The Weeknd is one of the biggest superstars in the world now, but once upon a time, he thought he didn’t have the right look to break through into the world of R&B.
The Canadian crooner recently sat down for a cover story chat with Interview Magazine, where he revealed that his insecurity was the reason behind his initial elusiveness.
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“I wanted to be very calculated about how I wanted people to see me or hear my music,” The Weeknd said. “The initial reason I did that was I didn’t think I was marketable when I was younger, especially for R&B. I didn’t think I had the right look.
“The R&B look was very sexual back in the day. Obviously there were a lot of singers that didn’t have the conventional R&B look, but for me it was more of a personal thing. I liked getting an unbiased reaction from my music.”
He continued: “People got to just judge me for the art, for the music I was putting out. So it worked in my favor, and then it became a gimmick. No one else was doing it at the time, so it was a breath of fresh air.
“And then the mythology and the mystique of it ended up becoming as interesting as the music. I tried to ride that wave as much as I could. In the internet age it’s impossible, but I got a few years in.”
The Weeknd debuted his face at his very first U.S. performance in 2012 at Coachella – and at his surprise return to the festival in 2023, he actually almost burnt his face.
On Saturday (April 22), a Twitter fan page dedicated to The Weeknd (@NewsWeeknd) shared a video of the Canadian singer’s surprise Coachella performance from last weekend. As he performed his verse on Future‘s 2016 track “Low Life,” the Grammy-Award winner almost got torched by some flames.
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The clip shows the singer trying to hype up the crowd when a sudden burst of fire blows up near him, causing him to back up and shout, “wooo!” Fortunately, he wasn’t burned.
“Be careful Abel,” the fan page wrote in the post’s caption.
Quote tweeting the post, The Weeknd quickly acknowledged that he almost got burned while performing. “ALMOST COOKED ME,” he wrote.
