Preface
I see a lot of people saying they only know The Weeknd for his stuff on the radio and haven’t dug any deeper. The Weeknd didn’t become the pop-sensation he is today over night. It happened over 7 years during which Abel worked on a lot of different music with a lot of different people.
Brief History
Abel Tesfaye was born in 1990 in Scarborough, Ontario. Him and his best friend Lamar (who is still one of the pivotal members of the XO movement) dropped out of high school when they were both 17 and Abel began pursuing music full time. However, he had few projects before the release of his legendary Trilogy he released as The Weeknd.
(Lamar – Far Right)
Bulleez n Nerdz
2008
Abel began his musical endeavors under the stage name “Kin Kane” when he joined forces with another up coming rapper from Scarborough named Jesse Ray. The two released a handful of songs together. Most of which takes a lot of digging on the internet to find bad quality videos of. Below is a video of Bulleez n Nerdz in the studio and a soundcloud link to one of the songs released by the duo.
Bulleez n Nerdz in the studio with Majes-D
Bulleez n Nerdz – Have You Tonight
The two had great chemistry performing together at parties & decided to make songs together. They performed their first song for, Godzilla , the first track they had ever done together, After loving their personality and music he introduced them to his upcoming Toronto producer Kashif Majeed better known as Kid Klassic who was working at the time with a female R&B/POP group called Mynt. At that time Abel was writing R&B songs for other artists trying to make a library of material and the duo were working on some mixtape tracks, a first single was slated for release early 2009.
The Noise
You might see a lot of youtube comments on his videos claiming something like “I’ve been riding with Abel since The Noise.” Well those people are full of shit because the songs from this era leaked months after The Weeknd’s House of Balloons and Thursday mixtapes had already been released. The Noise EP is essentially a collection of loose tracks during a time that Abel and a few producers were making music under the name The Noise which were ultimately never released. The music was very generic, “poppy” sounding R&B. Similar to the likes of Chris Brown (no offense). That being said, the music wasn’t bad.
A couple of tracks that stood out on this EP were:
Love Through Her & Birthday Suit
After working with Entyse Entertainment’s producer Kashif Majeed aka Kid Klassic during his time as part of the duo Bulleez n Nerdz, Abel, Majeed & two other upcoming vocalists Tyler Done & Natalie Di Luccio formed a production/writing team called The Noise. They were signed by Lavish Life Management , a management company for producers and songwriters which shops their material to major label artists in order to get their beats, or songs, out onto airwaves and albums. Also signed to lavish life at that time was producer T-Minus whom Abel had worked with.
Here’s a video of T-Minus x The Weeknd – Studio 2008
May 23rd 2011
Complex released the track Birthday Suit, a demo for Drake which Abel had also recorded with The Noise. The track got members on KanyeToThe interested in what other early Abel Tesfaye material may be floating around on the internet so they started searching. A member by the name of ‘Djamieldid’ did some Googling and found The Noise and Abel’s Myspace. Which lead another member to find a snippet of “Release Me” from The Noise Myspace, Djamiel later then posted 4 snippets for Do It, Rescue You, Appointment and X-Ray. Which also included download links they had found as it started building a lot of traction on a lot of different blogs. Ear Milk then put them all together and named it The Noise EP.
She’s So Lovely | Jeremy Rose Controversy
October 2009
June 2010
Abel met an upcoming producer from Toronto, by the name of Jeremy Rose (aka Zodiac) at a mutual friends house party. After hearing Abel freestyle over one of his beats (What You Need) Jeremy asked Abel if he wanted to work on some dark R&B songs. Jeremy had already done the instrumentals and production for the songs years before and all that was missing was the vocals. For example, the instrumental for What You Need was one of the first songs Rose had produced back in 2007 and the first song Abel had put vocals on. The duo recorded 4 songs together, What You Need which sampled Aaliyah’s Rock The Boat, Loft Music which sampled Beach House’s Gila, The Party which also sampled Beach House’s Master of None and a screwed version of The Morning. All of which were demos and early versions. They had also been working on a little rap
October 12th 2010
The duo released their first single What You Need as ‘The WeekEnd’, with Abel Tesfaye on the vocals and Jeremy Rose handling the production.
December 13/14th
Two months later Drake had introduced them on his Blog a day prior, their second single, The Morning started hitting the blogs a day after.
2012
The’s duo starting gaining recognition online and were featured that same month in The Fader, mixpakrecords, Robin-waters & The NYTimes, being described as a breath of fresh air, going on to craft some of their own beautifully dressed R&B hits, capturing smooth vocal riffs alongside glitched and dragged beats even getting a shout out from beatmaker extraordinaire Flying Lotus . A Mixtape was supposed to be released during Christmas but was never finished due to a falling out between the two which led to their split but with Jeremy Rose agreeing that Abel can keep the songs they had already recorded.It’s not clear why the two parted ways but it’s rumored that shortly after the fallof 2010 due to “creative differences” Rose ended the relationship. Tesfaye & the rest of the SSL crew began to seek out new producers to work with. Upcoming Canadian producer, Carlo “Illangelo” Montagnese was brought in for multiple studio sessions. An agreement was reached between Rose & Tesfaye, which allowed Tesfaye to keep the stems (demos) off all their previous work.
Jeremy Rose (under the alias Zodiac) claimed that he helped construct the aesthetic we heard in the the Trilogy and was not given production credit for the work he had put in. In fact, he said the whole “dark r&b” sound was his idea. Allegedly, Rose helped produce early versions of “Loft Music”, “What You Need”, and “The Morning”, all of which were songs off of The Weeknd’s first mixtape: House of Balloons. When Pitchfork reviewed House of Balloons, they credited Rose in the review. In turn, the site received statements from Lamar C Taylor, long time friend of Abel’s and XO affiliate, as well as Illangelo, one of the producers who is credited for making House of Balloons the masterpiece it was. The statements claimed that there had been a mistake and Rose should not have been credited. Illangelo said in his message to Pitchfork:
“Joe Colly’s album review credits Jermey Rose on production, this is incorrect. Production on House Of Balloons headed by Doc McKinney & Illangelo.”
Here is an early version of “The Morning” produced by Rose
Whether Jeremy Rose was a producer who Abel really stepped on or just a guy who is mad he missed out on the success remains a mystery.
Rose continued to produce as Zodiac until 2012. His Soundcloud and Youtube channel remain inactive. (Until 6 months ago) Below is a song by him you may find familiar due it being sampled by Drake on the song “WuTang Forever” from his album Nothing Was The Same.
Zodiac – Loss Config Soundcloud: Zodiacbeat
Build Up To House Of Ballons | Doc Mckinney & Illangelo
Two producers who played a HUGE role in the success of The Trilogy were Doc Mckinney and Illangelo. Every XO stan recognizes that their contributions to The Trilogy were just as significant as Abel’s own contributions. However, to the casual listener these names may go under the radar.
Doc Mckinney is a Canadian producer who has been around for way longer than people may think. Before even working with The Weeknd, Doc’s track record included artists such as Maroon 5, Cee Lo Green, and Mary J. Blige. He produced a big part of House of Balloons and Thursday then went on to also work with Drake on Take Care and is now working again with The Weeknd on his next album.
Illangelo is the other producer who worked on The Trilogy. He’s also been involved in a lot of the singles other artists have released which feature The Weeknd including Drake’s Crew Love (originally a song Abel wrote). Aside from his work with The Weeknd, Illangelo has a solo career and is signed to Bromance Records which he released his solo album under: The History of Man. Here’s a song off the album. Really atmospheric music.
January 2011
After officially operating under the stage name The Weeknd, Abel started working with producer Illangelo, a video for the pair in the Studio had been released by the SSL crew but was then removed. One of the first songs they worked on was High for This, a song which was co-written and produced by Canadian L.A based producer Cirkut in 2010.
While working with Illangelo, Abel was introduced to veteran producer, musician and guitarist Martin Doc Mckinney who had previously worked with the likes of Esthero & Res, Illangelo was Mckinney’s protege & right hand. The three got in the studio together and starting working on the ‘masterpiece’ through the first 3 months of 2011. At that time, the 3 songs which were previously released at the end of 2010 started resurfacing under ”The Weeknd”, after crew members and Mckinney started re-tweeting and posting them, building a hype for what this mysterious Toronto R&B ‘act’ had to offer.
Both Doc and Illangelo are confirmed to be working with The Weeknd on his latest album signifying that there will be some similar production to his older mixtapes.
February 21st 2011 | First Tweet “I’m on that shit that you can’t smell baby…”
The Weeknd opened a twitter account, tweeting the line “i’m on that **** that you can’t smell baby.. so put down your perfume”, a week later on march 6th , the first song under his new alias, ”Wicked Games” was released, produced by Doc Mckinney, the next day Drake tweeted another line from the same song, posting it on his OVO blog with the tag “OVOXO Gang, Faded Too Long” leading to more hype & anticipation knowing that this “act/group” was somehow affiliated with October’s very own. The Weeknd took to twitter thanking everyone for the response to the song and that this was only the beginning & also shutting down rumors that he was a group or a Duo Act.
March 12th 2011 | XO Til We Overdose
The Weeknd & his crew started a Tumblr blog, headlining it “XO Til We Overdose, a line which in someway he explained, also redefining and re-introducing his crew (which were previously known as She’s So Lovely).
