Tesfaye's third album Starboy (2016) was a similar commercial success and included the number-one single of the same name, and also won Best Urban Contemporary Album at the 2018 Grammy Awards. It was among the best-selling albums of 2015. His sophomore album, Beauty Behind the Madness (2015), with the Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles " Can't Feel My Face" and " The Hills", won Best Urban Contemporary Album and was nominated for Album of the Year at the 2016 Grammy Awards. His debut studio album, Kiss Land, was released in 2013. In 2012, he signed with Republic Records and re-released the mixtapes in the compilation album Trilogy. He quickly earned a following and critical recognition from several mainstream publications due to his dark style of Contemporary R&B and the mystique surrounding his identity. Under XO Records, Tesfaye released his debut mixtapes: House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence. The letter "E" was excluded to avoid trademark problems with Canadian band the Weekend.
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However, his estranged producer Jeremy Rose claims the name was his idea. He chose his stage name in tribute to when he, along with his best friend and future creative director La Mar Taylor, dropped out of high school at seventeen years old, took his mattress, and "left one weekend and never came home". Two years later, he met music executives Sal Slaiby and Amir Esmailian, with whom he founded XO Records. Born in Toronto and raised in Scarborough, Tesfaye began his recording career in 2009 by anonymously uploading his song "Do It" to YouTube. Abel Makkonen Tesfaye (born February 16, 1990), known professionally as the Weeknd (pronounced "weekend"), is a Canadian singer, songwriter and record producer.