Akon pisses me off. His picture showed up as a side-by ad on Youtube, and there's something inherently irritating about knowing who he is and what he does that stirs a self-righteous indignation from within me. Before you read on, I must stress I won't say anything libellous or otherwise personally insulting about Akon. I won't call him a wanker, or indeed single him out as a pretentious mainstream vampire with a dodgy and contrived 'gangsta' persona, along the lines of Jay and Silent Bob, or that white bloke with cornrows in uni who's always asking people why we hatin', and has a predilection for mispronouncing rapper's names [I'm no mainstream cocksucker, but even I know better than to pronounce them as 'Chin-guy' and 'The Black-eyed Pissh']. Akon, for me, represents something more worthy than a personal slag-off; I intend on using him to illustrate the frustrations I have had with regards to his music and that of all the current music culture.

It doesn't need to be said that I've not so much done this topic to death, as resurrected it repeatedly from cryogenic suspension to the point where it's one nervous sympathetic twitch away from totally destabilising its cellular physique and exploding into a cloud of cold whitish powder. Such is the prevalence of today's current musical culture however, that the fury within me directed towards it is given constant stirrings and cause for revival. It is to the point that I am almost concerned about how little it takes to start me off. I am however, given to feeling a simultaneous sense of pride, looking at how far I have managed to dissociate myself from modern-day music, that I can treat it with more than just casual disdain. My inherently pacifist and considered personality will preclude me from becoming part of a more physically radical solution, however let it be known that if for some reason someone were to bomb an Akon concert or some other rap, pop, faux-rock or R&B 'star''s lip-synching suckfest I would feel very strongly that some measure of justice has been served. It's not the wishing-death-on-people part that interests me, I just want to see some terminus to the dubious craft that is modern music.

Akon for me, represents all that is bad about the current music industry, and here are my reasons why:

1) Sudden stardom. No one had heard of this guy five years ago. Suddenly, from out of the ether, some two-bit producer pulled this identikit black rapper out of his ass named Akon, launched the biggest charm offensive this side of the Milky Way and made him mainstream. According to his Wiki article the man spent half his life in Senegal and half of it in the United States. Recording mostly from home, his tapes found their way up to Universal Studios who duly pressed an album and launched it into the mainstream idiosphere. This is the way the world works these days, where any person with a two-bit recording system and an ounce of 'talent' can be made the biggest thing on the planet, at least for a little while.

Andy Warhol was a prophet when he said 'In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.', and it's true. What happens when tastes switch and trends change? The industry in a way, provides answers before this question is even asked. At the end of it all, record producers want to make a buck or million, just like everybody else. That's why the music industry of today can seem to be saturated with 'talent', precisely because the more names a studio can pump out and throw in massive numbers at a stupid public, the more money they'll get, hence their urgency in snapping up any person who even has a vague idea of what music is as an artform. Which leads me onto my next point:

2) Pretentiousness of the industry. Akon's Wiki article is highly stressful of his West African roots. As the son of famed 1970s jazzist Mor Thiam, who was known for incorporating ethnic sounds into the modern jazz equation, it is assumed that Akon grew up true to his roots, in a candyland of musical wonder, where modern and traditional sounds melded in a potpourri blend that oozed class and intellectual distinction. No wonder Universal were so quick to publish his records, such a character would be the perfect riposte to tradition-advocating purists like myself- it would be better than a Kenyan Colombian coffee blend!

The reality: Here are some arbitrary lines, a short excerpt if you will, that I gleaned from Akon's song Ghetto, from the supposed breakthrough album of 2004. As Russell Brand would say, ''And this is verbatim...''

