R&B icon Akon has admitted that he used to get his brother Abu ‘Bu’ Thiam to double as him when he could not make it to a show.
Appearing on the radio show The Morning Hustle, the 49-year-old singer came clean after the hosts asked him about the rumours of his brother-body-double.
“Let me clear some things up so we all know,” he started, around 20:50 minutes into the interview. “Bu was my double. Yes. He was my double.”
“This was before internet. If you saw Bu in one place and you saw me, you couldn’t tell the difference,” he continued before explaining that he would be getting offered so much money it would be stupid to turn it down. So, the two brothers came up with a plan.
“Bu started off as my hype man when we was on the road,” he said. “We was booked soo - I was like ‘man, all this money I’m leaving on the table. We cannot leave all this money on the table’.”
Far out that’s pretty good thinking from the Thiam bros.
What makes it even better is that Akon says his bro doesn’t have the same singing voice as he does. The hosts asked him if Bu could sing and Akon was quick to say “no, he can’t sing, he can’t do none of that.”
Omar Thiam, Akon’s other brother, would even perform shows pretending to be his famous sibling without even telling either Akon or Bu.
“That was the sequel, cause Omar… he would do it without getting permission from me nor Bu. Omar would be in another country, another city, getting money and I’m like ‘what? They booked me already? I never did that!’”
Honestly, what a great story. Good to see the whole whānau getting paid and having fun while doing it, but there might be some people who attended an Akon concert circa 2006 that might be feeling a little cheated right now...
