Before hitting the top of the charts with such hits as “Starboy,” “Can’t Feel My Face” and “Blinding Lights,” Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, better known as the Weeknd, had to work his way up. up from the bottom. “It was hard to grow up where I was from,” explained the “street child” from the Toronto suburbs in Scarborough Variety. “I really thought it would be a movie on my way out, but I couldn’t make a film feel better, you know? Music was very direct; it was instant and people enjoyed it. It definitely saved my life. ”
Five studio albums, four No. 1 Account Board goal and three Grammys after that, The Weeknd is now among the best-selling artists worldwide. Here are 10 things you may not know about the Canadian singer, who will headline the 2021 half-time Super Bowl show in Tampa Bay on February 7th.
It is trilingual
The son of Ethiopian immigrants, The Weeknd grew up outside of Toronto in a multicultural neighborhood full of fellow East Africans, as well as people from India, the Middle East and the Caribbean. “Ethiopian – Amharic – was the first language I learned to make sentences because my grandmother didn’t have English, which I picked up with my mother,” he said. Variety. “Because of television and being in Canada, I also learned English, but I went to a French immersion school, where you would be in trouble for speaking English, and I couldn’t speak to my grandmother, so it’s almost like English is my third language, even though it’s my first language. ”
He has a special connection to Jim Carrey
The Weeknd also reported Variety that comedy Jim Carrey from Ontario Among it was the first film his single mother, Samra Tesfaye, gave him to see in theaters when he was 4 years old. “It blew me away,” he said, adding that it inspired the dream of one day attending film school. Nearly three decades later, the men were introduced over text, and The Weeknd invited Carrey to his condo in Los Angeles to hear some new music in 2019.
As it turned out, not only did they find out they lived in the same neighborhood – and even found telescopes to wave at each other – but Carrey knew also on the very theater that his mother gave him to see Among. “On me [30th] birthday, he called and asked me to look out my window, and on the balcony he had those big red balloons, and he picked me up and we went to breakfast, ”The Weeknd recalled . “It was amazing. Jim Carrey was my first inspiration to be a player of any kind, and I went to breakfast with him on the first day of 30. ”
The Week in 2012
Photo: Daniel Boczarski / Redferns via Getty Images
At first he wanted to spell the name of his stage in a different way
At AMA Reddit in 2013, the singer revealed that he hated the name given to him and, as a teenager, decided to use the moniker “The Weekend,” instead, with that it “looked good. There was one problem, however: there was already a Canadian rock band, so it removed the “e” to avoid copyright issues. According to music producer Jeremy Rose, however, he and his colleague used “The Weekend” as a collective name, but his colleague dropped the “e” after falling out in 2010.
His previous hairstyle was a pain – literally
The Weeknd says her trademark dreadlock hairstyle – inspired by artist Jean-Michel Basquiat – gave her a wake-up call with neck pain at times. He kept the style to a minimum so that he did not look “like everyone else,” also wanting to be remembered as “iconic and different. ”In 2015, he said Rolling Stone he would “probably cut it” if he started to block his sight, however.
He finally turned his hair off in 2016, discussing his brief look at the album’s artwork. Starboy. “I think I felt one tear come down on my cheek,” he said later in an interview with The Keeper, adding that he had also missed the name he would get from wearing basketball caps.
He worked at American Apparel
Before he made it big, The Weeknd worked wrap shirts at an American Apparel retail store in downtown Toronto around 2010. He started making music with the intention of selling it to other musicians around the same time, and would his colleagues listened to tracks while they worked without even realizing that he was singing them.
He dropped out of high school
After changing schools several times, The Weeknd finally dropped out of high school when he was 17, also forcing his best friend, La Mar Taylor, to join him. The pair, along with another friend, Hyghly Alleyne, decided to move into a one-bedroom apartment in the Toronto’s Parkdale area. He remembers his mother giving him “the worst look anyone could have,” as he pulled the mattress out of their home. “She looked at me like she had failed,” he said The New York Times in 2015. Accepted Rolling Stone that he still feels insecure when he is “talking to someone who has been educated,” he says that he has once again started doing puzzles to improve his vocabulary.
The Weeknd performs in 2017
Photo: Isaac Brekken / Getty Images for iHeartMedia
He was homeless
While The Weeknd lived in a $ 850-a-month flat with his two high school friends – to whom they paid for welfare checks – the three would pick up food from a nearby supermarket for to live. Eventually selling marijuana for a nominal amount of money, he and his roommates lived a “no rules” lifestyle and would get high on drugs like MDMA, Xanax, cocaine, mushrooms and ketamine. (He also addressed this dark period of his life in his 2020 autobiographical song “Snowchild.”) He was eventually evicted, and The Weeknd admitted that he would tell various girls that he loved on them until he had a place to stay. “There were, like, three girls who thought I was their boyfriend,” he explained New York Times.
In a 2016 interview with The Keeper, The Weeknd also admitted that he spent nights in jail when he was about 18, something he described as being bad enough for him to “tidy up, focus. He explained: “Many people don’t get that second chance. But around that age, you usually get one second chance after a slap on the wrist. And you either take the experience and think, ‘This is it, final straw’, or not. And the next move after that? It’s your whole life. You become the person you will be as a result of your next move. “
Drake helped launch his career
Drake introduced the then lesser-known singer to his fanbase in 2010 by posting two of a Canadian artist’s songs on his own blog in October . After the two later met in 2011 while The Weeknd was promoting its debut Dumb House mixtape, Drake asked him to appear on his Take Care track “Crew Love” the same year. “If you want to talk about evolution – rapid evolution – that’s definitely someone who, everywhere I go, they love it,” Drake told MTV in 2012. “We’re definitely a family. It’s definitely a Toronto thing.”
After The Weeknd they received zero Grammy nominations for 2020’s After hours – despite the record ‘s commercial and critical success – Drake defended his pal on Instagram. “The other day I said that Weeknd was a lock for either a record or a song of the year with countless reasonable opinions and it won’t go that way,” he said in November, adding the award may not be “any different.”
The Weeknd (left) and Drake (right) took to the stage in 2014
Photo: David Wolff – Patrick / Redferns via Getty Images
He (probably) lived in a house with an omen
The Weeknd wanted Rolling Stone in 2015 that the Hollywood Hills home he was renting at the time was disturbed, meaning he did not want to live there very often. “I’ve got sleep paralysis. I hear voices sometimes, ”he told the magazine. “I heard the hills are above an Indian cemetery. But it ‘s probably the wind. ”
He has a $ 3 million car collection
Not only does he own the $ 1.2 million orange McLaren P1 featured in his “Starboy” music video, but the hypercar is only one part of his reported $ 3 million car collection. His other vehicles include: Ferrari LaFerrari, Porsche 918, Aventador Lamborghini SVJ and Bentley Mulsanne, among others. His $ 25 million LA mansion, which he registered for sale in June 2020, even features an automated gallery garage with a custom mirror that can switch between purple, blue and green neon lights.