Abel Tesfaye grew up in Toronto in a practicing Ethiopian family. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church was part of his childhood routine. This religious imprint has never completely disappeared from his music, even when his lyrics spoke of excess and darkness.
Ethiopian Orthodoxy and The Weeknd’s Childhood
Abel Tesfaye’s family is originally from Ethiopia, a country where Orthodox Christianity has structured social life for centuries. As a child, he attended church with his grandmother, who largely raised him in Scarborough, a neighborhood in Toronto.
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This religious upbringing is reflected in recurring details of his work. References to crosses, redemption, and sin run through his albums without him openly claiming them as a discourse of faith. As explored in The Weeknd’s religion according to dNews, this relationship with spirituality remains a discreet but persistent thread in his discography.
Have you ever noticed those images of Ethiopian crosses in his music videos or on his album covers? They are not trivial aesthetic choices. They directly refer to the liturgical culture that shaped his early years.
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Doubt and Rejection of Faith in Dark Albums
With the mixtapes House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence, The Weeknd constructs a universe saturated with drugs, destructive relationships, and isolation. Religion then appears as a heritage kept at a distance, almost pushed away.
In several interviews given around the time of Beauty Behind the Madness and then Starboy, Abel Tesfaye speaks of a conflicted relationship with faith. He does not deny it, but he puts it aside. His lyrics play with religious codes (confession, fall, temptation) without ever asserting a clear belief.
This positioning is not rare among R&B artists. The difference with The Weeknd is that the religious vocabulary is never used as mere decoration. It reflects a real inner struggle. When he sings about the fall, he knows from where he is falling.
Dawn FM and the Question of Purgatory
The album Dawn FM pushes this tension even further. The entire concept revolves around a radio station that one listens to in a liminal space, a sort of purgatory. The narrator Jim Carrey guides the listener toward “the light.”
It is no coincidence that several music critics have analyzed this album as a spiritual journey. The idea of a space between life and death, between sin and grace, directly borrows from the Christian register. The Weeknd does not preach, but he structures his narrative with religious tools.
- The radio station symbolizes a transitional space, comparable to purgatory in Christian tradition
- The tracks progress from despair to a form of acceptance, following a narrative arc similar to a path of repentance
- Jim Carrey’s voice serves as an almost pastoral guide, accompanying the listener without imposing doctrine
Give Me Mercy and the Spiritual Turn of Hurry Up Tomorrow
The track Give Me Mercy marks a clear break in The Weeknd’s discourse. For the first time, Abel Tesfaye directly addresses a prayer in a title. The tone is no longer ambiguous. He asks for mercy, not as a figure of speech, but as an act of faith.
In an interview relayed by Billboard, he states that his relationship with God is stronger than ever and that he talks to Him constantly. This statement contrasts with years of a distanced posture.
Hurry Up Tomorrow is presented as the last project under the name The Weeknd. Abel Tesfaye has confirmed his intention to abandon this pseudonym, giving the whole a nearly confessional dimension. It is no longer just about music, but about a passage toward a new identity.
What This Shift Changes in His Discography
When revisiting the early projects in light of this evolution, the journey takes on a new coherence. The dark mixtapes become the narrative of a distancing. After Hours and Dawn FM tell the story of wandering. Hurry Up Tomorrow closes the loop with an assumed return.
This is not a pattern that The Weeknd planned from the beginning. He himself acknowledges having gone through phases of deep doubt. The trilogy After Hours, Dawn FM, Hurry Up Tomorrow was not designed as a conversion narrative, but it functions as such in retrospect.
- After Hours explores loneliness and self-destruction, an existential breaking point
- Dawn FM depicts a sonic purgatory, a space for reflection between two states
- Hurry Up Tomorrow introduces mercy and prayer as central themes, completing the journey
Religion and Ethiopian Identity in R&B Music
The Weeknd is not the only R&B artist to incorporate religious themes. Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, or Chance the Rapper have done so before him. His uniqueness lies in the grounding in the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition, much less represented in Anglo-Saxon pop than Protestantism or Catholicism.
This specificity gives his references a different texture. Ethiopian liturgical chants, golden icons, ritual fasting: all cultural elements that surface in his visual and musical aesthetic without being explicitly named.
The choice to abandon the name The Weeknd, itself linked to a hasty departure from the family home in adolescence, reinforces this reading. Abel Tesfaye seems to be returning to what he left behind, not out of nostalgia, but through an artistic path that has led him, album after album, from rejection to reconciliation with his roots.
Abandoning the pseudonym does not mean the end of music. It rather signals that the dark character of The Weeknd has fulfilled its narrative function and that the future belongs to Abel Tesfaye, with all that this name carries in terms of family and spiritual heritage.