It Was A Piece Of Paper So It Was Up to Him to Turn It Into A Contract- Akon On Why He Could Not Work With Sarkodie

American singer and songwriter, Aliaune Damala Badara Akon Thiam, known mononymously as Akon has finally explained why he could not embrace Sarkodie to his record label Konvict Music over a decade ago when preliminary arrangement brought them together.

In an interview conducted on #PulsexKalyJaySpace, a Twitter Space by Ghanaian influencer Kaly Jay and Pulse Ghana, Akon said aside from the fact the Ghanaian iconic rapper was not ready to upgrade mentally, he was also more fixated on becoming a local champion.

“Sarkodie was the first artist that we signed out of Ghana,” Akon began. “My brother, Babs actually was dealing with him on a day-to-day basis, but at the time it was one of those situations where when you signed African artists, you really didn’t have full control over them.”

Akon noted that because they didn’t have full control of Sarkodie’s activities, they couldn’t connect with him very well. “It was a piece of paper so it would be up to the artist to say okay, we have a contract. Let’s honour it,” he added.

“We had plans to make him so much bigger but I think at the time his agenda was more focusing on Ghana, which worked for him. And I think that it was a plan that worked,” Akon continued his narration on #PulsexKalyJaySpace.

I mean, it’s arguably or arguably not – but I know for sure if had he followed our plan, he would have been a global artist without a doubt. We realised that we really couldn’t work with him yet because he just wasn’t mentally ready to go on that level. We just allowed him to continue moving the way he was moving.

Unfortunately, when you have an artiste and you can’t control the artists or you can’t control the asset to them, it’s hard for you to do what you need to do with them if you don’t have control over him.

I don’t know if it was him specifically or the team that he had around him at that time, but it was just very difficult to get certain things done with the communication that we were getting with his team at that time. I always say he is the artist that got away.”

SOURCE: www.