Akon used to misconceptions

Akon

Hip-hop can be so deceiving. "I thought P-Money was going to look like a sumo wrestler," hoots Akon. "We did all that stuff over email so he actually only flew into New York when we shot the video. He was the total opposite of what I thought he was going to look like."

After featuring on P-Money's Magic City album, fellow Kiwi Savage's Moonshine, and several albums by international artists, things took off for the Senegalese-American singer.

In New Zealand, his debut album Trouble is double platinum, and hit single Lonely has spent a whopping nine weeks at No 1.

Akon is used to misconceptions about his life. While songs like Locked Up paint an accurate picture of his hard-knock life, others, such as Ghetto, are misleading.

"We were living in a pretty good, nice residential two-storey home," he says. "It was pretty good the way we lived, in the suburbs, a real quiet area. To me that was just boring. I wanted to be where the excitement was at."

Akon (real name Aliaune Thiam) spent his early childhood in Senegal before his family (including his father, jazz percussionist Mor Thiam) moved to New Jersey when he was 7.

As a child he learned to play drums, and he remembers rubbing shoulders with musicians including James Brown and the Jackson clan.

School life was another matter. "Trying to fit in was hard. I felt Americans were really ignorant about African cultures. They didn't understand what an African was. They thought every African had a disease, that we walked around naked chasing zebras and lions."

He frequently got into fights and soon progressed from trouble in the classroom to petty crime. When his parents left Akon and his brother in New Jersey, he became involved in a car theft operation and in the late 90s he was jailed for three years.

"Trouble just always seemed to follow me," Akon says. "I didn't have to go looking for it, it just happened. I'd be on the corner one day just hanging out with the fellas and something will pop off and I'll be right in the middle of it."

Akon still maintains his innocence but says no one would hire him when he got out. Instead, he threw himself into hip-hop, selling self-produced tapes on the street to survive and resisting the temptation to ask his parents for help.

Eventually the tapes found their way to Universal Records, who, impressed by his unusual high-pitched voice, helped to shop him around smaller territories.

Now Akon says he's redeemed himself. "Talking to people in prison made me realise how dumb and stupid some of the things I've done were. That really opened my eyes and ears. I'm totally the opposite from the guy I used to be ... prison made me see life in a whole other way. Just to have come this far is a blessing because I was definitely headed down the wrong path."

Lowdown

Who: Akon
Releases: Trouble (2005)
Collaborations: P-Money, Savage, Baby Bash, Jesse McCartney, Brian McKnight, Styles P and Bobby Vinton, whose Mr Lonely inspired Akon's hit
See him: Live with Nelly, Supertop, Ericsson Stadium, Auckland, July 28