March 20th | theweeknd.com Crashes
After promising more songs & tweeting it’s lyrics The Weeknd released another song titledComing Down also produced by Doc Mckinney, he later took to twitter asking his fans to be online at 8 PM then posting a picture/sign shortly after reading that a mixtape of all the songs released & more would be up on the website the-weeknd.com in 2hrs, causing the site to crash immediately after it’s upload
In almost 3 weeks the mixtape entitled House Of Balloons was downloaded 200,000 times from The Weeknd’s official website alone creating a frenzy on the internet and music blogs. The Mixtape contained 9 tracks
Chapter I | The Trilogy
Finally we get to the infamous mixtapes. This set of mixtapes is the reason you see so many X’O flairs on HHH. The Trilogy is often times given credit for revolutionizing R&B and to make it even more impressive, the three mixtapes were all released within a year. I HIGHLY recommend listening to the versions of the mixtapes that were originally released over the remastered versions he released as The Trilogy. As I’ve listed the mixtapes below, you can click each of their names to find the official datpiff download link.
House of Balloons – Released March of 2011, House of Balloons was the first project Abel Tesfaye released using the alias The Weeknd. He said in his AMA that at first, The Weekend was supposed to be the name of the mixtape but after not liking his real name, decided to try it as a stage name and it stuck. The tape consisted of 9 songs but I’ll only recommend a few essentials and let you experience the whole thing for yourself.
House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls
Thursday – The Weeknd came out with his second tape in August of that same year with a slightly different sound. The vocals on this tape blend with the music much more and just slur a lot in general making for a really unique sound. Like I said above, you should definitely listen to the tape in its entirety for the full experience but here are a few recommendations.
Echoes of Silence – The final tape was released December of that year. This tape contains a lot more lyricism and storytelling. It is probably the strongest of the mixtapes in that regard. The hooks feel grander but he didn’t veer far from his bare bones instrumental style just yet.
An example of the remastering differences between the original mixtapes and The Trilogy release can be heard if you listen to the original version of Wicked Games above and this music video version here . The differences are subtle but significant to the observant listener.
3 mixtapes, 9 songs each amounting to 27 songs released in 9 months. He later released three new songs that came bundled in with the tapes in the Trilogy package.
Twenty Eight was added to House of Balloons.
Valerie was added to Thursday.
Till Dawn (Here Comes the Sun) was added to Echoes of Silence.
OVOXO
The Drake cosign played a big role in bringing The Weeknd to a larger audience. Drake first appeared with The Weeknd on the song “The Zone” on the second mixtape of the Trilogy: Thursday. Soon after, The Weeknd appeared on Drake’s album Take Care on the song “Crew Love” which did relatively well amongst a mainstream audience. The OVOXO movement made waves and built huge momentum that unfortunately came to a hault when The Weeknd signed with Republic for the release of the The Trilogy. There was rumored beef between the two over Abel’s decision to pass up signing to OVO. However, the two seemed to have patched things up before the release of Kiss Land which was made obvious by the song Live For. Although the song couldn’t hold up compared to their previous collaborations, fans were just happy to see the two working together again.
Chapter II | Kiss Land
The Weeknd’s second commercial album (the Trilogy technically being the first) was released in September of 2013. Leading up to it, fans were hyped because he had released the self-titled song Kiss Land , which is almost 8 minutes long, as a teaser and it was exactly what fans were hoping for. The dark atmosphere hadn’t changed. However, once the album released it was obvious he was influenced by different things. The whole aesthetic of the videos, the tour, the merch, etc. was influenced by Japanese culture which signified his experiences leaving Canada for the first time. Although it didn’t tank, Kiss Land was not received nearly as well by the fans as The Trilogy was. Here are a couple of standouts from the album, the song Kiss Land linked above being one of them.
ALSO. Please check out the directors cut of the Kiss Land music video here. If I recall correctly it was quickly removed off YouTube…you can see why. Personally one of my favorite music videos.
King of the Fall
Since the release of Kiss Land, The Weeknd has released a handful of singles that have the fans excited for his next move. Back in 2014, he released a couple of songs to promote his fall tour titled King of the Fall.
Since the tour he stayed pretty quiet until he gave us a surge of new material/information.
Chapter III | Beauty Behind the Madness
Pre-Release
Here we are at Chapter III of The Weeknd’s journey. The Weeknd recently announced that his third commercial album was set to release August 28th. The singles that had been released so far were pretty well received but had fans wondering what sound he’ll be going for on the next album. On one hand he’s released a song relatively similar to his darker stuff, The Hills, but then he went and released a super funk-pop song, I Can’t Feel My Face. While both are good songs in their own right, they’re very different leaving listeners curious which direction the album will go.
Release
Why Girls Born In The 90s Was Scrapped & Merged With The Outro Of Acquainted?
“In the 90’s came from some sessions with Illangelo, Doc, Da Heala and DBS, but it was changed because one of the producers left the project – Doc.
