akon
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Akon is threatening to sue Suge Knight over wild allegations that he committed sexual violence against underage girls while in the studio.
TMZ reported that during the first episode of Knight’s new Collect Call podcast, which he launched from behind bars last month, he accused Akon and producer Detail of raping two teenage girls, which Akon vehemently denies.
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Way back in 2009, Knight caught a beatdown by Akon’s business manager, Robert Carnes, Jr., who was charged with one count of felony aggravated assault. In 2020, Akon said the confrontation began over a business dispute between himself, Suge and Detail, but he told TMZ he hasn’t had any recent contact with the former Death Row CEO who is currently serving 28 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter.
From TMZ:
Akon tells TMZ Hip Hop … the claims are false, and he’s not standing for the slander. He says, “I need to make it very clear that I absolutely deny these outrageous false and disgusting claims Suge Knight made on his podcast about me.”
“I’ve never called, received, or had any contact with Suge Knight since he has been incarcerated. My voice you heard on his podcast was as a soundbite previously recorded from an interview I did with DJ Vlad 3 years ago regarding Suge Knight in 2009.”
He continues, “I’ve never been a guest on Suge Knight’s podcast. I always believe in building positivity into the world and my actions and legacy have spoken to that.”
“It’s unfortunate that I have to defend myself from these lies and I will be involving my legal team in filing a defamation lawsuit against Mr. Knight, my prayers for him will still continue.”
Knight recently declared that he will never testify against Duane “Keefe D” Davis has been arrested in connection with the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur, or anyone else involved in the case. Apparently, he’s far less tight-lipped when it comes to using his platform to air out alleged offenses about other artists and celebs.
As for Akon, the “Locked Up,” singer also addressed the allegations on X last week tweeting, “The world knows a lie when they hear it. It’s unfortunate that this man is going out like this. It’s sad and seriously embarrassing. Regardless of our history, I’m still going to be praying for him.”
https://twitter.com/Akon/status/1718640169232769174
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Source: Allen Berezovsky / Getty / Soulja Boy
Remember when crypto was all the rage? Now celebs who were out here pushing them are getting in T R O U B L E.
The SEC is cracking down on celebrities nefariously pushing crypto on normal people. Lil Yachty, Soulja Boy, Ne-Yo, Akon, Jake Paul, Lindsey Lohan, Austin Mahone, and adult film actress Kendra Lust were all hit with charges by the SEC for illegally promoting cryptocurrency.
According to Pitchfork’s reporting, everyone has agreed to pay a fine of $400K in “disgorgement, interest, and penalties” to settle the charges without admitting or denying the SEC’s findings. Mahone and Soulja Boy have yet to pay the funds.
The SEC also charged crypto pusher Justin Sun and three of his companies—Tron Foundation Limited, BitTorrent Foundation Ltd., and Rainberry Inc. (formerly BitTorrent Inc.) for the unregistered offer and sale of Tronix and BitTorrent. Sun is also in trouble for allegedly violating federal securities laws by plotting a scheme to inflate Tronix’s trading volume artificially.
Sun allegedly duped investors into buying Tronix and BitTorrent by using celebrity influencers and throwing them money to promote what the company was offering while telling them not to spill the beans on how much they were receiving in compensation.
Per the SEC:
While we’re neutral about the technologies at issue, we’re anything but neutral when it comes to investor protection. As alleged in the complaint, Sun and others used an age-old playbook to mislead and harm investors by first offering securities without complying with registration and disclosure requirements and then manipulating the market for those very securities. At the same time, Sun paid celebrities with millions of social media followers to tout the unregistered offerings, while specifically directing that they not disclose their compensation. This is the very conduct that the federal securities laws were designed to protect against regardless of the labels Sun and others used.
These latest celebs join the likes of T.I. who the SEC hit with a charge in 2020 for pushing bootleg initial coin offerings from a company called FLiK. In 2018, Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled felt the SEC’s wrath, with the boxer coughing up over $600K and the music producer having to pay over $150K and agree to not “promote any securities, digital, or otherwise,” for multiple years.
Kim Kardashian also got in trouble for the crypto jig as well and had to come out of her pockets. It was fun, but the SEC is not playing anymore.
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Photo: Allen Berezovsky / Getty
It’s been 16 years since Akon unveiled his R&B hit, “Smack That,” and the 49-year-old star shared how Eminem came to be a producer as well as a featured artist on the track.
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While appearing on the Bootleg Kev podcast this week, Akon discussed his past collaborations with the superstar rapper. “It’s interesting because every record I ever put out, I actually produced, except ‘Smack That,’” he explained. “Eminem produced that record. Isn’t that crazy? He always had them small little sounds, it was something minute, but it felt like Eminem.”
Akon went on to admit that he didn’t expect Em to be such a good producer. “He gave me a folder with, like, 30 tracks in there. And out of 30, I picked five. And I recorded all five, and the one that stood out was ‘Smack That.’ I was like, ‘Bro, this is it’,” he recalled.
“Once he heard my concept to it, he was like, ‘Yo, I’m jumping on this one’. And I said, ‘You know what, if he jumps on this one, this will be a single,’” he continued. “And that’s the only one we ever had together, besides all those we did. But I still have them. I literally still have those records today. These are all the records that’s gonna drop in the future.”
“Smack That,” which was featured on Akon’s 2006 album, Konvicted, peaked at No. 2 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 dated November 4, 2006, and spent 30 total weeks on the chart.
Watch the full interview below.
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