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The Weeknd · S1 E3
The Dropout
Leaving high school at 17, couch-surfing across Toronto, and disappearing into the city's nightlife
Abel Tesfaye packs everything he owns into a garbage bag and walks out of his grandmother's Scarborough apartment. He is seventeen years old and does not leave a note.
Kid Cudi, Day 'N' Nite (official music video, 2008). A lonely kid who only comes alive after dark, drifting through a world that does not quite fit. When this song dropped, Abel was living the exact same pattern on the other side of the border: sleeping through the day, disappearing into Toronto until sunrise.
Day 'N' Nite, Kid Cudi (2008)
Produced by Dot da Genius, "Day 'N' Nite" built an entire aesthetic out of loneliness and insomnia. The beat sounds like 3 AM everywhere at once, and Cudi's half-sung delivery proved you did not need to be a traditional rapper or singer to connect with millions. The song eventually went Diamond, certified for over ten million units. Abel was living the exact nocturnal pattern Cudi described: sleeping through the day, alive only after dark, caught between two worlds and belonging to neither.
TAP TO REVEAL: Where did Abel sleep during his first year after dropping out?
West Hill Collegiate Institute
The Scarborough high school Abel attended before dropping out in grade eleven. A short walk from the apartment he left behind, and the last classroom he would ever sit in.
The Morning, The Weeknd
"The Morning" from House of Balloons is what the next day sounds like after a night with no address to go home to. Over a chopped Cocteau Twins sample, Abel sounds half-awake and half-gone, drifting through the aftermath of whatever happened last night. For this episode, it is the soundtrack to waking up on someone else's couch and doing it all again.
The Morning, The Weeknd (2011)
Abel's morning-after confessional: hazy, unapologetic, and completely uninterested in pretending last night didn't happen. Every verse reads like a diary entry from someone who has no home to go back to and no reason to be awake before noon.
The Dropout Years
Abel has no home, no diploma, and no money. What he does have is a city full of dark corners and a growing appetite for the things that happen in them. Next: the years Abel never talks about.
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