The Weeknd compiled his first three mixtapes into one Trilogy compilation album back in 2012, and 12 years later, he’s preparing to close out the current chapter in his career with yet another trilogy.
On Sunday (Jan. 7), he posted the album covers from his 2020 album After Hours and 2022’s Dawn FM — the latter of which celebrated its second anniversary on Sunday — and a third, black slide with a white question mark in the middle and a parental advisory warning label. “3,” he wrote as the caption.
The Canadian-Ethiopian superstar (real name Abel Tesfaye) said in his May 2023 interview with W Magazine that his next studio album will be his final one as The Weeknd. “It’s getting to a place and a time where I’m getting ready to close the Weeknd chapter. I’ll still make music, maybe as Abel, maybe as The Weeknd. But I still want to kill The Weeknd. And I will. Eventually. I’m definitely trying to shed that skin and be reborn,” he said at the time. “The album I’m working on now is probably my last hurrah as The Weeknd. This is something that I have to do. As The Weeknd, I’ve said everything I can say.”
It’s poetic to end his tenure as The Weeknd the same way he started it: In 2011, he dropped three mixtapes — House of Balloons, Thursday and Echoes of Silence — that were eventually remastered and repackaged into his Trilogy compilation album, which Republic Records and his XO label released the following year.
In 2021, The Weeknd released the original mixtapes on streaming services on their corresponding 10-year anniversaries since the samples had finally cleared, including Beach House‘s “Master of None” on “The Party & The After Party,” Siouxsie and the Banshees‘ “Happy House” on “House of Balloons / Glass Table Girls” and Aaliyah‘s “Rock the Boat” on “What You Need.”
