I am a 90’s kid. And apart from being a first-hand observer of all these breakthroughs like the internet, Facebook and moreover Hollywood movies, I discovered Hip-Hop.
And this was not just discovering a new person dipping their hands in Hip-Hip. This was my introduction to Akon- The real OG of the 90’s Hip-Hop era.
Not just mine, but he entered the life of every Indian kid wanting to discover English music like a wave. It just took one of his songs and he became that artist whose music we would learn religiously just to be ‘cool’ amongst our friends.
Whether you wanna agree with it or not, we formally met Akon through Smack That. I mean, we all were so young at that point that we learnt the entire lyrics to this song without even understanding what it actually meant.
Smack that, all on the floor
Smack that, give me some more
Smack that, ’till you get sore
Smack that, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Yep, we all sang our lungs out to these lyrics in the school bus and honestly, i’ll still do it with no shame.
After Smack That there was no looking back for us. Akon was the top artist in everyone’s MP3’s and I-Pod’s playlist. To be even more hep amongst our bunch of friends we started memorising all of his songs one by one and aced it like its no biggie. In fact, the more of his songs you knew, the more popular you become.
From listening to Lonely on loop when our crush won’t give us any bhav to low-key singing Sorry, Blame It On Me during recess so that they would finally start giving us some attention, we did all of it.
We loved Akon so much that we would actually wait for his new songs to release and download it on our desktops.
After this, he kept giving us a list of great music and we cherished all of them like we wrote the lyrics ourselves. From shaking our booty to Belly Dancer to feeling all the beats from Beautiful, all his songs worked like magic.
I mean, we appreciated this guy so much that we even accepted his entry into Bollywood with open arms.
Remember those cute vocals for Chammak Challo, you guys!
So, even though Akon has come up with a brand new track now, every time I will hear that familiar early 2000’s song of his, my inner kid will start dancing to his beats.
Disclaimer: We grew up to understand these lyrics were problematic, however, these songs remained a major part of our childhood. We do not endorse the use of violent language.
