The Weeknd

“I’m a chill person. That guy is who I am, but it is who I am to myself and in my writing. Sometimes, you take him and then you create more, and then it becomes this beast. You add more to him, and then it’s uncontrollable—its own character. It’s like Scarface, the villain: It’s horrible, but you can’t stop looking at it,” Abel Tesfaye—aka The Weeknd—told Apple Music about the persona behind his music. The Toronto singer—Ethiopian by heritage (his parents immigrated to Canada in the late ’80s, just before he was born)—took off in 2011 with a string of mixtapes (later collected as 2012’s Trilogy) that forged cavernous, falsetto-driven R&B with narratives drenched in drugs, sex, and other regrettable decisions—a sound both sensuous and detached, featherlight and dead heavy. His music has become a symbol of hedonism pushed to bleak excess, with a series of albums—including 2015’s Grammy-winning Beauty Behind the Madness, 2016’s multiplatinum Starboy, and 2020’s dense and atmospheric After Hours—whose narrators can’t seem to say no even if they hate themselves for it later. Though he didn’t release a new album in 2021, he was a constant part of the cultural conversation, dropping a slew of singles, performing at the Super Bowl and on Saturday Night Live (think: “Ladies and gentlemen, The Weeknd”), and winning the Apple Music Award for Global Artist of the Year. After a banner 2021, he unleashed 2022’s Dawn FM, a cross-decade synth-pop exhibition for the ages. Then, 2025’s Hurry Up Tomorrow ended his unofficial trilogy that began with After Hours in grand fashion with guest appearances by Florence + the Machine, Playboi Carti, Anitta, Future, Lana Del Rey, Travis Scott, and Giorgio Moroder. And though his music has gotten a little brighter over time, the prevailing mood remains heavy, even unsettling—the ride you want more of even when you’ve had too much.