Akon swung by Drink Champs on July 15 to discuss his legendary career. Of course, a big part of the conversation was about how the Senegal-born artist has long pushed for African Americans to relocate to Africa. However, he also wanted to refute several prominent stereotypes about the continent. “South Africa is the real Africa. Any amazing part of Africa that’s beautiful, that attracts tourism, they’ll say, ‘Oh, that’s not really the real Africa.’ But if it’s poor, impoverished, and full of diseases or plagues — ‘Be careful, you don’t want to be in that part of Africa,’” Akon shared. “That’s what we gotta break. To South Africa’s credit, they had help by the British… Those are real Africans. Them white boys over there, some of them are more African than the Africans.”
He also spoke on his plan to build “Akon City” in Senegal. “Just think of what Dubai is today and what it used to be 15 years ago. That’s what we would want it to become, but it’s going to start small with 2,000 acres… The first stage is 3 1/2 years. We literally just started building last week.” However, perhaps his biggest revelation was about his iconic song “I Wanna Love You”.
“I Wanna Love You”, originally “I Wanna Fuck You”, is arguably one of Akon’s biggest hits. Released in 2006, it became Akon’s first #1 single and spent two weeks at the top of the Billboard chart in December. Originally featuring Piles, Akon replaced the rapper with Snoop Dogg after Piles was arrested on gun charges in July. However, it turns out that Trick Daddy was the intended featuring artist.
“When it got leaked in Miami, Plies was on the record. Plies had the record first because what’s interesting is I originally did it for Trick Daddy… When I sent the record to Slip-N-Slide, I never knew how Plies actually got the record. All I know is one week, Steve got a call that, ‘N**ga, we got a smash in Miami that’s all over satellite radio, in every fucking strip club. We gotta do something about [it].'” Furthermore, Akon said he believed that Piles was the reason for the song leaking in the first place. “Without a doubt. That n**ga debo’ed the fuck out that record.”
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