The Weeknd had a rough weekend. The singer, aka Abel Tesfaye, allegedly assaulted a police officer in Las Vegas Saturday, Jan. 10, after law enforcement tried to break up an altercation. According to Billboard, Tesfaye struck the officer with a closed fist, which earned him a misdemeanor charge of battery of a protected person.
Tesfaye posted a picture to Instagram later that night of him leaving Sin City, writing that he "escaped."
No other information about the incident is known.
The artist posted a few more pictures yesterday, Jan. 12, of him in the studio. Perhaps there are some new tunes coming from Tesfaye in 2015. He dropped a track for Fifty Shades of Grey in December.
His last album, Kiss Land, came out in 2013. The effort hit No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and No. 1 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums lists behind "Wanderlust," "Love in the Sky" and "Live For" featuring Drake. It was met with generally mixed reviews.
"Kiss Land follows in the lethargic steps of 2012's Trilogy, but the pace is slower, songwriting thinner and vision more bloodshot," Rolling Stone wrote, giving the album two out of five stars. "Tesfaye floats through songs like a child in the most luxurious bubble money can buy. 'This the shit that I live for,' he claims, riding around in a car, going through mild withdrawals. Only a Drake cameo can cheer him up — barely."
Tesfaye is not one for interviews, but he broke his silence prior to Kiss Land in a cover story for Complex. He also sent MTV a few quotes about the album and how it fits into his catalog.
"When you're traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually," he said. "Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents, I like to create characters based on different people I've met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events."
