Yet songwriter Savan Kotecha, a longtime Martin cohort, says things were more complicated at first. “We had some ideas that in hindsight definitely would not have fit,” says Kotecha. “He told us, ‘Nah, I’m not really feeling that.’ ”

The team didn’t “get it” until a Weeknd show at the Hollywood Bowl, where it realized how diverse and hip Tesfaye’s audience was, with the likes of West and Rick Rubin hanging out backstage. “We were trying to bring him too much into our world,” says Kotecha.
“We had to learn how to move into his -- to be more dark and innovative, and to trust him.”

“He’s the kind of voice that just can’t go unnoticed for long,” says Ellie Goulding, who covered The Weeknd in 2012. Says Albert: “The culture has come to him.”

Today, says Tesfaye, “I still loosen up, but I have much more control. I can go overboard, but nobody can stop me but myself. Me and myself have a better relationship now than we did back then.”
Another bond that has been strengthened is with his Ethiopian-Canadian single mother, from whom Tesfaye became estranged when he dropped out of high school to move downtown and make music. “I couldn’t face her until I made something out of myself,” he says. “I couldn’t go back home as a nobody.”

Tesfaye admires, even emulates, trailblazing black pop giants. One of his prime role models, along with Prince, is Michael Jackson: When he first read the lyrics to “Dirty Diana,” which he covered on Trilogy, Tesfaye says, “I got emotional -- it’s when I first knew I wanted to write songs.” Indeed, critics have compared the bubble and flow of “Can’t Feel My Face” to Jackson, and Kotecha says the groove of “In the Night” was inspired by the “swing” of Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel.”

“When she introduced me and the whole stadium screamed their lungs out, it kind of threw me off. I did not expect that reaction.”