87. "Yeah it was more about articulation... from the Rolling Stone interview...." In response to In response to 79
The then-anonymous Tesfaye declined all interviews. In part, it was because he worried he wasn't well-spoken enough: A high school dropout, he used to do crossword puzzles to improve his vocabulary, and to this day, he often wishes he were more articulate. "Me not finishing school — in my head, I still have this insecurity when I'm talking to someone educated," he says. "I don't want them looking at me like this fucking retard — no disrespect." For months, no one even knew if the Weeknd was a person or a group. That's when Tesfaye realized he "could run with the whole enigmatic thing," he says now. "If it backfired, I probably would have been doing interviews. But people were kind of liking me being a fucking weirdo."