Multi-award-winning rapper Akon shared some interesting facts when he recently sat down with “Podcast and Chill” co-hosts MacG and Sol Phenduka in Los Angeles.
Among other things he spoke about working with the legendary Michael Jackson and growing up between Africa and America.
MacG and Phenduka were in LA for the 2024 BET Awards ceremony and, during their time there, they did a few international artist interviews for their podcast.
The first to be released was their chat with the “Smack That” hitmaker.
Speaking about the awards, Akon said, “I was very impressed with the production. I feel this is the best production I’ve seen BET have so far.”
During a round of rapid fire questions, Chillers learnt that Akon sees himself as “selfish” and “tunnel visioned”.
He also shared that the most famous person he has on his contact list is the late Michael Jackson.
“I would probably say that the most famous person in my phone book was Michael Jackson’s old number. I never erased it. I still have it in there.
He said Jackson and him met through a mutual attorney.
“Mike reached out to me actually and wanted to do a record with me, and then I ended up being the executive producer for his release of ”Thriller“.
He added: “Mike was probably the most selfless, most amazing person you could ever meet. I would say he was a model of what a human should be. No ego, always happy, always looked at the positive things in life, and he always wanted kids to advance to the next level.”
Akon said Jackson was more of an “inspirational” writer, just like him.
“He might be inspired by something and want to write it or he may hear something and love it and want to record it.”
The artist, who grow up in Missouri and Africa said that his father had a big role to play in making sure that they knew their cultural history.
“Every time my mom was pregnant, my dad would fly her to the States (St Louis). We would be born and then he would ship us right back to Africa, so we were raised until we were able to speak and school, until like seven or eight, then he brought us back to the US to finish school.
“Every summer we would go home to Africa, so we kept our roots, kept our background and before you know it, we were able to get the education in America and have the culture in Africa, all at the same time.”
“It was a benefit to me, I had an advantage over a lot of my peers because of the different knowledge in music. In Africa, there’s no genres, when I came up we were listening to reggae music, country music, R&B, blues, it was like a hit record was a hit record no matter who sang it.”
He said that up until now his family is split between the US and Africa.
He said that he regretted not following suite with his own children.
“I only took them to Africa when they were older, but I should have sent them when they were younger, because it would have been a different foundation being laid, they are spoiled a** brats...,” said Akon.
Watch the full interview below.