The end of The Weeknd and the power of owning your name

One of pop music’s biggest stars is calling it quits — well, kind of . . . 

The Weeknd, whose real name is Abel Tesfaye, is wrapping up his three-album journey of self-discovery and annihilation with the release of his sixth studio album, “Hurry Up Tomorrow.” Tesfaye’s expansive 22-track venture has already become the biggest debut of the year, just weeks after its release, acting as a follow-up to the artist’s other smash hit albums, “After Hours” and “Dawn FM.”

As one of the few dominant male pop stars of recent years, Tesfaye has consistently topped the charts, earning the longest-running Billboard No. 1 song ever with 2019’s “Blinding Lights.” In 2023, he explored new ventures with HBO’s “The Idol,” a drama series created alongside Sam Levinson, and though it became a staggering critical and commercial failure, Tesfaye has remained a cultural force, reinventing himself through his albums and tours.

But in “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” the Ethiopian-Canadian singer is seemingly breaking free of the shackles of “The Weeknd” moniker. Tesfaye enlists heavy hitters like Giorgio Moroder, Anitta, Playboi Carti, Lana Del Rey and Travis Scott to aid him to “kill” his pop star persona, a “character” that has lived with Tesfaye since his mysterious and anonymous 2011 debut with the mixtape “House of Balloons,” groaning about drugs, girls and fame.

Nearly 15 years since his ascension into the upper echelons of pop and R&B music, Tesfaye no longer clings to his stage name and its pill-popping, party monster persona. As the son of two Ethiopian immigrants who migrated to Canada, Tesfaye is ready to reclaim his given name and identity — struggles that many diaspora people like myself know all too well. 

In a recent cover story interview with Variety, the musician said that inhabiting The Weeknd at this point is a mental challenge. “It’s a headspace I’ve gotta get into that I just don’t have any more desire for,” he said.

“You have a persona, but then you have the competition of it all. It becomes this rat race: more accolades, more success, more shows, more albums, more awards and more No.1s. It never ends until you end it,” Tesfaye explained.

Making moves towards this change for awhile now, in 2023, he told W Magazine, “I’ll still make music, maybe as Abel, maybe as The Weeknd. But I still want to kill The Weeknd.”

This sense of regaining ownership over his identity is felt through the track “Red Terror,” off of his new album. The song is a reference to Qey Shibir, a violent period in Ethiopia’s history that launched a civil war in the 1970s, sparking a famine that led to the mass exodus of Ethiopian refugees.

Tesfaye’s parents were a part of this influx of refugees from Ethiopia seeking asylum in Western countries like Canada and the U.S. My parents also were persecuted by the government at this time and left the country for Somalia in 1990. My dad lives to tell the tale of how the violent militia, called the Derg, attempted to recruit him and ultimately beat and arrested him for his opposition.

Tesfaye sings from his mother’s perspective, “I ran from the terror, the ground was red from the led/My only intention, alone, I left to the West/Then moved to the city, eight months, we wеre pregnant.”

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In the song’s outro, Tesfaye says, “Death is nothing at all/Call me by the old, familiar name.”

It’s here that Tesfaye seems to come to terms with the evolution that has happened within himself, appearing to crave what is familiar to him — his cultural background — while moving away from the fame, success and alienation that went along with his moniker, The Weeknd. 

As a child who grew up in the internet age, I only learned about Tesfaye because of my older brother, Nathan. Just two years older, my brother was the person I looked to to determine what was cool or not. So when I asked him when he discovered The Weeknd, he texted me, “Been waiting my whole life to flex that I’m an OG fan.”

A fan of Drake, like many other perpetually online teenage boys at the time, Nathan found The Weeknd in 2011 when the rapper dropped a freestyle and name-dropped him. It was on Wikipedia that he found out that The Weeknd was a “dark rnb Ethiopian-Canadian singer from Toronto.” 

“Outside of the obvious Ethiopian diaspora connection, the music was already insane,” Nathan said.

There is a sense of pride in witnessing the rise of an Ethiopian artist on a global stage, but even more so, it is validating to experience— in real time—his rejection of the whitewashing that happens when one of your people makes it mainstream. Anyone with a name unfamiliar to the Western world understands its power. It is alienating when a teacher butchers your name in a classroom, when someone pauses before saying it, or when they altogether give you another name to simplify their inability to pronounce it.

While Tesfaye has been an advocate for the Ethiopian plight, donating millions to aid Ethiopians affected by the perils of war or funding research to preserve and further Ethiopic Studies at Toronto University, inhabiting his given name is the next step in rectifying the pain and generational trauma so prevalent in “Hurry Up Tomorrow.” He sings in “Enjoy The Show,” the “traumas in my life, I’ve been hesitant to heal ’em.”

For me, as a third-culture kid navigating multiple identities, I always felt torn—caught between the cultural world my parents raised me in and the white Pennsylvania suburb that rejected our customs and native tongue. In response, I tirelessly corrected people who mispronounced my name or purposely tried to assign me another one. Yet despite my defiance, I still hated my name. I hated the difficulty attached to its pronunciation. In my teenage angst, there was nothing about it that empowered me.

In adulthood, however, I came to realize that I have nothing to prove—to others or even to myself. I had always questioned why my parents didn’t give me an easier name, like Saron or Salem, both popular Ethiopian names. But mine was a name I couldn’t escape; it followed me everywhere until I finally accepted its power. It holds thousands of years of history and culture, something I no longer want to shun just because it makes me different.

Similarly, Tesfaye seems exhausted from hiding behind the grandeur of his alter ego, finally ready to step out of the shadows and reveal his true face, name, and self. When all is said and done, I hope this version of the pop star finds peace and meaning in where he came from—because I know I did.