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Akon, you’ve got some explaining to do! The Smoking Gun is claiming that the omnipresent autotune addict behind “Locked Up” and Konvicted has been lying about his criminal record. While Akon claimed in interview after interview to have written his first album, Trouble, during a three-year jail stint for running a car theft ring (where he both owned chop shops and personally pulled people out of the cars), it now looks like he spent a few months in jail for stealing a single BMW before charges were dropped. I wonder if he was lying about the secret country hit and the polygamy too.
Akon’s ad nauseum claims about his criminal career and resulting prison time have been, to an overwhelming extent, exaggerated, embellished, or wholly fabricated, an investigation by The Smoking Gun has revealed. Police, court, and corrections records reveal that the entertainer has created a fictionalized backstory that serves as the narrative anchor for his recorded tales of isolation, violence, woe, and regret. Akon has overdubbed his biography with the kind of grit and menace that he apparently believes music consumers desire from their hip-hop stars.
While the performer’s rap sheet does include a half-dozen arrests, Akon has only been convicted of one felony, for gun possession. That 1998 New Jersey case ended with a guilty plea, for which the singer was sentenced to three years probation. Another 1998 bust, this one in suburban Atlanta, has been seized upon by Akon and transformed into the big case that purportedly sent him to prison (thanks to his snitching cohorts) for three fight-filled years. In reality, Akon was arrested for possession of a single stolen BMW and held in the DeKalb County jail for several months before prosecutors dropped all charges against him.
So there was no conviction. There was no prison term between 1999 and 2002. And he was never “facing 75 years,” as the singer claimed in one videotaped interview.
Try rhyming that with “Gwen Stefani!”
Akon’s Con Job [The Smoking Gun]
