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Image via Dan Garcia
Abel Tesfaye, bka The Weeknd doesn’t exactly paint himself as a timid figure in his music, but in a new interview with Pitchfork, that’s exactly how he comes across. Speaking about his influences, working with Kanye West, and achieving mainstream success, the interview covers a multitude of interesting topics with some surprising answers. He mentions the lack of confidence in himself during his first show, as well as his desire to possibly create an instrumental album in the future.
Starting the interview off, Abel spoke about how he got into singing, and how he still feels he’s not “100% there yet” when it comes to star quality. Playing in arenas gave him a lot of confidence, he admits, but he says he can “never be Michael Jackson or do what he did, but he is definitely a good inspiration: I want to give the kids that feeling.” When asked what that feeling he’s referring to actually is, he explained by saying “When Michael died, it felt like part of my family died.”
He says he wants to make his fans feel like that if anything were to happen to him, because first and foremost, he wants his fans to know that his music is “for them.” His biggest inspirations are Michael Jackson, R. Kelly, and Prince, which explains a lot. “Prince turned experimental music into pop music,” he elaborates when asked what it is he likes so much about Prince. “He was inspired by the Cocteau Twins and new wave pop and brought it into R&B when he first started, and then it became this cool, next-level, kind of hard-to-digest music.”
When asked what it was like to work with Kanye West, he had nothing but good things to say. Abel boldly proclaimed that 808s & Heartbreak is “one of the most important bodies of work of my generation.” He’s not wrong there, as its influence is still being felt in both the underground and the mainstream, particularly with artists like Yung Lean and Future.
Read the whole interview here.
