Portrait · Brian Ziff / CC BY-SA 4.0

The Weeknd

Singer, songwriter and actor

Born 1990

The Weeknd is the Canadian singer, songwriter and screen performer Abel Makkonen Tesfaye. Born in Scarborough, Ontario, to Ethiopian parents, he developed an early creative partnership with school friend La Mar Taylor. He grew up speaking Amharic and first wrote pop demos for other singers before becoming a performer. In a later interview he recalled American Apparel colleagues playing his anonymous music without knowing he made it. Online recordings led to the House of Balloons, Thursday and Echoes of Silence mixtapes, later collected as Trilogy. Kiss Land preceded the broader pop breakthrough of Beauty Behind the Madness; Starboy, After Hours and Dawn FM extended his mix of R&B, electronic production and cinematic characters. His recording collaborators include Ariana Grande, Daft Punk, Doja Cat, Swedish House Mafia, Madonna and Playboi Carti. Hurry Up Tomorrow continued that album career while its associated feature film gave him acting, co-writing and producing credits. Screen work spans a cameo in Uncut Gems, animation voices, concert films and Tedros in The Idol, which he co-created. His public humanitarian work includes a World Food Programme ambassadorship and the XO Humanitarian Fund. Recent Japanese work includes Out Of Time with Tomoko Aran and an unreleased Tokyo performance with Yoko Takahashi. His personal disclosures remain dated: interviews describe listening influences, historical walks, named dogs and professional event skincare, without establishing a current private routine.

Verified identityCore facts checked against named sources.

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Connected people

ConnectionLa Mar TaylorSchool friend and early XO creative collaborator.

ConnectionTomoko AranCollaborator on the 2026 version of Out Of Time.

ConnectionYoko TakahashiPerformed unreleased Tokyo together in Japan.

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Attribution.

Date not supplied OfficialOriginal

Image rights ledger

The Weeknd photographed by Brian Ziff in 2021

Media: Brian Ziff

Source-level licence and VRT permission ticket 2022111010014851 checked. Original portrait personally visually inspected; editorial contextual use with attribution. Independent gap reviewer rechecked source rights and actual portrait-format pixels October 2, 2026.

Source file CC BY-SA 4.0

The Weeknd performing at Festival d’été de Québec in July 2018

Media: Nicolas Padovani

Exact Commons file and Flickr licence review checked. Existing portrait crop personally visually inspected; original Flickr live access failed, retained honestly. Independent gap reviewer rechecked source rights and actual portrait-format pixels October 2, 2026.

Source file CC BY 2.0