If Morgan Wallen isn’t featured on the new version of “Locked Up,” Akon missed HUGE opportunity…
But seriously… NOBODY asked for this.
We have a new artist getting ready to step into the world of country music, and that would be rapper/hip hop star and producer Akon, who burst onto the music scene in 2004 after the release of his aforementioned single that originally featured Styles P. Later, in 2006, he put out his second album Konvicted, which was a huge commercial success and nominated for Best Contemporary R&B Album at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards, while its lead singles, “I Wanna Love You” (featuring Snoop Dogg) and “Smack That” (featuring Eminem), both received nominations for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration.
Both of the songs simultaneously peaked at numbers one and two on the Billboard Hot 100, respectively, along with two of his singles released the following year in “Don’t Matter,” and his guest performance on Gwen Stefani’s “The Sweet Escape,” which made Akon the first solo artist to concurrently hold the top two positions on the chart twice.
He was and is a big name in the rap and pop world in the early 2000’s, featuring on tons of songs too and working with people like Michael Jackson, Dr. Dre, Eminem, T-Pain, Gwen Stefani, Lil Wayne and many more, if that gives you any indication of his track record and the caliber of people he collaborates with.
While Akon hasn’t had any massive commercial hits of his own for a while now (as a solo artist), he recently told TMZ that his next project will be unlike anything he’s done before… he’s redoing his entire catalog to make it country. He explained that it has been in the works for at least five years, and it will also feature other country artists, though he didn’t name any names yet:
“I’m actually redoing my whole catalog in country. The whole catalog, I’m not even joking. We’ve already started. It’s been an idea for years, like, forever. Starting next month you’re gonna start seeing all the releases.”
Since he says the songs will start coming out next month, fans can expect to get a lot more details pretty soon… and while I’m not so sure the “country versions” of this stuff will be my taste, I did like some of his music back in the day. Considering two of his biggest hits, “Smack That” and “I Wanna Love You,” were basically about hooking up with strippers, I’m really curious to see how they “redo” that “in country” as he put it.
I’m not sure how deep his love for country goes (my hunch is that it’s about as deep as a shower), but clearly he sees it as an opportunity to cash in. Obviously, the popular thing for pop artists to do these days is try and make a “country record,” much like what Beyoncé did with Cowboy Carter and Post Malone with F-1 Trillion. He’s not the only rapper putting out music like this lately either, as Snoop Dogg is currently working on his second gospel album and dropped country collab with Ernest just last week, and BigXthaPlug put out a duet with Bailey Zimmerman and has more on the way with more “country” music too.
Ed Sheeran recently said he wanted to make a “proper” country record, and then would stay in the genre afterwards, but until that happens, Post Malone is the only artist who has really ingratiated himself with the country music community. Others like Lana Del Rey, Chappell Roan, Machine Gun Kelly and Beyonce… not so much.
It’s also been reported that Akon is going to be featured on Gary LeVox’s (Rascal Flatts frontman) “Hold the Umbrella” soon, so this whole country project probably has a lot to do with the timing of that single as well.
Stay tuned…
#Akon is happily joining the country music boom … but unlike other rappers, he plans on re-recording his whole discography — and giving people that honky-tonk twang!!!#Exclusive clip HERE: https://t.co/8ItnhsaihZ pic.twitter.com/nqQSov1hNj
— TMZ (@TMZ) April 17, 2025
