If you attended an Akon show back in the day, there’s a chance the man on stage wasn’t him.
The “Locked Up” artist explained the situation during the April 30 episode of Bootleg Kev’s eponymous podcast. Around the 17:30 minute mark, Akon addressed his previous admission about enlisting his brother Abou “Bu” Thiam as a body-double who performed his concert when he was overbooked.
Akon said he and Bu carried out the ruse to ensure no money was left on the table, suggesting they both profited from the move. But it wasn’t just Bu who would front as Akon; the artist’s other brother, Omar Thiam, allegedly pulled off similar stunts early on in Akon’s career—and he did so behind Akon’s back.
“Bu used to fill in for me in shows, and my other brother, Omar, he would just Debo, like, straight take a show,” Akon said. “I’ll be in New York, and next thing you know, I’m getting a flyer from Baltimore that I’m performing live. This n***a O would just book the show and keep the money. [He] wouldn’t even tell, as if I’m not gonna find out. He would go as me. O was a straight gangsta about it.”
He continued: “[The audience] would not know the difference. And when you see me and my brother separately, if you didn’t see me in person, you would definitely say ‘OK, 1000%.’ Omar was running it up.”
Akon was clearly amused by Omar’s money grab, insisting he and his family “laugh about it today.”
The Grammy-nominated singer spoke about Bu’s body-double plots in a 2022 interview on The Morning Hustle, revealing Bu once filled in for him at a Hot 97-hosted event. He admitted Bu couldn’t sing, so he just lip-synced through the entire gig.
“Let me clear some things up so we all know,” he said. “Bu was my double. He was my double. This was before the internet. If you saw Abou in one place and you saw me, you couldn’t tell the difference … That was probably the funnest part of our lives.”
Akon said there came a time when he could no longer get away with the stunt, as Bu became an increasingly prominent figure within the music industry.
“Damn Bu just too popular,” he told Kev. “He got big. Huge executive today.”
