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The Weeknd lands on the cover of Billboard's "Year in Music 2016" issue. The singer rarely gives interviews, but granted one to the publication.

He discuss his new "Starboy" album, it's influences, upcoming tour, songwriters he looks up to, dealing with the paparazzi and more.

Billboard: How long have you been working on the album?
The Weeknd: We started six months ago, and then we shut down the entire studio for four months.

Billboard: Were you consciously going for ­something more pop?
The Weeknd: Well, a lot of people think “The Hills” is pop now, but when it came out, the reaction was, “What is this?” People’s ­definition of pop just means whatever’s playing on the radio 24/7.

I wanted to drop Starboy as soon as ­possible [after Beauty Behind the Madness] just to show that this is what I love doing: making music. It’s very natural, very real. There was a lot of thought behind it, but I did it frantically, very fast, off the fumes of Beauty.

Billboard: So what’s different?
The Weeknd: I tried to find different registers that I hadn’t sung in before. I sang a lot of low stuff on songs like “Secrets” and “Rockin’,” almost like Toni Braxton. On “Secrets,” I’m a different person. I’ve played it for people, and they have no idea it’s me. I even wanted to make an entire album where it was all very “Vogue”-inspired, music like Frankie Knuckles and Chicago house. That was the initial idea for “Rockin’,” which is one of the first ones I finished for the album.

Billboard: When you listen to Weeknd songs, you can hear three characters -- the selfish guy (“Often”), a guy who is romantic but guarded (“Love Me Harder”) and an empathic guy (“In the Night”). “Starboy” might even present a fourth character. Does that sound about right?

The Weeknd: It’s almost schizophrenic, who I portray in my music. The vibe just represents how I feel, what relationship I’m going through, what friendships I’m going through, the success in my life, the failures in my life. It is all just documentation. I’m not going to sit here and just sing about making love, even though my favorite artists, that’s all they sing about.

When I was making the early stuff, I never expected it to be so big. I was in my own kind of bubble. I never wanted to tour, I just wanted to create music and make a diary I could put out into the world. And sometimes I became the characters. I like to look at it like a film -- for every director, every film is different, with different actors, ­different emotions, different plots. The other albums always had a theme. On this album, every song has a theme, is kind of its own ­cinematic piece.

The vibe on “Starboy” comes from that hip-hop culture of braggadocio, from Wu-Tang and 50 Cent, the kind of music I listened to as a kid. Bragging just sounds good, man. I was a teenager when I saw Scarface, and even though it was ­unbelievable, it’s kind of cool Tony Montana could survive all those gunshots and not feel them.

And there’s more than one way to do hip-hop culture. For the chorus of “Secrets,” we used The Romantics’ “Talking in Your Sleep” and “Pale Shelter” by Tears for Fears. It’s like hip-hop: Just grab it. We could have done the interpolation thing, but sampling the original gets the feel.

Billboard: Who are some songwriters you look up to?
The Weeknd:For me, Bill Withers is at least top five among songwriters. His [Live at Carnegie Hall] album is even better than the ­studio ones. It’s all passion. I also love Chromatics -- they were a huge inspiration for “Party Monster.”

Billboard: What’s it like living in L.A. and dealing with things like the paparazzi?
The Weeknd: I believe that if you’re always getting paparazzi, there’s something fishy going on. I go out, and they’re there sometimes, but I don’t tell the whole world I’m going out. A couple of times, they caught me. I had a few new cars, and I wanted to drive them. That was a mistake. They literally followed me from Beverly Hills all the way down to Hollywood. If I had a great car, with my old hair, it was hard. Now? It’s a breeze. I just put the hat on. My life is one hundred times better. I respect the paparazzi, it’s their job, I got no beef with them. Luckily, for me, my career is putting out the hits and interacting with the fans. I don’t need pictures of me being generated all the time.

To read the full cover story head over to Billboard (http://www.billboard.com/articles/events/year-in-music-2016/7616356/the-weeknd-interview-starboy-no-1s)

Written by Sasha Frere-Jones.  Photo credits: Koury Angelo

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