Freedom

With Freedom Akon delivers a set of songs so accessible they work well whether played at top volume in a night club or as background music in a doctor’s office. The disarmingly simple music-box melodies of “Sunny Day” and “Be With You” continue the tradition started by “Don’t Matter.” “Holla Holla” folds his voice and protégé T-Pain’s voice into a single entity, while the raspy rhyming of Lil Wayne and Young Jeezy forms a perfect complement to Akon’s innocence on “I’m So Paid.”