365 days of Weeknd: We chart Abel Tesfaye's rise to fame a year after House of Balloons

By T’Cha Dunlevy

It all started one year ago, almost to the day. Abel Tesfaye, a.k.a., the Weeknd, released his debut mixtape, House of Balloons, online, for free, on March 21, 2011. You could call it the smartest thing he’s ever done, and you wouldn’t be wrong.

Not that I have a comprehensive list of every move the Ethiopian-Canadian Toronto native has made in his 22 years, but let’s just say this was a stroke of genius matched only by his music.

[np-related]

The collection of raw, tripped-out R&B tunes placed him squarely on the cutting edge, while establishing him as the latest in a long line of talented singers who somehow put their finger on the pulse of a moment in time and thereby come to encapsulate it.

He has released two more mixtapes in the interim — Thursday, on Aug. 18, and Echoes of Silence, on Dec. 21 — both in the same format, with the same non-price tag (thus putting him among the front-runners of those capitalizing on the age of free-traded downloads). Both were as entrancing as the debut, cementing the Weeknd as the voice of contemporary soul in 2011-12.

There was a time, not far back, when this could not have happened — for a kid from Canada to so quickly become the epitome of club-land cool in the U.S. and abroad.

Sure, Drake (who, not coincidentally, lent his considerable clout to the Weeknd’s meteoric ascent) paved the way: musically (gravity-free emo-soul-rap), strategically (making his name via online mixtapes) and in precocious attitude.

But the Weeknd took Drake’s lead and ran with it. His tightly guarded persona is more mysterious, his music darker — more R&B than hip hop, smoother yet somehow edgier — and his output more prolific.

His murky tales of drugs, sex and sketchy come-ons are unapologetically single-minded. And yet his music is none the weaker for it. If anything, the consistency is liberating; like the mood-over-melody focus of the synthed-out production, it functions as a tone-setting backdrop to Tesfaye’s slippery vocal meanderings.

This is late-late-night music that evokes an endless post-closing-time daze, where accumulated intoxicants have made reality a relative concept. The Weeknd doesn’t just sing about it, he puts you in the room with him. Songs stretch into the ether, blurring together as you wonder how long you’ve been here, high on these strangely hypnotic sounds.

“I always want you when I’m coming down,” Tesfaye coos on Coming Down, off House of Balloons. Listen to him long enough, and you’ll need to come down, too.

There are antecedents. The Weeknd owes debts to Kanye West’s groundbreaking synth-soul-noir album, 808s, and Heartbreak, to trippy Swedish electro-pop duo the Knife and, yes, to Drake. But also to R. Kelly, Sade and, vocally, to Michael Jackson (whom he repays with an uncanny cover of the song, Dirty Diana, to lead off Echoes of Silence). And let’s not forget Akon, for his elastic croon; and oft-compared contemporary The-Dream, for his more pop-centric sense of atmosphere. Or how about the boundary-pushing slow jams of ‘90s R&B adventurers Maxwell and Aaliyah?

Before anyone could box him in, the Weeknd was sampling ‘80s alternative icons, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and current ambient-indie act, Beach House. Yeah, he’s hip like that.

Most impressive, he touches on all these references without losing focus, without ripping off, and while crafting a distinctly modern sound all his own. From there, he has free rein.

He gets away with heavy-metal guitars and reggae grooves (Life of the Party), acoustic ballads (Rolling Stone), singing en francais (Montreal) and voice-morphing, dubstep-tinged fantasy (Initiation).

It ain’t always pretty, but that’s part of the appeal. The Weeknd’s twisted, predatorial seduction style has garnered him more than 400,000 followers on Twitter, widespread critical acclaim, and a bated-breath frenzy surrounding whom he’ll sign with to finally engage the music industry on more conventional terms — assuming, of course, that day will come; he may have more tricks up his sleeve yet.

Despite repeated predictions of his demise, the Weeknd has shown impressive staying power. One year and three mixtapes later (who does that?), he’s still a hot topic. House of Balloons was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize in September, and the Weeknd was hired to remix Florence and the Machine’s Shake It Out. In November, he collaborated on several tracks off Drake’s second album, Take Care, and reworked Lady Gaga’s Marry the Night for her Born This Way: The Remix album.

As the download frenzy for Echoes of Silence crashed his server in December, his debut landed on numerous year-end Top 10 lists (The New York Times, Billboard, Pitchfork, mine). Then came the official video to his song, The Knowing — an arty affair reminiscent of the surreal, cut-and-paste collage esthetic of West’s Power video.

Tickets for the Weeknd’s concert at Metropolis this Friday went on sale less than three weeks ago, and sold out soon after. He’s slotted to make his U.S. debut at Coachella in April, and to headline the Pitchfork stage at Barcelona’s San Miguel Primavera Sound Festival in June.

There is rumour of another mixtape in the near future, and an album proper by year’s end.

All to say there is no rest for the Weeknd. And the way things are going, the best may be yet to come.

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