Weeknd (Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, born February 16, 1990) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and record producer who goes by the stage name Abel. In his music, he tackles themes such as escapism, romantic longings, and melancholy, frequently drawing inspiration from his own life. He has won four Grammy Awards, 19 Billboard Music Awards, 15 Juno Awards, six American Music Awards, two MTV Video Music Awards, and a nomination for an Academy Award.
As a young man, Tesfaye started uploading songs anonymously on YouTube, where he grew up in Toronto. Later, he co-founded XO Records and released the mixtapes House of Balloons, Thursday and Echoes of Silence, which swiftly acquired attention for his style of modern and alternative R&B as well as the mystery surrounding his identity two years after that.
A compilation album of his mixtapes, Trilogy, was published in 2012 after he signed with Republic Records and released the mixtapes in 2012. Kiss Land (2013), his first studio album, explored dark wave and debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 chart the same year. Tesfaye’s “Earned It” from Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song shortly after its release.
As a child
Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, better known by his stage as The Weeknd, was born on February 16, 1990. After his parents divorced, he was raised by his mother and grandmother in Toronto, Ontario. In the late 1980s, The Weeknd’s parents immigrated to Canada from Ethiopia. Tesfaye’s father was absent from his life as a youngster; the two only met a handful of times throughout that time period. Tesfaye’s early years were heavily influenced by religion, and he often visited the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The young Abel Tesfaye, despite his devout upbringing, began doing narcotics at the age of 11. Tesfaye maintains that he committed crimes in order to pay for his drug habit, which began with marijuana smoking. He went to high school, but he didn’t finish it since he dropped out before the last year of classes.
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How much money does The Weeknd have?
“Blinding Lights” actress and ex-girlfriend Bella Hadid and Selena Gomez are worth an estimated $80 million to $100 million in US dollars, or around $59 million to $74 million in British pounds.
A mainstay on Forbes’ lists of top earners, The Weeknd was ranked as the sixth highest-paid performer in 2017 by the publication. His ‘Starboy’ album allegedly earned him roughly $1.1 million every stop on his album tour, breaking sales records.
Career
When The Weeknd and producer Jeremy Rose started working together on an R&B record called ‘The Weekend,’ it was the beginning of his career. Jeremy opted to exclude Abel’s music off the CD after writing three tracks for it.
His three songs were rejected, so he decided to start his own YouTube page under the moniker “The Weeknd” to share them with the rest of the world.
His first mixtape, ‘House of Balloons,’ was published in 2011, after the success of his first single in 2010. As time went on, he started playing in front of crowds and even cooperated with rapper Drake.
The second and third mixtapes he put out in 2011 were titled “Thursday” and “Echoes of Silence.” Within a year of releasing his first three mixtapes, he shot to the top of the charts.
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The Weeknd spends a fortune on a luxury apartment in New York City.
The Weeknd has a penthouse in Los Angeles with four bedrooms and five bathrooms as of December 2019. If true, this is one of the most expensive apartment transactions in Los Angeles history at $21 million. What’s even more bizarre? A $20 million house in Los Angeles was already owned by him! That’s what he allegedly spent in 2017 for a 12,000-square-foot mansion in Los Angeles’ prestigious Hidden Hills area with nine bedrooms and eleven bathrooms. A year later, The Weeknd released his official music video for “The Hills,” which he also filmed here in Los Angeles.
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Life at Home
Bella Hadid, a well-known model, began dating The Weeknd in 2015. They divorced in 2016 because of scheduling issues caused by their busy lifestyle. In 2017, he was romantically linked to singer Selena Gomez for a short time before the two parted ways.
The Weeknd and Bella Hadid reconciled in 2018, however their relationship ended in divorce in 2019.