From anonymous mixtapes to the biggest streaming numbers on record

Abel Tesfaye started out anonymous. Born in 1990 and raised in Scarborough, Ontario, by his mother and grandmother, he grew up speaking Amharic and attended a French immersion school. At seventeen he dropped out and moved to Toronto’s Parkdale with friends, among them La Mar Taylor, now his creative director. He paid rent from welfare checks and worked in an American Apparel store, where colleagues played his early music without knowing it was his.

In 2009 he began releasing songs under the name the Weeknd without revealing who he was. After co-founding the label XO, he put out three mixtapes in 2011, House of Balloons, Thursday and Echoes of Silence, and then signed with Republic Records, which gathered them as the compilation Trilogy in 2012. His debut studio album, Kiss Land, followed in 2013.

The turn toward pop came with Beauty Behind the Madness in 2015 and Starboy in 2016, both of which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. They carried the Hot 100 number ones “Can’t Feel My Face”, “The Hills”, “Starboy” and “Die for You”. Then came the After Hours era, inspired by dream pop and new wave. “Blinding Lights” became the best-performing song in the history of the Hot 100 and the most-streamed song on Spotify. Dawn FM brought “Take My Breath” into the US top ten, and Hurry Up Tomorrow followed in 2025.

The scale of the career is hard to overstate. He has four Grammy Awards, eight diamond-certified singles from the RIAA and was the first artist to pass 100 million monthly listeners on Spotify. His After Hours til Dawn Tour set the record for the highest-grossing tour by a male soloist. Away from music he co-created the HBO series The Idol, hosted a radio show on Apple Music 1 and became a goodwill ambassador for the World Food Programme. The anonymous voice has become a name known across the world.