Akon
The voice on half of late-2000s radio. Akon went from "Locked Up" to "Lonely" to "Smack That" — and guested on 23 Hot 100 hits for other artists while his labels signed Lady Gaga and T-Pain.
Aliaune Thiam — Akon — is a Senegalese-American singer whose breakout came in 2004 with "Locked Up" featuring Styles P, from his debut album Trouble, released that June. The track introduced his signature: a keening sung hook pitched somewhere between rap and R&B, a sound you could identify in a single bar. "Lonely" followed in 2005, reaching the top five of the Billboard Hot 100 and hitting No. 1 in Australia, the UK, and Germany.
His peak arrived with Konvicted, released in November 2006, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and spawned hits at an almost industrial rate: "Smack That" with Eminem climbed to No. 2 on the Hot 100, "I Wanna Love You" with Snoop Dogg became his first No. 1, and "Don't Matter" his first solo chart-topper. Beyond his own records, Akon guested on 23 Billboard Hot 100 entries for other artists — including "The Sweet Escape" with Gwen Stefani, which reached No. 2. By 2008 it seemed impossible to turn on the radio without hearing his voice open somebody's song, a moment of melody before the first verse — one of the defining sounds of the ringtone-rap era.
He was building an empire on the side. Akon founded the label Konvict Muzik in 2004 and KonLive in 2007, signing artists including Lady Gaga, T-Pain, and R. City, and released his third album Freedom in December 2008. As the hits cooled after 2010, he pivoted toward big-canvas projects — launching Akon Lighting Africa in 2014, which provides electricity across more than a dozen African countries — a second act that reframed the hook-man of 2000s radio as something closer to a mogul.
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