Akon had to work his way to the top, like many other musicians — but sometimes, folks have to fake it until they make it.
And that’s exactly what the “Locked Up” hitmaker admitted to doing on a recent episode of Drink Champs, which dropped on Saturday (July 15).
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In the interview, Akon — who was born in St. Louis, Missouri and spent a significant part of his childhood in his father’s native Senegal — revealed that lied about his background to feel better about the way things were going in his life.
“I used the excuse that I was a survivor, because it made me feel better about it,” he said. “But there was nothing for me to survive. Because my parents was actually really wealthy. I was living in New Jersey. We lived in a three-story house, just me and my older brother. So when I think about it, we were just bored as hell.”
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He continued: “I think a lot of my choices came from wanting to be accepted, you know? So that’s how I got caught into all the things that I got caught into, including cars. Because cars made me feel special. I was young, I could drive with the most elite vehicles, and I ran with the scenario that I was an African prince.”
The Konvict Muzik founder also admitted that his royal ruse was inspired by Coming to America, the 1988 Eddie Murphy movie about an African price who travels to the U.S. to find a wife.
“After Coming to America, I was like, ‘Shiiiit!'” he joked. “That’s what motivated it!”
This isn’t the first time that Akon has admitted to pretending to be an African prince. Back in 2010, he told MTV the same story for their show, When I Was 17.
His episode, which also featured Kerry Washington and Donald Glover, marked the first time that the “Smack That” rapper admitted to lying about his background.
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“I think I was a young hustler at that time. I told everybody, ‘I’m a prince!'” he said, with his brother Omar admitting that “people just didn’t know any better so they believed that we were princes from Africa.”
Despite lying about his royal heritage, Akon’s love for Africa runs deep. The 50-year-old launched Akon Lighting Africa in 2014, a project that provides solar-powered electricity in over a dozen African countries including Guinea, Sierra Leone and Senegal.
Earlier this year, the musician/philanthropist made headlines by saying that he believes Africa could become the strongest nation in the world if African-Americans moved back there — and he’s making it his mission to make that happen.
“My goal is to get everybody to move back to Africa. That’s my goal,” he said on REVOLT’s Deposit$ podcast. “I wanna get as many African-Americans back home to Africa as I possibly can, because I know the day they move back, everything they fighting for in America — they will not have to fight for over there.
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“All the struggle that they struggled [in America] … they gon’ come there with this mindset, with this mentality, with the finances that they built, the equity in life and bring it back and invest that in Africa?”
He continued: “Man, Africa could be the strongest nation in the world if y’all went back home. Because we got everything that it takes to be that. We got the resources, we got the land, we got the population. And together we got the strength and we got the know-how. Like, why we ain’t doing that?”
