The Weeknd

Abel Tesfaye was a Toronto kid, born in 1990 to Ethiopian parents, when he started uploading songs to YouTube under a name with the “e” knocked out of it. No face. No interviews. Just the music, which was unlike most of what was around it: slow, narcotic, sung in a falsetto that sounded both wounded and unbothered. The 2011 mixtape House of Balloons made him a cult figure before anyone knew what he looked like. It was sex and drugs and 4 a.m. regret, recorded like a secret.

For years that was the brand. Dark R&B, after-hours music, the sound of a party you should have left already. He was very good at it, and he made it bigger than anyone expected a sound that bleak to get.

Then he turned toward pop without softening, and the second act dwarfed the first. The After Hours run made him one of the most-streamed artists alive and rewrote chart records that had stood for decades. He has also been willing to bite the hand: when the industry’s top awards snubbed him, he said so loudly and walked away from the process. The voice stayed the same. The scale changed completely.