As was reported here at HipHopDX.com earlier today, Hip Hop’s hook king, Akon, has been revealed to be exaggerating about his criminal past [click here to read].
HipHopDX caught up with Kardinal Offishall, who is signed to Akon’s Konvict Music label, late today to get his thoughts on TheSmokingGun.com’s report that has cast his label leader as nothing more than a savvy con artist who “couldn’t be more fake.”
“I thought it was kinda funny,”Kardinal said to DX about the report. “Because it’s like, just knowing ‘Kon and just following his career, I don’t think he ever based his whole career off of making people think he was in jail for 10 years and selling crack on the side and this, that and the next thing.”
AD LOADING...
While Akon has never suggested he did that kind of time, it has been sufficiently proven by TheSmokingGun.com that he didn’t serve the three plus years in the pen he claimed to have in countless interviews, but rather what some consider a more paltry term of five months in the DeKalb, Georgia county jail.
Kardinal insists the amount of time Akon actually spent “Locked Up” is irrelevant, because contrary to suggestion, Akon and Konvict Music are not in the business of glamorizing going to prison.
“He did what [amount of time] he did,” said Kardinal, “He did his time, but basically the whole Konvict movement has been based on the total opposite [of that], off of staying out of jail. If you look at even the Konvict symbol, it’s all about breaking the shackles, and you can see the music that’s wrapped around it.”
“‘Kon is definitely a dude that’s trying to focus on the positive,”Kardinal continued, “so I mean it’s kinda hilarious to me [that there’s] like a expose [on him]. It’s not like he’s [Young] Jeezy or somebody who’s claiming some crazy shit.”
AD LOADING...
Some may argue that indeed Akon had made claims of doing “some crazy shit,” but Kardinal remains adamant that his fans shouldn’t care that Akon appears to have been lying about the length of his bid.
“It shouldn’t matter at all,” said Kardinal. “No matter what jail time he did, anybody that’s really been to jail knows that it ain’t the place to go. It ain’t like we talking about he was going on vacation somewhere, we’re talking about jail. All my niggas that I know that’s been to jail [know] it’s not the place to be. I ain’t never been to jail, and I ain’t trying to go. So whether he was there for a few months, or whatever the scenario [was], he did his time and let the nigga live.”
Kardinal’s Konvict Music/Interscope Records debut album, Not 4 Sale, is due in June. The album’s first single, “Dangerous,” featuring Akon, is available for sale right now on iTunes.