It was on the table until “last minute, but once he decided not to be on the project they went and recorded Acquainted, which from what I’ve been told only has Illangelo’s and Da Heala’s production. There was also another song produced by Da Heala and himself that got to the mastering stage and then got scrapped.” (Accurate Source)
Hard core fans are left asking:
Where is the incredible Doc Mckinney production that was riddled throughout Trilogy.
1. Doc & Illangelo don’t get along?
It’s very strange that Doc went silent about this album and then suddenly Illangelo was in the picture again. They haven’t worked together since Trilogy. Not a single time but The Weeknd has worked with both of them a bunch of time. They kept following and unfollowing each other in Twitter.
The standard line is that Doc only wants to produce full albums, not just odd tracks in between those of other producers.
Last time I remember, Abel was talking/tweeting about how he’s paired up with Doc and Illangelo for this new album, Illangelo produced Losers, The Hills and Acquainted. If he stuck to these guys, we most likely could’ve got a album sounding like a mix of Trilogy and Kiss Land. Even Abel himself said the sound was sounding nostalgic. But it’s clear Abel doesn’t want that. BBTM reflects this new found vision for for money, fame and creativity.
“Money is the only thing I’m chasing” – Tell Your Friends
Why?
Well, when Kiss Land stalled, The Weeknd fell into a creative rut. “I just kept getting more and more depressed,” he says. He considered relocating from Toronto to Seattle in search of a “super-drugged-out Nirvana vibe.” Instead, after writing and scrapping an album’s worth of material, he started spending more time in Los Angeles and listening to his label. Republic got him a choice placement on the 50 Shades of Grey soundtrack with “Earned It” and set up a duet with Ariana Grande on her club-ready single “Love Me Harder,” produced by synth-pop wizard Max Martin. “At first I was kind of iffy about it,” the Weeknd says of the collaboration, which would have been unthinkable in the old days. “Five years ago? Definitely not. I was the young starving artist that wanted to do it all by myself.” – Rolling Stone Interview
What could have been if he didn’t get entangled with Max Martin?
Him and Doc were in the studio in Seattle for a solid 5 months. On the Kiss Land tour he repeatedly said he was going to record with Doc in Seattle. The only product we have to show for that amount of time was the ‘Drunk In Love Remix’ that Doc said they did in two days on twitter once. King Of The Fall was another throwaway with that vibe to get fans hyped before the tour.
Additionally, Doc said he’s on The Weeknd’s next album and said that they were cool, Abel said he was his mentor like Quincy was to Michael. They were tweeting about making ‘dirty baby making music’, Abel favorited tons of Docs tweets then patches it up Illangelo to finish this album at the end of 2014 then we get start getting contradictory confusing sounds from what we expected of him. When it was time to build the tracklist Abel starts to throw away all the Doc tracks then Doc goes silent.
Fans Were Saying:
“We’ve lost The Weeknd”
But honestly, we never had him, and he told us this would happen on Rolling Stone.
“Baby I got you. Until you’re used to my face. And my mystery fades. I got you, So baby love me, Before they all love me, Until you won’t love me, Because they all love me, I’ll be different, I think I’ll be different, I hope I’m not different, And I hope you’ll still listen, But until then, Baby I got you, I got you”
There were rumors early on of him telling Drake he was going to bigger then MJ. His idol is MJ the KING OF POP. Abel seemed to want to be a figure like MJ from day one. It makes sense.
Maybe he thought working with Nicki Minajs producer would be enough and he could blow up off that. Maybe he’s ego got the best of him because it didn’t really work out that well. Sure he got more fans but everything still wasn’t working out. It’s clear he doubted himself after Kiss Land wasn’t as well received as he had hoped for. He sais it himself in the Rolling Stone interview. Maybe he realised he couldn’t blow up by himself, he needed a hit and he needed help from the likes of Max Martin (producer), a hit movie (50 Shades Of Grey) and a face everyone recgonises (Ariana Grande)
At the end of the day he’s just a 25 year old kid from Toronto that wants to be the modern day Michael Jackson.
Not too much to ask for.
Chapter IV | ?
Ever since BBTM The Weeknd has been on a tear of performances, tours, too many awards to count, a handful of features and a couple of music videos.
We’ve had a album’s worth of music leak (15 tracks I believe) with a few nostalgic hints at Trilogy Weeknd. In the mean time, there has been no comment from The Weeknd.
He’s purged all his Instagram posts 2-3 times to date that appears to be an ode to ‘restarting fresh’.
BUT the most promising news we’ve got thus far is that he’s back working with his HOB producers Doc McKinney and Illangelo.
He’s cookin’ something up, we will see whether we do or don’t love him for it.
–
Written By,
Faroz Ahmadi, KTT Member and Alex Sandalis (Up To BBTM Section)
BBTM onwards: Alex Sandalis with excerpts from Reddit.
Jungle Beats Radio (Melbourne)
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