My Man Kev from ThisIsHipHop had the chance to sit down with Akon for an interview.

Chances are you will be hard pressed not to hear an Akon song on the radio at any given moment. The hip hop/R&B singer-songwriter and Grammy nominated record producer has literally been everywhere over the course of the last three years. Aside from his solo albums, Trouble and Konvicted, superstars such as Young Jeezy, Eminem, Gwen Stephani, and Snoop Dogg have reached out for his musical expertise. Now with a third solo album under his belt (the recently released Freedom), Akon is taking radio waves by storm. Being a successful artist, producer, label owner, and entrepreneur, Akon is extremely difficult to get a hold of. So when Akon’s label, SRC Records, asked me if I wanted an interview I simply could not refuse. Here’s what went down…

Kevin: First of all, thanks a lot for taking time out to chat with us and congratulations on the release of your new album! The name of the new album is Freedom. Can you tell us a little bit of the concept behind this album? I read somewhere that the original title was supposed to be Acquitted. Can you expand on that?

Akon: Absolutely. We wanted to give a more positive outlook on the record and on the title more so than anything. Just kinda refurbish the image of Konvict on a positive side, because somewhere along the lines it got misinterpreted. [People were] Thinking that we were glorifying jail life, gangsta, and street… all the negative aspects of what [the word] konvict would represent normally. We changed the name from Acquitted because Freedom means the same exact thing as acquitted. Only difference is Freedom is a lot more positive, a lot more global. You can take that anywhere and everyone has a definition of what Freedom means to them.

Kevin: You’ve been pretty busy since releasing your last album Konvicted in 2006. How long did it actually take to put Freedom together? Are you happy with how it turned out?

Akon: I’m extremely happy with Freedom and how it turned out. It didn’t really take me much to put it together. We didn’t even really time it; the whole album was done while I was on tour, you know as I was roaming through Europe, Africa, Asia, on the international run. That whole album was being developed as we moved, so there really wasn’t like a deadline. It was more like vibin’ out… records that we loved, we did them at that moment, spur of the moment. We just put them all together to create this package.

Kevin: I heard about a duet you had with Michael Jackson that was supposed to be on the album, but wasn’t included in the final release. What happened with that song?

Akon: “Hold My Hand” was the record I did with M.J. And unfortunately it got leaked over the Internet. What ended up happening was it took away from the whole presentation of the record. We wanted it to be something special being the fact that it was a comeback record. It was my biggest collaboration ever. We wanted that movement to be special, we wanted people to be able to feel the energy. And when the record got leaked, it took away the excitement; it took away the set up. We just kinda backed off to see how things would move; if the record would get overly popular, would we get behind it. There was always the situation where we was trying to decide what we were gonna do with it, but for me personally I wanted it to be a little more special. Everyone had already heard it at that point so I felt there was really no purpose to put it on the record.

Check out the full interview here