Nigga[sic] don't make me have to step in the club
Wit [sic] my dogs show all you mutha fuckas [sic] how we ball
Nigga [sic]don't make me show you how I can violate the law
Get your woman go up in the bar

Dog how tha [sic] hoe [sic] love me
Waitin' to show me?
(Look bitch you just a fuck)
And that how she gon [I'm tired of sic-ing] be
But niggas want a hand of in L O V E

Ah, tradition. I'm sure Papa Thiam's very proud. "Sure it's vanilla-flavoured gangsta rap, but he played the djembe once when he was seven!" You wouldn't be dissing tradition more if you hacked down a fully-decorated plastic Christmas tree with a chainsaw, set it alight and fucked the trunk while wearing a zombie Santa Claus outfit.

This is from a guy who isn't even considered a gangsta-rap artist, by the way. Many people have made it explicitly clear, he's an R&B artist. It wasn't too long ago that R&B was once the domain of B.B King, latterly Whitney Houston. So to class this guy as an R&B artist doesn't just stretch the credibility of the genre, but that of the entire music industry. If this is a re-invention, why stop there? Why not call all pop classical? Why don't we make policemen lawyers as well? Why not, we have a re-invention of the law, that allows every-day lay-persons like myself to gun down errant people who produce records for artists and falsely market them as having adherence to some form of tradition?

The sad thing is I'd actually believe that Akon at one point showed some genuine adherence to his roots. Perhaps his rhythms had West African beats, or maybe were played on traditional African instruments. It's so like today's industry however to kill off any semblance of individuality that might earmark an artist for greatness. The artist is either re-invented from the start, or once s/he has established a foothold in the industry. All the machinations of the current industry is to homogenise musical tastes so every artist sounds the same, creating a trend which mindless consumers lap up like the 36 varieties of milk and 62 brands of ketchup. The fact is we can excuse such character assassination because we're too used to a convenient uni-patterned world. We ironically take pride in human culture as being diverse, when we seem to make every attempt to kill off any slightest attempts at heterogeneity, to the point that the only indication a culture ever existed is in remixed soundbites of crappy R&B 'songs' and those families who eat curry every second Tuesday.

3) Pretentiousness of the artist. As much as I'd like to blame the industry, I'm a firm believer it takes two hands to clap. There's a neat little concept called 'selling out', which has become increasingly definitive of current music artists. We'd like to think that artists are victims of the current trend, perhaps growing up with naivette and illusions that they might somehow be the ones to bring a fresh new sound to the music world only to have their dreams dashed at the big step forward, that the bigwigs who control the industry metaphorically [and perhaps literally] holding a knife to their throats and demanding they change for the sake of change. All indications are, however, that the artist is as much a voluntary player in the game as s/he is a pawn.

The logic is simple: If artists genuinely saw themselves as such, they wouldn't change what they did for the sake of earning dollars and fame and becoming just another identikit size 2 cog in the big machine of industry. Take Akon for example. His father, being a highly respected and influential jazz musician could certainly have pulled contacts to establish his son in the thriving world music or jazz industry. If his stance as an artist was as noble as the term entails, he could easily have walked away. The same goes for all the others; instead, 'Senegal-sound' Akon sold out for the bright lights and Promised Land of mainstream music, adopting a faux-gangsta/R&B/tough muthafucka personality that is as contrived as it is confused. And no, I'm not of the opinion that having spent time in jail for stealing a car makes one a 'tough muthafucka', nor do you have to rap like one.

The fact is, the industry creates frankly idiotic personas such as these that all artists have to fit into if they want to be part of the system. If you can imagine a persona as a coat, it's as much the boutique's prerogative to sell a person the coat as it is the person's to buy and wear it. In that sense, I consider every mainstream artist as having made a considered, conscious decision. They all know what they signed up for, and all the alternatives they could have taken. If they truly believed music was an art, they would not willingly sign up to destroy their careers from the rootstock up, to make cookie-cutter music that sells for a penny a pound, and to adopt personas that illustrate nothing more than the crass, violence-worshipping, lifestyle borne of the Sybaritic excessiveness of the First World. And who, might I ask, advocates these personas?

4) Misguided public who don't have a clue. I'll leave you to mull over that one. You know who you are.