Kanye West's Heartless was a lead up to The Weeknd's Heartless

In After Hours, Abel has a song called Heartless where he talks about how heartless he is. In 2008, Kanye made a song called Heartless where he talks about how the person he was dating was heartless. This leads me to believe that Heartless by Kanye West was a lead up to the Heartless that was made by Abel in the lore of The Weeknd persona.

I know that Kanye was referring to a woman in Heartless (2008), but this may be because The Weeknd persona (separate from irl Abel), may've used to be a woman until he transitioned to a man at some point in the lore.

If you're wondering why they'd plan this so far in advance, it's because they actually didn't. When Abel was starting work on After Hours, he got inspired by Heartless (2008) and found it to be a perfect opportunity to make his The Weeknd persona a transgender man in the universe where this all takes place in. After getting permission from Kanye to extremely vaguely reference Heartless (2008) in his album, he made his own song called Heartless in hopes that somebody would figure out the message he was trying to send out.

Why would he do this? There is two reasons. The first one would be representation. This wouldn't be the only time Abel has shown LGBTQ+ representation in his work. At the 2:10 timestamp of the Gasoline music video, there is two lesbians intensely kissing. The second reason would be that his in-universe The Weeknd persona transitioning to a male represents how Abel transitioned to a successful pop star.