“People tell me I’m changing the culture,” he says. When talking about his art and his career, Tesfaye is blessed with a towering self-confidence and has no hesitation about declaring his own greatness. “When people meet me, they say that I’m really kind - contrary to a lot of my music.” When I tell him he’s not what I expected, he nods. Spend just five minutes with him, though, and he reveals himself: sweet, soft-spoken, surprisingly earnest. “I think that’s why my career is going to be so long: Because I haven’t given people everything.” “We live in an era when everything is so excessive, I think it’s refreshing for everybody to be like, ‘Who the fuck is this guy?'” Tesfaye says. A press-shy Ethiopian kid from Toronto who has given only a handful of interviews, he has cultivated a near-mythical image as a bed-hopping, pill-popping, chart-topping cipher. This scene would not have seemed possible in 2011, when the Weeknd appeared with a trio of cult-favorite mixtapes that established both his sonic template - drug-drenched, indie-rock-sampling, sex-dungeon R&B - and his mysterious, brooding persona. Go behind the scenes of the Weeknd’s performance on Saturday Night Live in our exclusive mini-documentary below: (Overheard: “I wanted to hug him!” “You didn’t hug him? I kissed him!”) The cold caught up with him yesterday, during a signing for 500 squealing fans at the Oxford Circus HMV. Since starting this promo tour a week ago, he’s been to Las Vegas, Paris, Berlin and now London. “Sorry, I’m sick,” he says, as his handshake becomes a fist bump in midair. Tesfaye comes over to say hi, dressed in black Levi’s and a Roots hoodie, his tsunami of hair piled high atop his head. How True Is 'Respect'? Fact-Checking the Aretha Franklin Biopic 'Silence of the Lambs': 'It Broke All the Rules' “But the screams keep getting louder, dude.” “I’m still digesting it, to be honest with you,” Tesfaye says of his success. His new album, Beauty Behind the Madness, has sold more than half a million copies in a couple of months, and he’s preparing to launch a national arena tour in November.
Tesfaye is just the 12th artist in history to score back-to-back Number Ones, a group that includes Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Taylor Swift. “The Hills” is currently enjoying its fourth straight week at Number One, a feat made even more impressive because it took the place of another Weeknd track, “Can’t Feel My Face” - Spotify’s official song of the summer, and the only song about cocaine ever to be lip-synced by Tom Cruise on network TV.
#THE WEEKND NEW ALBUM QUOTES PROFESSIONAL#
So when the verdict comes back “no swearing,” he nods and smoothly pivots to a censored version - a small gesture that says a lot about the kind of professional he has become. For Tesfaye, that’s relatively clean, but he knows the pensioners in Twickenham might disagree. With Jools Holland, the BBC music show, about to soundcheck his smash hit “The Hills,” a four-minute horror-movie booty call featuring more than a dozen f-bombs. Tesfaye, better known as breakout pop sensation the Weeknd, is at a rehearsal for Later. So is this swearing or no swearing?” In a darkened soundstage on the outskirts of London, Abel Tesfaye is wondering if he can say “fuck” or not.
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