Video will appear as you scroll through the story
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.
“I left home when I was about seventeen. Left one weekend and just never came home.”
— Abel Tesfaye, The Guardian, 2016
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.
Rolling Stone -- The Weeknd
"Rolling Stone" from Thursday is the thesis statement of Abel's couch-surfing years. Over glacial production, he declares himself rootless and alone, a rolling stone with no home to return to. For this episode, it is the sound of a seventeen-year-old sleeping on his fourth couch this month and calling it freedom.
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.
0 XP earned this session