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Any album that you pick up of mine, you know it's an Akon album. The guests are very limited, and you get to really feel the experience. You get the Akon experience when you get the albums. I always want to make sure that stays the way it is. I don't want to flood the album to where you lose focus on why you bought it.

I was signed to a record label at the same time as my friend Elliot Murphy, who makes great records to this day.

It's not like a boss and artist relationship; it's like a big brother to a younger brother relationship, and he's a great guy. So big shout-out to Akon and the Konvict Muzik crowd.

I signed contracts I didn't think were a good idea but people around me said it was the way forward. It saddens me that I'll never own my first album ever, which sucks.

I was signed by L.A. Reid on Arista Records when I was 16. He understood me and believed in me. Arista folded and I got put on RCA or whatever, then there were new people there, and every six months it changes and more new people come in.

I was an artist, I was executive producer on my first album, so I've always had to manage both. I couldn't get a record deal. It wasn't by choice - I couldn't get a record deal, so I had to figure it out.

When I was 13, I was saying that I wanted to be signed to a label. I was begging my dad to get me signed with somebody.

When it came time to be a professional rapper, I wouldn't sign anything without reading it. There was no way I was going to have people make decisions for me or wake up one day and find that I was broke because I never bothered to read a contract.

Akismet started on a $70 dollar-a-month server. Anyone can scrape together $70.