According to their tour manager, the only commercial flight from Oslo to Austin is at 8 a.m. Cash looks around and grins: "The label's paying for it, right? I feel amazing right now."The next afternoon, Tesfaye is in a seventh-floor suite at his Soho hotel, having spent most of the previous 18 hours in bed.

(There was also a B12 shot involved.) When a bellman brings in a silver tray with a selection of waters, Tesfaye pours himself a glass.

Cash is a first-generation Iranian-Canadian sweetheart who occasionally yells things into the phone like, "You may as well bend me over a table, bro!

The cold caught up with him yesterday, during a signing for 500 squealing fans at the Oxford Circus HMV. "We live in an era when everything is so excessive, I think it's refreshing for everybody to be like, ' Who the fuck is this guy? "I think that's why my career is going to be so long: Because I haven't given people everything."Spend just five minutes with him, though, and he reveals himself: sweet, soft-spoken, surprisingly earnest.

When I tell him he's not what I expected, he nods.

"I'm still digesting it, to be honest with you," Tesfaye says of his success.

"But the screams keep getting louder, dude."Tesfaye comes over to say hi, dressed in black Levi's and a Roots hoodie, his tsunami of hair piled high atop his head.