R&B star Akon has been in the music industry for almost 20 years. He says that now, after all these years, he's finally able to make music just for himself.

Akon was born in the USA but spent his childhood moving between New Jersey and Africa. He learned to play different musical instruments from both Western and African traditions. However, when he started his music career in the early 2000s, producers were only interested in one aspect of his background.

"At that time, one of the big things I had to distance myself from was the fact that I was African," he tells BBC Newsbeat. "That wasn't something they could promote in the kind of music world I was in."

Akon became a huge commercial success with popular pop and R&B songs like "Lonely" and "Locked Up." But he says the music industry's financial pressures and the need to make money influenced his music.

"Everything had to be carefully planned," he says. "It got stressful and started to feel like work."

Since his early successes, Akon has established his own record label and launched business ventures like the Konvict Clothing line. Some of his projects, like the idea of creating a "real-life Wakanda" in Senegal with its own cryptocurrency, didn't go as expected. However, he believes that enough has worked out, and he no longer relies on others to support him.

Making music at 50 years old is more about "the passion and love for music," he says. He can now include "more of an African influence" in his work because there's less pressure on him to make money.

"Music is not my main source of income now; it has fallen to maybe the tenth," he explains.

With financial freedom, he can "infuse more culture" into his songs. The tracks on his new Afro Freaks EP represent a "significant evolution" from his earlier hits like "Lonely" and "Locked Up."

"I can enjoy making music without dealing with the politics and the complexities of the music industry," he adds.

Akon's new EP heavily draws from Afrobeats, a genre that has gained global popularity thanks to artists like Davido, Wizkid, and Burna Boy.

He mentions his efforts to promote this music style, which blends African and Western influences. He even signed Wizkid to his own label in 2008. However, Akon remembers a time when US industry leaders dismissed Afrobeats.

"I recall in the early 2000s when I was trying to introduce and promote Afrobeats in America, they thought it was Reggae music," he recalls. "It was frustrating, trying to make them understand that the African audience was substantial, and this music would be the future."

Unfortunately, he faced resistance. It took another ten years before Afrobeats truly made its mark, with big artists like Drake and Beyonce collaborating with some of its brightest stars.

When Wizkid won a Grammy Award in 2021, Akon saw it as a vindication of his earlier efforts, saying it was "one of those 'I told you so' moments."