After years of speculation and no clear answer, the Weeknd finally gave a direct response to the origin of his stage name during his Reddit Q&A. When the Toronto crooner was 17, he dropped out of high school and convinced friend Lamar to do the same. Here’s how he told it:

We grabbed our mattresses from our parents threw it in our friends shitty van and left one weekend and never came back home. It was gonna be the title of HOB. I hated my name at the time though so I tried it as a stage name. It sounded cool. I took out the “e” because there was already a canadian band named the weekend (copyright issues).

Here are some other notable points from the session:

1. He was influenced by movies such as Scanners, Naked Lunch, The Thing, Chinatown, Enter the Void, Amadeus and Videodrome while creating Kiss Land.
2. He has a “big” collaboration with Diplo for another singer’s album in the works.
3. Emika is his favorite singer at the moment.
4. Ahmaric is the first language he ever learned. His father was absent and his mother worked all the time so his grandmother raised him until he was around 5 years old. She never spoke English with him.
5. His original demos floating around were never meant to be his own music. They were demos for pop artists but the songs were not seen as “pop enough” so he decided to try his luck at his own career.
6. He will not cover another Michael Jackson song.
7. The hardest part of the recording process for Kiss Land was getting comfortable in other studios, although he says he loved Japan (as is extremely evident in the album artwork).
8. “Professional,” “Adaptation,” and “Pretty” are his favorite songs on the album.
9. He says he no longer fucks with old collaborator Jeremy Rose (Zodiac) following an interview he did with Vice, which Abel called “disgusting.”
10. He was disappointed in Chan-wook Park’s film Stoker, and is disappointed that a US remake of Old Boy is in the works.
11. The actual “house of balloons” is located at 65 Spencer Avenue in Toronto.

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Okay, this actually hit the web in February, but better late than never.

If you’re not up on Johnny Rain, you will most likely be tweeting about him after this 13-track project. L.o.M., produced entirely by the Southern California artist himself, features some of the most attention-grabbing sonic elements since The Weeknd’s House of Balloons. Described by the 6J Recordings signee as “Avant-Electro,” the sound is at once cold and atmospheric, while still drawing listeners in with lyrics of loss and attempted reconciliations.

Listeners may draw some comparisons to JMSN’s Priscilla album, distressed girlfriend voicemail interludes and all, but this remains as a powerful standalone project. Stream or download below.

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As announced, The Weeknd will be re-releasing his previous three mixtapes, along with three bonus records, under the title Trilogy on November 13 through Universal.

“Wicked Games” serves as the first single, and it has undergone a new mix and master, as well as some other vocal changes. It makes for a pretty different listen.

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The Weeknd has inked a deal with Universal Republic Records. On the heels of this news, it was announced that Abel will be releasing Trilogy on November 13.

As previously tweeted months back, Trilogy will be a compilation of his three free mixtapes from 2011: House of Balloons, Thursday and Echoes of Silence. All three will be re-mixed and remastered. Both the digital and physical copies will also feature 3 additional bonus tracks.

“Wicked Games,” off House of Balloons is set to be the first official release and will hit Tunes soon.

fall tour, music videos, trilogy release with three bonus tracks. xo.

— The Weeknd (@theweekndxo) September 11, 2012

The post The Weeknd Signs to Universal Republic appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

It’s nice to have everything in one little package.

The post The Weeknd Plans To Re-Release Mixtapes As A Package appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

Remember all those unofficial videos for the Weeknd? There was H5C’s “The Morning,” another for “What You Need,” and Storm Saulter’s version of “Wicked Games.”  Well, released today on the French filmmaker Mikael Colombu’s Facebook is this photo, which later confirmed by the Weeknd that this will be his first visual off his much praised House of Balloons. But it won’t just be a video, rather Colombu and Abel Tesfaye plan to direct together a short-film for “The Knowing.” Expect the man behind Cee-Lo Green’s “Bodies” to reveal more teaser pictures, and even the release date soon.

The post The Weeknd Plans To Debut A Short Film for “The Knowing” appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

For those of you who live under a rock, or potentially in the French-Canadian province of Quebec, The Weeknd is Abel Tesfaye, a Toronto R&B artist who quickly became one of the most talked about R&B artists probably since Prince debuted his Purple Rain movie. The Weeknd’s debut album/mixtape, House of Balloons, was recently crowned The Best Album of 2011 (So Far) by Complex Magazine, & has achieved acclaim from almost every Hip Hop reviewer on the net.

That being said, no one seems to know anything about the dude, Abel, except for Drake, who is one of The Weeknd’s biggest supporters. Drizzy claims to have Abel featured extensively on his upcoming sophomore album, Take Care. The Weeknd even addresses the issue of his own mysterious identity on a recent track entitled, “Rolling Stone”, which is presumably off the upcoming Thursday mixtape. Abel sings on the record, “They recognized, they just recognized, I’m in a life without a home so this recognition’s not enough,” hinting that he may have to spill the beans in order to earn a living in the game. He goes on to sing, “Until you’re used to my face, and my mystery fades,” a subtle rhyme indicating that Abel is well-aware of his mystery moving records & creating buzz.

But the most obvious mystery surrounding Abel has to be the name itself, The Weeknd, an obvious misspelling of the two-day holiday at the end of each week. However, I don’t think we should be so naive to interpret the name, The Weeknd, at face value, since Abel’s records are riddled with double-meanings and ambiguous rhymes. For example, consider another excerpt from “Rolling Stone”, “I think I’ll be different. I hope I’m not different. And I hope you’ll still listen, but until then I got you, I got you, girl I still got you. And I got you.” It’s difficult to decipher whether Abel means, “I got you,” as in, “I have your back,” or, “I got you,” as in, “I still have my girl if this music thing doesn’t work out”. There’s really no way of knowing, which is the beautiful thing about art. It’s complicated.

On the other hand, Abel continually tempts us into believing his bad guy image, with tweets like, “this game needs a villain…” on June 22, and, “expect absolutely nothing from me…” on June 16. If The Weeknd is anything of a villain, he is the Riddler. After all, the gothic aura of Chris Nolan’s Batman films does indeed suit OVOXO’s midnight aesthetics. And then there are the continuous references to drugs on House of Balloons, not to mention a candid photograph that showed up on Twitter, of Abel’s Starbucks cup mixed with Promethazine-Codeine.

So, what does it all mean? Well, it means we should definitely look to reevaluate our interpretation of The Weeknd. Personally,  I believe The Weeknd ought to be pronounced The Weakened, as it is typically the weak, or in this case, the weakened, who fall victim to drugs, and become villains… just like The Riddler in Batman Forever. In the movie, Jim Carrey’s character Dr. Edward Nygma becomes hooked on knowledge, to the point where he hires a bunch of thugs & dangerous herbalists/botanists, Poison Ivy, to make him smarter so he can outsmart & kill Batman. At this point in time, I think we, the listener, are the ones being outsmarted, by The Weeknd’s encrypted lyrical content. However, unlike The Riddler, Abel Tesfaye acknowledges on “Rolling Stone” that he will have to shed his own mystery in order to survive, financially. After all, we all know that the villain dies at the end of the movie… unless a change is made. Hell, look what happened to Heath Ledger.

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