Akon

CTL-E-5731 · Person · musician · 1973–present

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07003 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-5731.

Akon, born Aliaune Damala Badara Akon Thiam on 16 April 1973 in St. Louis, Missouri, is a Senegalese-American singer, songwriter and entrepreneur who spent much of his childhood in Senegal as the son of percussionist Mor Thiam. Signed to SRC/Universal, he broke through with "Locked Up" and the debut album Trouble (2004); Konvicted (2006) reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200. He became the first solo artist to hold the Hot 100's No. 1 and No. 2 positions simultaneously twice, with "I Wanna Love You" and "Smack That," then "Don't Matter" alongside his Gwen Stefani feature "The Sweet Escape." Through Konvict Muzik and Kon Live Distribution he developed or signed acts including T-Pain and Lady Gaga. GRAMMY.com's authoritative count gives him five nominations and no wins; some press sources say six — the conflict is carried in this record's notes, not blended.

The record

• Also known as: Aliaune Damala Badara Akon Thiam, Aliaune Thiam

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Census Intake Wave 1 — 747 Program, Wave 7; first packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Akon entity in the live graph at 3,443 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-5731 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 3 — Famous Birthdays ABSENT census, readiness rank 204 (R&B Singers list). The census supplied the NAME ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — Senegalese-American recording figure — diaspora scope. Vital status: LIVING — BBC reported the July 2025 Akon City cancellation naming him; a co-headline tour with Ne-Yo was announced for 2026. CONFLICTS CARRIED: Akon's long-repeated account of three years in prison for an auto-theft ring was challenged in April 2008 by The Smoking Gun from court records; the current sourced record states his only conviction was a 1998 gun charge with probation. The disputed version is not asserted here. Grammy nomination count conflicts (5 per GRAMMY.com vs 6 in some press) are shown in the statistics line. STATISTICS (sourced, dated): Five Grammy nominations, zero wins (GRAMMY.com, accessed 2026-10-16); some press/feature sources report six nominations — shown as a conflict. Konvicted peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 (2006). MEDIA: photo HELD (candidate: Wikimedia Commons and label/press photography of this subject exists; no file page was read at file-page level in this pass, so no image is cleared — CTL-PHOTO-001; a CTL-created graphic is the standing alternative); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-5731-akon.svg); video HELD (the Shorts Link Map catalog was checked by name and variants — no matching-entity CTL Short exists for this subject; the three catalog string-hits for "Ne-Yo" resolve to Nina Simone and John Coltrane rows, not Ne-Yo billings); audio HELD (no CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio; the subject's recordings are third-party copyrighted material). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Person records carry no map slot under the media-layer rule; maps attach to places and institutions.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map catalog (checked by name and variants), and no official/em) | audio = HELD (No CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio at staging; the subject's own recordings are third-party )

Relationships

• T-Pain — related to
  Akon signed and developed T-Pain through Konvict Muzik (2005).

Sources

• AllMusic artist page — born 16 April 1973, St. Louis, Missouri (authoritative biography) — https://www.allmusic.com/artist/mn0000933458/ (primary source · build store)
• GRAMMY.com artist page — five nominations, zero wins, categories listed — https://www.grammy.com/artists/akon/1615 (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia, "Akon" — SRC/Universal signing; Trouble (2004); Konvicted No. 2; first solo artist to hold Hot 100 Nos. 1–2 simultaneously twice; Konvict signings — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akon (build store)

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Record CTL-E-5731 · Combined Graph record U-07003 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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