Month: July 2022

Diddy‘s debut album, No Way Out turns 25 this week, and he has plans to celebrate the anniversary in true Diddy fashion. To coincide with the anniversary, Diddy, who was known as Puff Daddy at the time of the album’s release, will drop a special edition of the album.

The 25th anniversary edition of No Way Out will contain the original 17 tracks, as well as 15 bonus tracks. The bonus tracks will include radio mixes, instrumentals, and several iconic Bad Boy remixes.

Diddy’s debut album spawned several hits, including “All About The Benjamins,” and the Biggie tribute, “I’ll Be Missing You,” the latter of which featured Faith Evans and 112.

Additionally, Diddy will drop a vinyl edition of No Way Out on November 4, which will be the first time the album was available on vinyl since its release. He will also drop remastered versions of the music videos from that era throughout the remainder of the year.

Check out the No Way Out: 25th Anniversary Edition tracklist below.

1. “No Way Out” Feat. The Notorious B.I.G. and Busta Rhymes
3. “Been Around The World” Feat. The Notorious B.I.G. and Mase
4. “What You Gonna Do?”
5. “Don’t Stop What You’re Doing” Feat. Lil Kim
6. “If I Should Die Tonight” (Interlude) Feat. Carl Thomas
7. “Do You Know?”
8. “Young G’s” Feat. Jay-Z and The Notorious B.I.G.
9. “I Love You, Baby” Feat. Black Rob
10. “It’s All About The Benjamins” Feat. The LOX, The Notorious B.I.G., and Lil’ Kim
11. “Pain”
12. “Is This The End?” Feat. Carl Thomas, Ginuwine, and Twista
13. “I Got The Power” Feat. The LOX
14. “Friend” Feat. Foxy Brown
15. “Señorita”
16. “I’ll Be Missing You” Feat. Faith Evans and 112
17. “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” Feat. Mase)
18. “Been Around The World (Radio Mix)”
19. “Been Around the World” (Instrumental)
20. “It’s All About the Benjamins” (No Chedda Mix)
21. “It’s All About the Benjamins” (Gangsta Mental Mix)
22. “It’s All About the Benjamins” (Ain’t Armand Mix)
23. “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” (Radio Mix)
24. “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” (Bad Boy Remix) [Instrumental]
25. “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” (Club Mix)
26. “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” (Bad Boy Remix) [Extended Club Version]
27. “It’s All About the Benjamins” (Rock Remix)
28. “It’s All About the Benjamins” (Rock Remix II)
29. “It’s All About the Benjamins” (DJ Ming & FS Drum N’ Bass Mix)
30. “Victory” (Nine Inch Nails Remix)
31. “Victory” (Drama Mix)
32. “Bad Boy’s Been Around the World” (Remix)

Way, way back in the 1980s and 1990s, two supernatural teen comedy movies made waves by introducing the sleepy suburbs to monstrous legends. Teen Wolf and Buffy the Vampire Slayer were both built on the absurdity of ancient monsters popping up in the idyllic realm of middle class America, far from the dreary castles and haunted moors of old. It’s wild to see how far their legacies have both stretched because of TV offshoots. Obviously Buffy was first out of the gate, with a decade-defining run where Sarah Michelle Gellar and her Scoobies acted as a last defense at the Hellmouth. Teen Wolf‘s TV dominance came in 2011 when MTV resurrected the concept into a moody show of teen angst that shed most of the movie’s DNA.

But now it’s also a movie, with Teen Wolf: The Movie standing in for a seventh season of the hit show before a spin-off series called Wolf Pack sees screens presumably next year. That series has now pulled the ultimate power move by getting vampire-slaying royalty to star and executive produce.

Based on the book by Edo Van Belkom, Wolf Pack is the story of Blake (Bella Shepard) and Everett (Armani Jackson), two teens whose lives change when a wildfire wakes up a big bad monster. Gellar will play Kristin Ramsey, an arson investigator with her own painful past to deal with (alongside the murderous supernatural baddie).

