“Lonely” singer Akon practices polyamory and has multiple wives.
“Polyamory is a natural behavior for men,” Akon, 53, said on the Tuesday, May 19, episode of the “We Need to Talk” podcast. “Now, because of the rules that [are] set around us, we control that behavior to, you can say, appease our partner because of the same rules that we’re living by and that we’re, you can say, agreeing upon.”
He continued, “When you’re single, it’s not a problem. It’s only when you are attached or you’ve promised someone that this is a relationship that we’re supposed to hold in the rules that you decide to hold it in.”
When asked how many wives he has, Akon (real name Aliaune Thiam) succinctly said, “I’ll just leave that to your imagination.” He added, “It’s entertainment,” after being questioned about having more spouses than the Senegalese president. (Bassirou Diomaye Faye, the leader of the Republic of Senegal, has two wives of his own.)
While playing coy about his relationships, Akon did offer insight into his home life.
“I got the most amazing kids. I got nine altogether. Seven boys and two girls, and the setup all depends on the person and the understanding,” he said. “It’s communication. It’s literally the answer and the solution. You got to be mature enough to know that, ‘If this is the situation that I’m going to park in, I have to communicate.’”
Among Akon’s relationship rules, his wives cannot have other partners and he lists his first wife as his emergency contact “no matter what.”
“That one is the reason you even got one, two or three. She’s the queen,” he stated. “Nobody violates Wife No. 1. The moment they violate, [they are] out the door. … There’s levels in the end, like, she’s the one that’s actually sacrificing in the end. With new people [joining] your family, there’s going to be new attitudes, new mindsets, new behaviors and [the first wife has] to deal with that.”
Akon also shut down any critics of his lifestyle during the candid conversation.
“If you’re going to do it, be honest about it,” he said. “The problem is [a] majority of the critics are hypocritical because they’re saying that this ain’t right, but yet they’re doing it. There’s not a person, I promise you, that ever critiqued anything that I’ve ever said that if I went and did a background check on them right now or hired a private investigator that I wouldn’t find nothing. That’s just being real, right?”
Akon added, “I think as humans sometimes we find ourselves judging others, not understanding the pathway they went through because most of the time, oftentimes, when I’m talking, I’m talking relating to culture.”
Akon further claimed that polyamory benefits each wife more than the husband.
“Oftentimes when the family is united in that way, the benefit is more for the woman than it is for the man because the man actually has to take care of all of them,” he said. “He has to treat them all equally and their responsibility bears on him as well.”
