The Weeknd

Abel Makkonen Tesfaye[a] (Amharic: አቤል መኮንን ተስፋዬ; born February 16, 1990), known professionally as the Weeknd, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor. Regarded as a pop icon, he is best known for his light-lyric tenor vocal range and falsetto, as well as his signature alternative R&B sound. His accolades include four Grammy Awards, 20 Billboard Music Awards, 22 Juno Awards, six American Music Awards, three MTV Video Music Awards, and a Latin Grammy Award.

Tesfaye began releasing music anonymously in 2009. After co-founding the record label XO, he released three mixtapes—House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence—in 2011, and gained recognition for his alternative R&B sound, as well as the mystery surrounding his identity. He signed with Republic Records to reissue the mixtapes into the compilation album Trilogy (2012), and release his debut studio album, Kiss Land (2013) the following year. After a string of collaborations and film soundtrack contributions from 2013 and 2014, Tesfaye began combining his signature alternative R&B sound with a more pop-oriented approach on his second and third studio albums, Beauty Behind the Madness (2015) and Starboy (2016); both debuted atop the US Billboard 200 while spawning the Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles "Can't Feel My Face", "The Hills", "Starboy", and "Die for You".

He returned to a more alternative R&B-dominated soundscape for his debut extended play, My Dear Melancholy (2018), which included the US top-ten single "Call Out My Name". He started making an album trilogy named after three chronologic time points and explored the dream pop and new wave genres with the trilogy's first installment and fourth studio album, After Hours (2020), which spawned the chart-topping singles "Heartless" and "Save Your Tears", as well as "Blinding Lights", which became the best-performing song in the Billboard Hot 100's history and the longest-charting song at the time. Tesfaye began exploring dance-pop, leading to the second installment and fifth album, Dawn FM (2022), which included the US top-ten single, "Take My Breath". In 2023, he co-created and starred in the HBO drama series The Idol, which drew significant controversy and was received as a critical failure. His sixth album and third and final installment of the trilogy, Hurry Up Tomorrow (2025), yielded the US top-five single "Timeless" and a critically panned companion film of the same name.

Tesfaye co-founded in 2011 the record label XO with managers Wassim Slaiby and Amir Esmailian, as well as frequent collaborator and creative director La Mar Taylor. He also hosted the Apple Music 1 radio show Memento Mori from 2018 to 2022. Sometimes under the XO branding, he has collaborated with fashion brands BAPE, Puma and H&M, coffee brand Nespresso, football club Paris Saint-Germain, and video games Fortnite and Roblox, among others. In 2020, he launched the incubator HXOUSE of which he serves as a sleeping partner, and was appointed goodwill ambassador for the World Food Programme in 2021. He has also donated to various causes and expressed activism over racial equality and food security.

Tesfaye has sold over 75 million records, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time. He has earned seven diamond-certifications from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for his singles, and is the first artist to simultaneously hold the top three spots on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. He has also set the record for the most songs to have over 1 billion streams on Spotify (28), with "Blinding Lights" being the most-streamed song in the platform's history. Tesfaye was listed by Time as one of the world's most influential people in 2020. After Hours would later go on to be the most-streamed R&B album in history, while his longest-spanning After Hours til Dawn Tour set the record for the highest-grossing R&B tour in history.