Making Ends Meet

"Gate H-11, right?" the singer/songwriter/producer asks one of his traveling companions as he rushes to make his flight while simultaneously talking up his career, as if spending a spare moment on something other than business qualified as sacrilege.

In years past, Akon has squandered plenty of his time.

It didn’t work out for him so much.

Born in St. Louis, Akon was raised in the African country of Senegal until the age of 7, when his family relocated to New Jersey. There, beginning in grammar school, he’d start making beats on a cheap Casio ASR-10 keyboard, putting together rudimentary R&B and rap songs as a hobby.

But he’d also get involved in a life of petty crime along the way, eventually earning a three-year jail sentence for stealing cars, after which he turned back to music, desperate to make ends meet.

"Once you’re a convicted felon, you’re really an outcast," explains Akon, whose real name is Aliaune Thiam. "Once you fill out that application and they ask if you’re a convicted felon and you put ‘yes,’ they’re not hiring you. Where do you go from there? You want to change, you want to switch up, but society won’t allow you to, so you end up going right back to what got you there in the first place, because the bills are due every month.

"So, that was motivation, applying for all these jobs and nobody would hire me," he continues. "It was like, ‘OK, I’ve got all these songs, I need to figure out how to sell these joints.’ "

He’d eventually succeed on that end, primarily by pairing his thin, keening, upper register lilt with hard-nosed rappers to form a slick, sweaty amalgam of hip-hop and R&B.

It’s a testosterone-drenched, radio-friendly sound that enabled Akon to go double platinum with his 2004 debut, "Trouble," and post big numbers again last fall with his sophomore disc, "Konvicted," which moved more than 280,000 copies its first week out.

Since then, Akon’s had the charts in a headlock, notching three top 10 singles and also scoring a hit with current tourmate Gwen Stefani on "Sweet Escape." Akon’s taking a break from the tour to kick off the weekly Rehab party at the Hard Rock Hotel on Sunday.

More than just about any other artist these days, Akon has benefitted from the digital distribution of his material, selling 244,000 downloads of the first two singles from "Konvicted" the week they were released and moving 270,000 ringtones a week at one point shortly after the album’s release.

His tunes have become a staple on cell phones, so much so that he takes this into account when he’s in the studio crafting new material.

"Even now, when I make records, I keep in mind what would be good for digital, what would be good for downloads," Akon says. "People don’t really play CDs as much because the technology has advanced. When I mix my records, I listen to it on the iPod before I let it go. I don’t just look at it like it’s a regular CD or cassette sale."

Akon’s success largely is attributable to the stylistic mash-up inherent in his repertoire: He both sands down rap’s hard edges with his light, satiny voice and adds a degree of ruggedness and braggadocio to breathy R&B.

In a time when hip-hop has become increasingly regionalized, Akon’s tunes borrow from both the Southern and East Coast traditions, pairing outsized synth lines with serpentine beats and his distinctive, West African-influenced singing.

It’s a global sound attributable to Akon’s diverse background.

"Musically, it just opened my mind up," Akon says of his years in Africa. "I came in as an international listener, so naturally, when I create music, it gives it an international feel. I definitely love the fact that I grew up listening to all types of music, genres and cultures because it just allows me to be able to go wherever I want to go when it comes to music."

Akon also got an early tutorial in music from his father, jazz percussionist Mor Thiam, who taught him and his brothers how to play the drums at a young age.

"The drums, I think, is what really gave us our rhythm," Akon says. "That’s what attracted me to hip-hop so much, because it was a drum driven genre. When I make the beats, the drums come first, and then I build the music around it."

This approach has made Akon a hotly sought after producer who’s been tapped to work on the forthcoming discs from such big names as Britney Spears, Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson.

"I like dealing with artists who are going through something, because those are the records that mean the most, especially when an artist is willing to talk about it," he says, reflecting on the controversial lives of his latest batch of clients. "All these people have a history to where the media looks at them a certain way because they’ve been bashed for so long. It’s like, nobody’s ever really heard their side."

Akon knows all about grounding troubled times in music — he’s made a career out it. As he turns the page on his own rough- and-tumble past, he’s looking to enable the aforementioned pop heavyweights to do the same.

"It allows them to see that, ‘I’m not the only one in this position, he’s been there and overcame it through the music, so I’m sure I can do it, too,’ " Akon says of his turbulent background. "It’s always just been about the music."