Akon felt under pressure to 'distance himself from his African background'
Akon felt pressure to "distance" himself from his African background at the start of his career. The 50-year-old singer was born in the US but spent some of his childhood in the west African country of Senegal, and Akon has now claimed that producers were only interested in one side of his heritage in the early 2000s. He told 'BBC Newsbeat': "One of the biggest things that I had to actually distance myself from at the time when I did come out, was the fact that I was African. "That wasn't really something that they could market or promote in that kind of arena that I was actually playing in." ...