Don't know if this story has already been posted:
http://www.comcast.net/en...h=itn_akon


Verizon Drops Akon Like He's Hot
Fri May 4, 7:50 PM

Verizon really didn't want to see Akon "Smack That."

The communications company scrapped its partnership with the 25-year-old rapper Friday after a video was released that shows him simulating sex onstage with an underage girl during an Apr.12 concert in Trinidad.

According to various accounts, 15-year-old Danah Alleyne thought she had won a dance contest when she was invited to dance with Akon, but soon found out that first prize was a close encounter with the Konvicted rapper.

The Trinidad Express reported that Akon got seven women to come up and dance with him, promising that the best of the bunch would score a grand-prize trip to Africa.

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E! Online "We've never done this in the Caribbean before, but my DJ assures me that Trinidad has the best winers. Is that true? Well, y'all gotta represent here. Come on up now. Don't be scared," he told the crowd.

"I got carried away," Alleyne, a pastor's daughter, said in a public apology last month after a local TV station aired the footage. "I started to dance, as well, but I never thought it was going to be like that. I was shocked. My head was hitting the floor."

None of which sat well with Verizon, which will be taking their featured ring tones elsewhere.

"This week the partnership ended," Verizon said in a statement to Fox News. "We have music services on our cell phone service and we were promoting him as one of the artists. The other part of the sponsorship was the Gwen Stefani tour, of which he was an opening act. We are no longer sponsoring the tour."

The video depicting Akon improvising multiple sexual positions with Alleyne turned up on, and has since been pulled from, YouTube, but it can still be found elsewhere on the Internet.

Alleyne wasn't even supposed to be in the over-18 Zen nightclub, where the unofficial dance contest went down. Authorities have since closed the establishment and Trinidadian Prime Minster Patrick Manning has opened an investigation into the show.

"I have taken very careful notice of this matter and the owner of Zen owes it to the public to take responsibility," Manning told WorldNetDaily.com. "I will be interfacing with Zen because that kind of thing should never be allowed to happen in this country."

Meanwhile, Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds thinks Akon should get the Richard Gere treatment, describing his actions as "lewd" and suggesting that the hip-hop star be prosecuted.

"This whole hip hop thing is a guise and I don't want any part of it," Alleyne said. "I don't want any part of it. Look at what I have to go through with one mistake that I made. My dad warned me every time and I didn't listen. I am sorry."

Akon performed "The Sweet Escape" with Stefani on American Idol in March and then appeared two weeks later to sing "Don't Matter." His sophomore album Konvicted dropped in November and has sold more than 2.2 million copies.

Gwen must be pissed

I just saw the video and I am at a loss.

bellanoche said:

Can you post a link? All the other links were to pages where the movie was taken down.

guitarslinger44 said:

Never mind, I just found it. DAYUM! But still that girl had to know what she was getting into, and honestly, Akon's people should have checked to make sure she was of age. As an artist, you can never be too careful these days. There are a lot of guys that end up going to jail because they have sex with some groupie that is underage and it comes back to bite them in the ass (in terms of jail time) because they didn't check up on it first.

I hope Gwen fires him next!

she has a myspace page and is apparently bragging bout it

trideena, I think is what she goes by. .


sorry it is
trinideena
[Edited 5/7/07 2:28am]

Aww hell, just cancel the whole shitty tour

it takes this girl dancing provactively with this cat to realize he isn't about nothing? these kids really aren't listening to lyrics....because if that was so, most of these b.s. artists on the radio wouldn't even have records to be sold.

missfee said:

Yeah, but I really wouldn't call it dancing. Have you seen it?

http://contrydiction.blog...-stop.html

I think it is ok to post since this isn't Prince-related. If not, mods please snip.

missfee said:

guitarslinger44 said:

yeah, who?


But as for Akon, I'm not sure HE should be the one in too much trouble. For one thing, he didn't have sex with her. Second, he probably assumed she was of age if she was in the club. She was supposed to be, anyway.

Still, maybe it'll make some of these morons re-think their stage act.

missmad said:

Is this really her page? If so then she is surely doesn't seem ashamed of anything. I felt she was a willing participant in her degradation because at no point did she stop or leave the stage. She's just embarassed becasue Pastor Daddy found out.

Oh, I forgot to comment on that top she was wearing. Is that how 15-year-olds dress now?
[Edited 5/7/07 9:31am]

RZR said:

WEll for one the lead singer of that band Static-X. They were a great band back when their first couple of records came out, but they wound up having to take a long hiatus because the singer was jailed for banging an underage chick.

