The Manager Behind The Weeknd’s New Hit Album Is Lebanese

Rap Up | MTV

The Weeknd just released his very long-awaited album “After Hours” on Friday, March 20th, topping every chart there ever is, as expected. The Weeknd’s Lebanese manager just confirmed that the singer/songwriter “smashed” Apple Music Record.

Wassim “Sal” Slaiby is a Lebanese-Canadian entrepreneur and music manager, managing many international music artists the likes of French Montana, Lebanese-Canadian Massari, and The Weeknd, among others.

Wassim Slaiby, most known by Sal in the music industry, is also a partner at Maverick Management and XO label CEO.

Born in Lebanon, 1979, Sal immigrated to Canada without his family at the age of 15. He was later on introduced to the Canadian Rapper Belly who convinced him to get into the music industry.

Sal is married to the former Lebanese-American Miss USA 2010 Rima Fakih. The Lebanese couple came to Lebanon for their wedding, bringing along hundreds of international celebrities, many of which were introduced to Lebanon for the first time.

Sal and Rima have three children now, and the family currently resides in Los Angelos.

Talking about the Weeknd (real name Abel Mokkonen Tesfaye), Slaiby said to the Variety Magazine: “He [Abel] is his own A&R; he’s the king of his own music. When he’s creating, he just wants to see the future. He’s so good at that.”

 
 
 
 
 
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A post shared by SAL&CO (@salxo) on Feb 16, 2020 at 9:48am PST

The Weeknd’s new album racked up a record of 975,000 global ‘pre-adds’ on Apple Music ahead of its release today, according to Music Business Worldwide, and has hit over 1.2 million by the time of the album’s release.

According to “After Hours” description on Apple Itunes, “you can find love, fear, violence, dancing, demons, angels, loneliness, and togetherness all in the After Hours of the night.”

Abel was also chosen as the godfather of Mr. and Mrs. Slaiby’s son Joseph five months ago. The all-time record charter was spotted at Joseph’s baptism in October 2019.

Sal has made Billboard’s 2018 Power 100 List. He has helped bring Shakira to the Cedars International Festival in Lebanon in 2018 as well as Kygo in 2017.

The Weeknd After Hours is scoring already 14.9M views on youtube, and here it is:

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