Akon dishes to Livesteez about Freedom, John McCain, and Why People Have The Wrong Perception of Him.
Livesteez: It’s been a while. Tell us a little about the new album, Freedom.
Akon: You can always hear the growth in every album. You gotta walk them [fans] through your path without changing too drastically. In this stage of the game were trying to create a new sound, a new way that people could follow. So we got that whole European techno, but we still have the club Miami base, 808 with the clap, you know what I mean? We kind of blended it<--more--> in to where we’re not alienating what were used to, but the melodies and the tempo is really changing it to whole other level. This album is definitely an upgrade from Konvicted.
Livesteez: You’ve had Trouble, Konvict and now Freedom. Are your albums reflective of your journey in life?
Akon: Absolutely. Coming out with Trouble, it was always the straight street grind, street hustle; just trying to make it to the next level. Now, with Freedom, my mind is clear. Everything is more positive. Everything is based on the humanitarian aspect that I’m moving forward on. These titles are so powerful because my Grandpa used to tell me to be careful what you name your kids, because they take seven characteristics of someone that you name them after. With that conviction album, I was convicted in so many different ways and so many different angles. With this new energy, like, mentally I’m just free. Financially, I’m free. I’m traveling and experiencing different cultures. I’m seeing so much more and creatively I’m wide open.
Livesteez: Autotune is really hot right now. Do you think people will ever stop using it?
Akon: Originality left the game about five or six years ago to the point where nobody wants to be creative anymore. I think autotune is here to stay. It’s almost like a computer and people want to hear things that are accurate. They don’t want to hear mistakes. Autotune prevents that mistake. Even if you can’t sing, it makes you sound better. Melody is what attracts us to music in the first place. The melody always attracted you. I think it’s gonna be here for ages. It’s like the new millennium for voicing. Before you even know it, there won’t even be a human voice. You can see that actually happening now.
Livesteez: You’ve worked with Michael Jackson on his Thriller album and you’re working on some new music now. What’s it like working with him?
Akon: Well, I really can’t talk about his new music just yet, but that guy’s a genius, man. That’s probably the highlight of my career. He’s the most humble cool dude. When you stop and think about all of the controversies and articles on him, they don’t even reflect the person that I saw. I always say if people got the chance to actually meet the man behind all of the controversy, they would be embarrassed to even have that thought. He’s totally different from the normal perception that you see.
Livesteez: You’ve been in and out of trouble practically all of your career with the jail issues, notorious rumors of polygamy and the Trinidad incident. Most recently tapes surfaced of you smacking females at various concerts. Do you want to address any of that?
Akon: I think 85% of the perceptions are false. It all started with the name Konvict which started out as more of a street credibility thing. My goal was to show people that you can be in that situation and that environment and work yourself out of it. With the Trinidad issue, no one really took the time to investigate that. They just off jump said that’s not right, he’s wrong. No one took the time to think about the clubs responsibility of letting a minor into the club in the first place. Of course outside of western culture, no one took the time to investigate the dance itself. The dance we were doing was called “Dutty wining†and everybody does it around the time of the carnival, so it wasn’t an offensive thing. It was a tradition around that time of year.
Prime example is the thing where the media was saying that I smacked that girl. That was a shot from an angle that made it look like that. We put the actual footage on the internet and it shows that she was falling and I was trying to help her up and then I was about to fall and she was trying to help me up. We just both happened to be standing on the platform when I went out into the crowd. The crowd hit one of the legs and it broke and we were both off balance. But, if you let the media tell it, ‘Oh, Akon’s at it again, he smacked another chick.†I realized how fast negative news spreads.
Livesteez: How do you feel about the recent election?
Akon: I’m very proud of the American people for voting in Obama. If McCain would have took office, I really would have moved to Africa. I was not playing. I was dead serious.
Livesteez: What do you think would have happened if McCain won?
Akon: We would have got bombed. I know this for a fact. We would have got infiltrated on. Foreign leaders are a lot more willing to cooperate with Obama than Bush. At the end of the day he’s very relevant to both sides, Christians and Muslims. He can make a rationale decision because he understands both histories and cultures.
Share: