is super popular. The song got so much attention on social media apps and has also broken so many records.

Well, as we see The Weeknd is a pretty successful singer. He started off as ruining his life and ended up being one of the most successful artists in the world. This shows that no matter how hard your life seems right now, just know that things can get better. I feel that The Weeknd may be the artist’s stage name and popular name, but he will always be Abel Makkonen Tesfaye; a young man who went from zero to a hero.