Songfacts®:

• Akon was born in Senegal and his family moved to New Jersey, USA when he was 7. His father is the jazz percussionist Mor Thiam.
• This song tells of a drug runner who ends up locked up in jail. It is autobiographical apart from the fact that Akon was jailed for armed robbery, not drugs. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Edward Pearce - Ashford, Kent, England, for above 2
• Prior to his successful singing career, Akon spent three years in jail for car theft. In an interview with Clayton Perry on Blogcritics Magazine, the Sengalese artist said that getting locked up was a turning point. He explained: "Sitting there in jail, I thought, 'Oh, my life can't be like this. There's got to be another way.' You know what I'm saying? That's when I even got the idea of making a record called "Locked Up," creating a new vision for the future, like, 'When I get out, this is what I plan to do.' It opened up doors for other things that I wanted to do. Music was relevant at that point. That's when I knew exactly what time it was."