iHeartRadio Presents Black Excellence The Weeknd

02/01/21 • 2 min

The inaugural edition of Black Excellence highlights a young man who has changed the sound of R&B pop music over the past decade. We hold him in high regard for all that he has achieved and accomplished... Plus he’s one of the biggest acts to ever come out of Canada.

iHeartRadio's Dames Nellas walks you through just some of the reasons Abel Tesfaye AKA The Weeknd is an example of Black Excellence.

Hailing from the east end of Toronto, The Weeknd starting making noise in 2010, and his his critically acclaimed mixtape “House OF Balloons” was released in 2011. He’d follow up with with Thursday and Echoes of silence before signing his first record deal with Republic Records.

It didn’t take long for him to climb up the Billboard charts, landing 2 #1 ’s “Can’t Feel My Face” and “The Hills” in 2015. His album “Beauty Behind The Madness” also landed him his first Grammy for “Best Urban Contemporary Album”.

Since then, The Weeknd has gone on to win 3 Grammys, 5 American Music Awards, 10 Junos and he’s even been nominated for an Oscar thanks to his song “Earned It".

With the success of his music, The Weeknd has been able to partner with companies like Marvel comics and Puma.

In 2020, he announced a partnership with TD Bank to launch The Black HXUSE, which is an incubator for BIPOC entrepreneurs in Toronto. To date, he has raised over $2 million dollars to support social injustice platforms like Black Lives Matter, Colin Kaepernick's Know Your Rights defense initiative and TikTok's equal justice Initiative after the devastating explosion in Lebanon.
While donating abroad is always encouraged, he has been doing his part in his home community as well. The Weeknd has donated thousands of dollars to the Ethiopic Studies program at UofT, while purchasing $500k worth of PPE for frontline staff at Scarborough Health Network to combat COVID 19

Check back for more #BlackExcellence episodes throughout #BlackHistoryMonth

iHeartRadio's Dames Nellas walks you through just some of the reasons Abel Tesfaye AKA The Weeknd is an example of Black Excellence.

Since then, The Weeknd has gone on to win 3 Grammys, 5 American Music Awards, 10 Junos and he’s even been nominated for an Oscar thanks to his song “Earned It".

With the success of his music, The Weeknd has been able to partner with companies like Marvel comics and Puma.

Check back for more #BlackExcellence episodes throughout #BlackHistoryMonth

Previous Episode

iHeartRadio Presents Black Excellence Alicia Keys

iHeartRadio’s Jamar McNeil highlights just some of the reasons why Alicia Keys is #BlackExcellence.

Keys started playing piano at age six and studied classical music and jazz. Her exposure to the music of Billie Holiday Ella Fitzgerald and Thelonius Monk as well as Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin explain her signature style of fusing the classical sound with Black Swag. She wrote her first song at the age of 12 on the piano and shortly after She signed a record deal at 15.

She had a rough start in her professional career. Creative disputes about her songs her look, her hair and her overall presentation made things difficult for her during her relationship with record label. She was able to get attention from the one and only Clive Davis who brought her over to his new label J Records where he allowed her to have creative control of her music and her likeness. Without that support, we might not have gotten the Alicia Keys with her urban wear and her signature Corn rows that let us know that this classic piano virtuoso was keeping it ALL THE WAY REAL

At 20, she released her debut album Songs in A Minor. It's one of my fav albums. A combo of Soul, Classical Piano, Neo Soul and BoomBap east coast hip hop. She’d been working on it since she was only 14. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and earned Keys five Grammy Awards, including Song of the Year for “Fallin’

Keys co-founded Keep a Child Alive, a non-profit organization that supports families with HIV and AIDS in Africa and India. In 2017, she was named by Amnesty International, an award that also went to Canadian Indigenous rights activists.

Alicia Keys over came her rough environment of Hell’s Kitchen Manhattan and the tough pressures of the corporate recording industry to be given titles like, Artist of the decade, one of the 100 Greatest Women in Music, 100 most influential people in the world to name a few.

CREDITS:
Research By Jamar McNeil, John R. Kennedy

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Next Episode

Black Excellence Roundtable: What are the Black Music Influences that have Impacted our Lives?

CHUM 104.5's Azalea Hart is joined by Jamar McNeil (CHUM 104.5's Marilyn & Jamar), Leah Abrahams (Virgin Radio's Virgin Mornings with Adam Wylde TJ & Jax), and Dames Nellas (Virgin Radio Weekender) to discuss how Black Music and culture influenced their lives growing up, and their careers moving forward.

Each member gives us a look in to their upbringings, their passion for music, and what it means to them.

The roundtable panel discusses and debates the history of hip hop, and other Black-led genres, and the influence it has had on all of music past, present, and future.

The panel gets honest about how Black culture can often be misunderstood, misrepresented or mismanaged in mainstream media, and they discuss the upcoming Super Bowl Halftime show, and if the predominantly black performers will make a political statement while the world is watching.

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