Akon's past is wrapped in mystery, from stints in prison to his birthplace, but his R&B credentials are in no doubt, writes Angus Batey
AS IT DAWNED in the early hours of November 5th that Barack Obama would be the next president of the US, there will have been few citizens celebrating harder than RB singer, producer, songwriter and label-owner Akon. Celebrities are known to say things in the heat of the pre-election moment that they will hope fans and detractors forget about, but there was more than a hint of certitude about Akon as, sitting in a London hotel room eight days before the US went to the polls, he outlined his plans for life under John McCain. "If [Obama] doesn't get into office, I'm gonna change my citizenship. I'm scared. I'm movin' back to Africa. I'll just come visit, make some money and head back."
What, you have to wonder, is the Senegal-born star afraid of? "Just what we have had to go through in this past year. Like, I'm drivin' down the highway, I see cars parked with emergency lights on because they can't afford to buy gas. You got families walkin' with kids, carryin' infants to the next exit to take a taxi, because the taxi get them home cheaper than the actual gas! That's crazy.
"No," he says, emphatically, shaking his head. "You think the crime rate is high now? Nah. I'll move me an' my family home."
It's a surprising spiel from someone whose political songwriting is non-existent, unless you count tracks like his breakthrough hit, Locked Up, which was less social commentary than personal lament. Over the course of his brief but hugely successful career, Akon has become synonymous with the accessible end of hip-hop. Whether annoying or delighting in roughly equal measure with the speeded-up, Tweetie-Pie-on-helium Lonely, or duetting with Eminem on the smutty Smack That, Akon is many things, but challenging and politicised aren't among them. He and his associate, T-Pain, a signing to his Konvict Muzik label, have created a formula that has done more than cause everyone from Gwen Stefani to Michael Jackson to beat a path to the Atlanta-based maven's door. "That 808 clack, autotune sound," as he puts it, has become so ubiquitous that even those you'd think could beat the Konvict crew have decided to join them: Kanye West's current album owes a considerable debt, with the Chicago star claiming his take on the sound constitutes a new genre.
It seems an odd time for Akon to, as he puts it, "remodel the image", but that's precisely what he's done with a third album that makes two decisive breaks with his past. It all but abandons his sonic trademarks in favour of up-tempo, club-inspired pop, while its title breaks with his self-imposed nomenclature tradition. The first was called Trouble, the second Konvicted, but the previously announced Acquittedwas retitled Freedom. Why?
Earlier this year, US website The Smoking Gun published a 4,000-word investigation into Akon's claims to have spent some years in prison as a result of a conviction for car theft. The website found several major discrepancies between the PR spiel - that his arrest and incarceration followed an FBI investigation into a car-stealing gang he ran in Atlanta - and the verifiable record. Notably, the site could find evidence of only one six-month spell in jail, and an interview with the arresting officer elicited a derisive dismissal that Akon played a role in any auto-theft conspiracy. It was also pointed out that the date of birth of one of his children proved he couldn't have been in prison on at least one occasion when his biography implied he had been.
"What they wrote was what I would have loved for my life to be," he smiles as he dances around the topic. "My whole argument was that if I did one day in jail or three years, it doesn't matter: it was that experience that changed my life for the better.
"The whole purpose [of the Konvict brand and image] was to let everyone know, 'OK: this is who I used to be, and this is what I've become'. As time went by, I started to realise the misconception for those who didn't know the story; to them, it almost felt like we were promoting the convict thing, which wasn't the case whatsoever. When you use words like 'acquitted', it automatically gives you a negative vibe. So that's why we changed the title to Freedom, which means the exact same thing, but is more positive."
There is some substance to the defence that Akon eventually manages to mount. He implies that The Smoking Gun was unable to unearth his complete legal history because his real name and date of birth have not always been accurately recorded and he refuses to give any definitive answers. He says he was born in Senegal and moved to the US as a pre-teen, while The Smoking Gun claims he was born in the US. He says he has one felony to his name, from when police found a gun in a stolen car he was driving in New Jersey "around 2000". Yet trying to verify his version or the website's ends up posing more questions, with criminal records searches unearthing only an unclear reference to a three-year sentence for a probation violation in Georgia in 1999, and a $10 speeding ticket in North Carolina.
Akon is clearly someone who enjoys spinning a yarn and watching it develop its own life - an interview technique used over the years by everyone from Bob Dylan to the Beastie Boys. At the very least, he has been complicit in his story being embellished. This shouldn't obscure the conspicuous good he's doing, whether it's through his charitable foundation, which is building its second school in Dakar, or in taking the kind of plunge less than a handful of American label-owners have dared, and signing a British rapper - fellow west African émigré, Sway - to a US deal. But the result is a confusion that risks undermining the credibility of the message it is his calling to deliver.
Akon believes that his purpose beyond making music (and money) is to promote his redemption as an example. Curiously, it is to that figure in whom he has such a profound lack of faith - John McCain - that he turns for an explanation of why all too often the truth is not enough. "John McCain went to war. He experienced everything that a soldier would never want to experience. But at the same time, he's using that experience to gain votes. He brought it to the front so that people would vote for him. He has to put them in the shoes that he was in to understand what he saw.
"If you tell someone something and they don't believe you, they're not gonna support it," he concludes. "So you have to pull out details that's shocking or something that they would actually have to imagine and close their eyes and be like, 'Ooh, I would never wanna go through that', for them to actually understand. The drama of it is what makes it real."
- (Guardian service)
