The Weeknd

Abel Makkonen Tesfaye (Amharic: አቤል መኮንን ተስፋዬ; born February 16, 1990), known professionally as the Weeknd, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor. Regarded as an influential figure in popular music, he is known for his light-lyric tenor vocal range and falsetto, as well as his signature alternative R&B sound. His accolades include four Grammy Awards, 20 Billboard Music Awards, 22 Juno Awards, six American Music Awards, three MTV Video Music Awards, and a Latin Grammy Award.

Tesfaye began releasing music anonymously in 2009. After co-founding the record label XO, he released three mixtapes—House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence—in 2011, and gained recognition for his alternative R&B sound. He signed with Republic Records to compile the mixtapes into the compilation album Trilogy (2012), and release his debut studio album, Kiss Land (2013) the following year. Follwing collaborations and film soundtrack contributions from 2013 and 2014, Tesfaye blended his alternative R&B sound with pop on his second and third studio albums, Beauty Behind the Madness (2015) and Starboy (2016); both debuted atop the US Billboard 200 and featured the Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles "Can't Feel My Face", "The Hills", "Starboy", and "Die for You".

He returned to his alternative R&B-sound for his debut EP, My Dear Melancholy (2018), featuring the US top-ten single "Call Out My Name". He began an album trilogy based on three time points and explored the dream pop and new wave genres starting with fourth studio album, After Hours (2020), which spawned the chart-topping singles "Heartless" and "Save Your Tears", as well as "Blinding Lights", which became the best-performing song in the Billboard Hot 100's history. He then explored dance-pop, with his second installment and fifth album, Dawn FM (2022), featuring the US top-ten single, "Take My Breath". In 2023, he co-created and starred in the controversial HBO drama series The Idol, which was received as a critical failure. His sixth album and third and trilogy conclusion, Hurry Up Tomorrow (2025), included the US top-five single "Timeless" and a poorly received companion film of the same name.

Tesfaye is one of the best-selling artists of all time, with estimated sales of over 75 million records. He has diamond-certified singles from the RIAA. Tesfaye was listed by Time as one of the world's most influential people in 2020. After Hours would later go on to be the most-streamed R&B album in history, while his longest-spanning After Hours til Dawn Tour set the record for the highest-grossing R&B tour in history. Tesfaye co-founded the record label XO in 2021 and hosted the Apple Music 1 radio show Memento Mori from 2018 to 2022. He has collaborated with fashion brands BAPE, Puma and H&M, coffee brand Nespresso, football club Paris Saint-Germain, and video games Fortnite and Roblox, among others. In 2020, he launched the incubator HXOUSE of which he serves as a sleeping partner, and was appointed goodwill ambassador for the World Food Programme in 2021. He has also donated to various causes and expressed activism over racial equality and food security.

Abel Makkonen Tesfaye was born on February 16, 1990, in a city in Ontario, variously reported to be Toronto, or Scarborough. The only child of Ethiopian immigrants Makkonen Tesfaye and Samrawit Hailu, who separated shortly after his birth, he was raised in the suburb of Scarborough by his mother and grandmother. Tesfaye's patronymic is spelled "Makkonen" instead of the traditional Ethiopian name "Makonnen". The similarity with the Finnish surname Makkonen is pure coincidence. The spelling of Tesfaye's patronymic might be the result of a typographic error or a new form of the traditional name. Tesfaye is proficient in Amharic, his native language acquired from his grandmother, and is also fluent in French, as he attended a French immersion school. He was further educated at West Hill Collegiate Institute and Birchmount Park Collegiate Institute.

At seventeen, Tesfaye dropped out of school and relocated to an apartment in the neighbourhood of Parkdale with two friends, one of whom was La Mar Taylor—his best friend and now creative director. Living a hedonistic lifestyle with his friends, Tesfaye adopted his stage name because he left home on a weekend. He removed the last 'e' in 'weekend' to avoid trademark issues with the Canadian pop rock band the Weekend. 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. Before releasing music under his current stage name, he went under the alias "Kin Kane", as part of a hip-hop duo called "Bulleez n Nerdz", and was part of a production team called 'the Noise'.

In August 2009, Tesfaye began anonymously releasing music on YouTube. The following year, he met the producer Jeremy Rose at a party. Rose asked Tesfaye if he wanted to work together as a dark R&B project after hearing him freestyle over an instrumental. After creating multiple songs and parting ways due to creative differences, Tesfaye was allowed to use the songs they made together under the condition that Rose received production credits. 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. The songs subsequently received coverage from various media outlets, including Pitchfork and The New York Times.

In 2011, Tesfaye met music executives Wassim "Sal" Slaiby and Amir "Cash" Esmailian, with whom, along with Taylor, he founded the XO record label. On March 21, Tesfaye released his debut mixtape, House of Balloons, which featured production from Illangelo and Doc McKinney. The mixtape also included tracks produced by Rose, although he did not receive production credits. House of Balloons was named as one of the ten shortlisted nominees for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize.