You know that video of Akon angrily picking up a teenage boy and throwing him into a screaming crowd of people during a show? Yeah, Akon says he didn't do it.
Yesterday Akon appeared at a courtroom in Fishkill, New York to enter a not guilty plea to charges of endangering a minor and second-degree harassment stemming from the summer's fan-chucking incident. Pleading not guilty is a brave move for Akon because a) he was filmed doing the thing he's pleaded not guilty to and b) if he's convicted, Akon could end up spending over a year in jail. A year without Akon's blend of slightly derivative squeaky-voiced R&B music? Why, surely that's a punishment for us all.
Akon, then – genius or dickhead?
It's a tricky question, actually, because Akon is the man who invented the "woo-hoo, yee-hoo" hook for that Gwen Stefani song that you weren't able to shift from your mind for four months this year. So for that reason Akon is a genius. However, it's slightly outweighed by the 'dickhead' argument, since that includes everything else that Akon has ever done in all of his life.
Let's not forget that Akon isn't just the man who frenziedly dry-humped a 14-year-old girl in the middle of a concert once – or even the man who picked up a boy during a concert in upstate New York and threw him on top of a screaming girl's head – but he's the man who then goes and pleads not guilty to doing it.
After he was charged with endangering a minor and second-degree harassment last week, Akon yesterday appeared in a Fishkill courtroom to enter a not guilty plea even though there's a freely-available video of Akon's fan-fling on the internet for everyone to see.
As a result of the not guilty plea, Akon was released with no bail and ordered to return to court on January 16, where he faces a maximum sentence one one year and 15 days in jail if he's convicted. Not that we're making suggestions or anything, but Akon and his legal team should probably use that time to get his story in order.
That's because Akon claims that the boy-throwing was a staged introduction to his next song – something that doesn't explain why the parents of the boy who Akon threw contacted the police, or why the girl whose head the boy landed on is suing Akon – while Akon's lawyers Benjamin Brafman and Andrea Zellan say it was all just a big misunderstanding:
"It was never Akon's intent to violate the law. This unfortunate incident was a spontaneous reaction during a live concert that Akon deeply regrets. We are confident that this matter will ultimately be resolved in a manner that does not in any way interfere with Akon's successful career."
That's probably a statement that'll come back to haunt Akon and his lawyers in the future, because we'd argue that spending a year in jail wouldn't interfere with Akon's career at all, since to our knowledge he's borderline obsessed with basing all of his music videos in jails anyway.
In fact, if Akon manages to write and record a new album by January, he'll just be able to mouth the words to his new songs into a jail CCTV camera and nobody will notice any difference. Except that Akon will be crying and covered in all sorts of cigarette burns across his face when he does it. Plus the jittery arsonist staring at him while urinating down himself and playing with a razorblade might put him off slightly, but that can probably be edited away.
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