R+B singer AKON has avoided time in jail after pleading guilty to second-degree harassment for tossing a fan off stage at a concert last summer (07).
The Senegalese-American singer - real name Aliaune Thiam - was accused of picking up a teenage boy and throwing him off the stage during a concert on 3 June 2007 near Poughkeepsie, New York.
Another concertgoer said she suffered concussion when the teen landed on her.
A plea deal with the Dutchess County District Attorney's Office dropped a charge of endangering the welfare of a child, allowing him to plead guilty to a violation.
Akon will serve no jail time provided he performs 65 hours of anti-gang and anti-violence community service and pays a $250 (GBP165) fine.
A statement released by the singer's attorney, Andrea Zellan, reads: "We are pleased that the case has been resolved and Akon looks forward to putting this unfortunate incident behind him."
Akon: Absolutely. We wanted to give a more positive outlook on the record and on the title more so than anything. Just kinda refurbish the image of Konvict on a positive side, because somewhere along the lines it got misinterpreted. [People were] Thinking that we were glorifying jail life, gangsta, and street… all the negative aspects of what [the word] konvict would represent normally. We changed the name from Acquitted because Freedom means the same exact thing as acquitted. Only difference is Freedom is a lot more positive, a lot more global. You can take that anywhere and everyone has a definition of what Freedom means to them.
Akon: “Hold My Hand” was the record I did with M.J. And unfortunately it got leaked over the Internet. What ended up happening was it took away from the whole presentation of the record. We wanted it to be something special being the fact that it was a comeback record. It was my biggest collaboration ever. We wanted that movement to be special, we wanted people to be able to feel the energy. And when the record got leaked, it took away the excitement; it took away the set up. We just kinda backed off to see how things would move; if the record would get overly popular, would we get behind it. There was always the situation where we was trying to decide what we were gonna do with it, but for me personally I wanted it to be a little more special. Everyone had already heard it at that point so I felt there was really no purpose to put it on the record.
Akon: I’m proud of all my collabs. I only do records with people I admire and support. Everybody I’ve worked with has just been incredible. I’ve been a fan of everybody I’ve worked with to a degree. The majority of the time when it comes about differently, depends on who it is. A lot of times it’s just the relationship. They may need a record they feel like is missing from the album, They’ll call me for me to come up with it or they may just want me to be a part of the album. Or sometimes I may be recording something that I feel like fits that artist and I may give that artist a call and be like, “yo I got a record that’s crazy for your album.” So you know, it depends. Sometimes we’ll just meet at a party and be like, “yo we gotta get up, we gotta link”, then we’ll follow through and make it happen. It happens in different ways as far as the collaboration side of things.
Akon: Absolutely. The Fugees, the whole Refugee Camp is my original family. It’s where I started, it’s where I began. That’s where motivation for me came from, you know. We all started in Jersey, Jersey City. They were in Newark, Clinton, right in East Orange- where we all recorded at the Booga Basement, hung out and came up with ideas. That was like the place of molding for all of us, you know. I moved off to Atlanta at the time they were doing the album. Everybody was in there writing and I did a brief acapella for something and Clef thought it would be great for the “Fu-Gee-La” remix. So, he had me come in and do it, it was “Call Mr. Martin,” and that was just to kind of keep me involved in what was going on at the time because my mind wasn’t really heavily into music. You know, this was just more motivation for me to focus on what it is what I really wanted to do, you know. That’s why it was so brief [laughs]. In and out baby, stick and move.
Akon: Absolutely. Kardinal, no matter where he goes he represents the T Dot to the fullest. He’s always been a straight Canadian representative, Jamaican-Canadian. Like, a hardcore T Dot representative, and he does that in the shows wherever he goes worldwide. That’s one of the things I respect about him, you know, the fact that he kept his hometown on his back and always represented to the fullest. Outside him being an underground artist and doing big things on the underground level, he managed to be able to cross it over and still have his underground credibility, which is hard for any artist to do, you know. That just goes with a lot of hard work and maintaining your self esteem and understanding who you are as a person and I think Kardi is very aware of that.
Akon: Within me and T-Pain? Far from competition. Anything I can do to make sure that he precedes me, I do that. My goal was always to make sure any artist attached to me was larger than me. That’s why we put all of our energy into Pain the way we do it; allow him to grow and be his own man and to build his own empire from [Digital record label] Nappy Boy to everything else that he’s doing. It’s always been a situation where, you know, I never pigeon-held any of the artist that were signed to Konvict. I want them to be able to expand, grow out, become their own person, you know, have your own identity. That’s why I never hugged over him or stamped him so hard to a point where you get him and the brand mixed up, you know. But, I’ve been extremely proud of him for what he’s accomplished to this point, what he’s going through and what he’s about to do. I mean, it’s incredible to have him be the first artist, and represent the Konvict movement as thoroughly as he did. It’s a proud moment for anybody to have an artist, any record company to have an artist like T-Pain who’s probably representing and doing his thing to a level to where we could proudly say he’s a Konvict artist. There’s definitely no competition whatsoever; it’s our sound. This is what we do; we just blend it out for everybody else to enjoy it as well.
Akon: Well, growing up with my pop being a Jazz musician and percussionist from Africa I think helped me out in a lot of different ways. More so, in a way to where, I was lucky and had the advantage to be someone who was exposed to both cultures, you know, the African culture and the American culture. Because of that, I can use both cultures, both sounds, both melodies and both, you know, experiences, and combine them into one. I think that’s what helped my style, in a lot of different ways, to be so different, so, you know, abstract. I definitely look at it more as a blessing and an advantage, if anything.
Akon: The only thing on my iPod right now is all Konvict Music. I can’t remember the last time I played anything outside of what we’re already doing. And that’s mainly because I haven’t had time to really explore outside of what we’ve been creating. You know we have so much going on with all these acts from T-Pain, [Lady] GaGa, to Colby [O'Donis] , to Kardinal, to myself, you know to Tami Chynn. I mean just…we have a lot of records of our own that we are developing, creating…you know. More so you know just try to create and mode our own sound. That we haven’t had time to really jump out on anything and be influence by anything outside of what we’re already been doing. But, it’s just been, I mean a blessing period to have enough material to where you don’t gotta go outside and search for new material. But it only helps us to motivates us to create and bring out new material to be able to expand on.
Akon: For the artist coming up you know I think the key is to just stay focus. Stay focused stay very consistent, don’t give up too early. You gotta believe in yourself more than the people supporting you. You know sometime you have a lot of talent you based your talent more on everything. Sometime you lose focus on how much work has to be put into it. You know the talent and work ethic has to be balanced. Like you have to have just as much talent as you have work ethic. It has to be balance for it actually probably work because if you don’t put in the work then the people that supporting and doing what they doing. You know they just there sitting around in vain. It’s not really benefiting yourself. You almost have to meet them half way. But more so don’t give up. Because everybody has their time. It’s a million people trying to get in. It’s only room for one person at the number one spot. You gotta be patient enough to believe in yourself enough to work hard enough to make it happen. And that’s all I can really tell you man you gotta keep going. Can’t stop.
Posts
