A quick lesson with a long-time fan before the big show!

This year the Super bowl half-time will be headlined by Abel Tesfaye, known as The Weeknd. As a fan since 2014, it is always so surreal to see your favourite artist grow into one of the biggest names in music today.

That being said I thought I would give a quick backstory so you can know who he is before watching the show.

By Nicolas Padovani

The Weeknd was born in Toronto, Ontario and grew up in Scarborough. Both of his parents were immigrants from Ethiopia, and he grew up as an only child. His parents ended up splitting up and his father wasn’t very present from then, so Abel was raised by his grandmother and mother.

He is known for his lyrics on drugs, addiction, depression and relationships in his music, and all those lyrics come from the experiences from his past. He’s a pretty big smoker but did eventually move on to harder drugs and even stole to fund his drug habits. He mentions this in one of his songs Tell Your Friends;

“Me and Lamar would rob a ***** for his Jordan’s, and flip it just to get these ho*s another nose fix”

Yeah, you get the idea.

At first, he uploaded 3 songs onto YouTube under a fake name which gained a lot of attention. After this he started to release music on his own website and his mixtapes would be free to download back in 2011.

His very first release was the EP House of Balloons and it was a hit, the song House of Balloons / Glass Table Girls single handily influenced many RnB songs you hear today.

After the release of House of Balloons then came the EPs Thursday and Echoes of Silence. His music gained a lot of popularity and was mentioned in Pitchfork and The New York Times, at the time he refused to do interviews and would only use Twitter to communicate with fans.

He did his very first show at the Mod Club in Toronto and 6ix god Drake was there in attendance. Drake was a fan and eventually took him on tours as an opening act and Abel even wrote 4 songs off of the Take Care album, and did some vocals as well.

During all of this he was getting LOTS of offers from record labels but ended up signing with Republic Records, yes, he definitely refused the Drake offer too. Upon signing he re-released all of his 3 EPs onto the album known as Trilogy with 4 brand news tracks featured on the album. The album did numbers and went platinum by the RIAA.

Now its 2013 and he came out with one of my top 3 albums KissLand. This album wasn’t as big as Trilogy at the time and he faced some criticism from fans for the different sound and album name, but nonetheless it was loved by critics.

After Kiss Land he kind of took a break and would only release remixes or be featured on songs. He later announced the King of The Fall tour after the release of Often and King of The Fall on SoundCloud (one of his best songs btw).

Almost getting to the end I swear.

In 2015 he released Beauty Behind the Madness and was now known by everybody; he gained a lot of attention from the movie 50 Shades of Grey with his song Earned It.

The biggest songs from the album were The Hills and Can’t Feel My Face, you couldn’t turn on a single radio without hearing that pop candy song at the time. Which fun fact that song is about doing coke and was actually nominated for a Kids Choice award!

And yeah, after all of this came Starboy and the EP My Dear Melancholy and most recently After Hours which is one of his best, in my opinion.

He’s gained a lot of respect in the industry from people like Elton John, Prince, Quincy Jones, Beyoncé and hell of a lot more.

So, if you haven’t listened to one of his albums yet, what the hell are you doing? Go and listen now!