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One of Tesfaye’s two managers, who goes by “Cash” (real name Amir Esmailian) and his high school best friend turned creative director, La Mar C. 1 and is inching toward the 1-million sales mark behind hits like the surprising Max Martin collaboration “Can’t Feel My Face” and “The Hills,” a hypnotic jam as unsettling as the Wes Craven classic its title references.ĭespite the madness that comes with pop superstardom, the scene at his house on a recent Friday afternoon is low-key. Released in August, “Beauty Behind the Madness” combined the alternative R&B he was known for with expertly crafted pop tunes. It set the tone for “Beauty Behind the Madness,” which showed Tesfaye making a major play for pop stardom. 1 on the Top 40 chart and further exposing him even more widely to mainstream audiences. 2, it didn’t push him to mainstream status.Īfter notching his first top 10 single with “Love Me Harder,” a fiery duet with Ariana Grande from her 2014 album, “My Everything,” he released “Earned It.” The smoky bedroom number became a breakout hit, reaching No. And although his 2013 major label debut, “Kiss Land,” opened at No. Tesfaye’s first major appearance, at Coachella in 2012, failed to deliver on the hype that made him an Internet star (“It was a nightmare for me,” he admitted). Back then I didn’t even want to get onstage,” Tesfaye said of his anonymous start. “I wanted to drop three albums in a year because no one had done it. Lush, hazy tales of sex and drugs paired with his brooding, anonymous persona - his real identity went unknown, and he declined all interviews - gained him a cult following. The Ethiopian Canadian singer (Amharic, his first language, can be heard on his smash “The Hills”) debuted in 2011 with a trilogy of mixtapes that helped usher in a wave of artists who eschewed conventional R&B boundaries in favor of edgier productions.
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Tesfaye’s breakout year is that much more remarkable given how unlikely a pop star he was. The Weeknd’s blockbuster sophomore album, “Beauty Behind the Madness,” yielded seven Grammy nominations, including record and album of the year, along with an Academy Award nod for “Earned It,” which appeared on the soundtrack for the 2015 hit “Fifty Shades of Grey.” Every room offers a sweeping view of the city, a fitting vantage point, considering the 25-year-old’s rise over the past year from Internet sensation to the top of the world as pop radio king. It’s a sprawling maze of rooms, the result of combining two units that give him the entire floor. The place is serene, airy and stylishly decorated - not entirely what you’d expect of a singer whose music is dark, heady and hedonistic. The singer’s thick mane - tsunami, rooster’s comb and double mullet come to mind when describing its peculiar style - is arguably the most famous hairstyle in all of pop. Tesfaye has a towel draped over his shoulders, having just had his face groomed, his signature Jean-Michel Basquiat-inspired locks bouncing as he walks. The graphicness of the old-world artwork makes him laugh. Tesfaye, better known as the Weeknd, is pointing toward an intricate and ancient-looking drawing of a man and woman midcoitus hanging near his bathroom. in here,” Abel Tesfaye says about his new home, a high-rise condo in Westwood he just moved into a few days prior.