But you are right, if they let her into the club, I suppose that's the crux of the problem right there. IN an age of camera and video phones, celebs kinda have to think more before they act because you never know who will be around recording whatever it is you're doing. Kinda sad, we don't need the government watching every move we make, we have each other.

bellanoche said:

oh well no i haven't seen the actual video yet, and i'm at work right now, so i'll have to take a peek at it when i get home today. thanks for the link.

i wonder if top level verizon execs knew akon's history...i bet you this story brought him to the execs attention and that *thats* what caused his firing.

Well it has spilled over to Gwen.. Verizon has cancelled sponsorsship of the tour because Akon is her opening act

Good well maybe this is the start of the whole "Imus" effect that will be coming down on everyone. Whether this girl should have been in the clubor not in the club, everyone needs to take responsibility for their actions, honestly at this point in time, if you are bringing anyone on stage and not having them sign a contract U ARE AN IDIOT, u are open to any and all forms of a lawsuit. On tours by Christina,PCD,Janet,Mya they all have parts in their show where they take a guy out of the audience and do various things to them, but they are picked at the beginning of the show and they have to sign a contract backstage which basically says U CANT SUE, and heres what we will be doing with you. So Akon is an idiot for doing this plain and simple, and now he lost his tour, but also Gwen needs to take ownership here too, im sick of these POP artists using rappers like Akon,Camron,Rkelly to push their records, but then they are all shocked when they rape some girl or shoot someone.

lastdecember said:

You hit the nail on the head LastDecember.

But you know, to me, what is saddest in all of this is what passes for entertainment now. That crowd was loving that nonsense. As I watched it I thought they really have no idea what REAL talent is. I hate to beat a dead horse, but what is really going on? I just watched Young Jeezy "rap" about selling drugs on White Girl, now Rhiana is slinking around in fishnets and gold paint in Umbrella to distract from her very limited vocal ability. Where is my remote!!!

-grammar edit-
[Edited 5/8/07 8:27am]

bellanoche said:

Well that is exactly the issue, i listened to Russell Simmons talk this crap about getting the B and N word out of Rap, how about getting the Bullshit about dealing drugs and Violence out of it, how about getting "that" image out of it, of course he had nothing to say about that except that they are preaching what they know, which when translated means "i own a company and whatever sells, sells". As for Rihanna, never has someone been so calculated, this girl is a robot, and im not talking about the forehead either. She is so programmed, i swear if they check her neck there would be a bar code on it.

A lot of slackness goes on in Trinidad. I'm not surprised. I heard she told her father that she was going out with friends for ice cream.

lastdecember said:

LOL!!! I know, I read that interview with her a couple of years ago in Vibe I think it was where she said she had to learn how to sing into a microphone. How does someone who can't sing into a microphone get a record deal in the 21st century? And yes, I saw Russell Simmons and that other dude (was his name Kevin Lyles?) on Oprah basically excusing the trash that they've promoted for their own financial gain. There's always been a criminal element in the world, but when did we move to glorifying it? Don't you think there were drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes around back in the day? The difference is that there was a message about being a Pusherman when Curtis Mayfield sang about it. He didn't glorify it!

There seriously needs to be a paradigm shift, because I teach teens/young adults and I see firsthand the extent to which this garbage has polluted the mindset of a generation.

lastdecember said:

bellanoche said:

Well its basically an image thing with Rihanna, shes a goldmine because shes got the "look", shes exotic and can be put on magazine covers and videos, basically shes a model who happens to sing, which is what Cassie is also, dont get me wrong, im not knocking pretty girls here but it just seems that when the morphing of the Magazine/Video world got into the music world, the talent dropped big time, because at that point your musical talent is not even the important thing, I mean Avril Lavigne had to be told who David Bowie was??

whoa just saw the video, what the hell???? he sliding her and throwing her around like a blow up doll....and if she was that fuckin' innocent then why in the hell was she dressed so provacatively???

lastdecember said:

exactly. the pop songs with rapper routine kills my ears.

bellanoche said:

Trust me, I'm not a fan of Akon by any means. I've seen the video footage like 2 weeks ago and there are 2 things I've notice:

1. I don't think Akon has any idea that the girl was underage. In fact, she look like a grown woman.

2. It also look like the preacher's daughter was having too much fun. I'm not sure. Tough call.

missfee said:

Exactly. EXACTLY!!!!

Maybe cutting his sponsorship will finally stop his crappy ass singles from hitting #1...If I were Gwen I would've cut him from the tour no matter how many hits he produced for her because putting on a show isn't cheap and every piece of sponsoring counts severely...