5 Things You Definitely Don't Know About The Weeknd

Everyone’s fave Scarborough mans turns 28 today, and when it comes to this global R&B superstar, there’s a lot to celebrate.

The Weeknd, whose real name is Abel Tesfaye (pronounced “Eh-Bel Tes-Faye”), has blown up since his rise to fame in 2013. With massive hits like “Can’t Feel My Face” and “The Hills,” The Weeknd has proven that any song he touches turns to gold.

Tesfaye most recently released “Pray For Me” with fellow artist Kendrick Lamar, and was quickly one of the top songs on the Black Panther soundtrack. In fact, “Pray For Me” debuted in fourth place on Billboard’s top R&B/hip hop songs for the week of Feb. 17.

To show our respect for the prince of Toronto hip hop and R&B, we rounded up 5 random facts about notoriously private dude, The Weeknd.

The Weeknd used to live in a haunted house in the Hollywood Hills, and it was certifiably creepy

Or at least, he thought he did. In 2015, The Weeknd told GQ Magazine that he often experiences sleep paralysis, and when he rented one particular house, he would hear voices drift through the halls. “I heard the Hills are over Indian burial ground. But maybe it’s just the wind,” he said.

He dropped out of high school and left home when he was just 17

The Weeknd conducted an Ask Me Anything on Reddit in 2013 to promote his album Kiss Land, and the answers he gave were super honest. One Redditor asked where his stage name came from, and The Weeknd said, “I left home when I was about 17, dropped out of high school and convinced Lamar to do the same lol. We grabbed our mattresses from our parents threw it in our friends shitty van and left one weekend and never came back home. […] I hated my name at the time though so I tried it as a stage name. It sounded cool.”

At 1.73m (five feet eight inches), The Weeknd is as tall as 11 and a half Starbucks Grande cups

For reference, The Weeknd is exactly one full foot shorter than Lebron James—the NBA all-star stacks up at six feet eight inches—and he is four inches taller than comedian Kevin Hart, who adds up to five feet four inches.

He blasts Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall before ~practically~ every show

“I found my falsetto because of Off The Wall, “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” The Weeknd said in Spike Lee’s 2016 documentary about Michael. He’s made it very clear that he’s not trying to be the next King of Pop, but instead channel Jackson’s music through his own. In an interview with the LA Times, The Weeknd said, “There will never be another Michael… [but] he’s everything to me, so you’re going to hear it in my music.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4yyd2EYMY0

The Weeknd dropped the last ‘E’ in his name due to copyright issues

Surprisingly, there’s another Canadian band called The Weekend. The pop-rock group based in London, Ontario had their first performance in 1998, beating Tesfaye to the punch by more than 10 years.