The Weeknd

The Weeknd is the stage name of Abel Tesfaye, the Canadian artist who turned shadowy Toronto R&B into one of the defining pop runs of the last fifteen years. After emerging through the 2011 mixtape trilogy, he moved from cult anonymity into stadium-scale dominance with Beauty Behind the Madness, Starboy, After Hours, and Dawn FM, building one of the most commercially durable catalogs in global pop.

That run matters on HITKULTR because his orbit keeps touching K-entertainment at a top-tier level. His 2023 single One of the Girls linked him directly with Jennie, while his broader label structure also intersects with Republic Records, one of the most aggressive global-pop partners in the market. He is not a K-pop act, but he is part of the crossover infrastructure that high-level Korean talent now moves through.

Hurry Up Tomorrow in 2025 extended that scale rather than resetting it, and the 2026 After Hours Til Dawn campaign kept his live brand in blockbuster mode. The result is a page that should read less like a feature on a guest collaborator and more like a profile of one of the biggest pop operators currently touching the same global lanes as HITKULTR's core ecosystem.