Interestingly enough, it’s not clear how (or even if) the series will tie into Teen Wolf, or if it’s simply being advertised as a spin-off because it has teen werewolves and Jeff Davis is writing it. Van Belkom’s book is its own creature, so if the series does blend with the existing Teen Wolf universe, it’ll be a kind of Frankenstein’s monster of adaptations: an Aurora Award finalist book smashed together with a TV show based on a 1980s movie. Regardless of whether it ever breaches the Teen Wolf world, Gellar is a fantastic addition.

(via Deadline)

Dog lovers Paula Closier and her husband Peter were terribly worried after Bonnie, their 5-year-old beagle mix, escaped from their yard on Sunday, July 10, the BBC reported. Paula was especially upset because they live near a main road and feared that Bonnie might get hit by a car.

“Bonnie used to be a street dog and we were so worried she wouldn’t have known to come back,” she told the BBC.

The couple, along with their two daughters and neighbors, searched all over their West Sussex, England, neighborhood to find the missing dog. They called veterinarians, the police and animal shelters in the area to try and locate poor Bonnie but she was nowhere to be found.

Paula also posted on Facebook that her dog had gone missing in hopes that someone from the neighborhood would find the pooch.

u201cthis week I wrote about a lost beagle who not only found her way home, but also won a ribbon at a dog show in the process u2014 productive queen! nhttps://t.co/aGnWUV5Mysu201d

— Maeve (@Maeve)
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Later that day, John Wilmer was driving his two dogs to a dog show and saw Bonnie by the side of the road, not far from where the Closiers had been searching. “I was in a bit of a rush to get there when we found Bonnie and put her in the car,” he told the BBC. “She was such a lovely dog, I thought it’d be good to enter her.”

Before taking Bonnie to the show he put up a post on Facebook saying that he found a dog on the street. The Closiers saw the message and responded to Wilmer’s post.

Wilmer already had plans for Bonnie so he decided he might as well give her a nice play date with his dogs before taking her home. So he entered her into the show and lo and behold, she won third place in the best rescue category.

When Wilmer brought the dog home she was wearing a big beautiful yellow third-place ribbon. “When John brought her back to us with a rosette we couldn’t believe it. It’s a shame she didn’t come first in the show,” Paula told the BBC.

Bonnie must have won the award because of her natural charm. “[She’s] a free spirit,” Paula told The Dodo. “She’s lovely, never negative, tail always wagging.” Bonnie was rescued from Crete, Greece, where she lived as a street dog.

What started off as a terrifying day for the Closier family wound up being one they’ll never forget. “We found her adventure lovely and funny,” Paula told The Dodo. “We’re so thrilled she’s safe and well and also a winner. You couldn’t make this stuff up.”

See on Instagram

“Bonnie was absolutely fine when she got back. She just thought she was having a great day out,” Peter said, according to People. “When she was missing, I had five different outcomes in my head, the best being that she came back. This was even better than that; she came back with a rosette.”

Now that Bonnie has shown she can be successful in the world of dog shows, Paula is considering placing her in another competition.

“We might,” she said. “She obviously enjoys them.”

Actor Richard Dreyfuss (star of “Jaws” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”) shared intimate photos of the birth of his son Ben that showed the shock and confusion parents experience when realizing their newborn has a birth abnormality.

On June 14, 1986, Dreyfuss and his wife Jeramie Rain had their second child and they could tell something was wrong shortly after his delivery. “Your eyes are not the same,” Ben would later write about his birth. “One is blue, the other is grey. One is hiding under a partially opened eye-lid; the other is extending far beyond it, like a potato exploding out of an egg cup.”

It was the “most traumatic and emotional moment of my life,” Richard wrote on Twitter. “My wife Jeramie gave birth to our second amazing child. And, as these pictures show, we slowly realized there was a problem with our son.”

u201cThe most traumatic and emotional moment of my life was on June 14 1986. My wife Jeramie gave birth to our second amazing child. And, as these pictures show, we slowly realized there was a problem with our son.u201d

— Richard Dreyfuss (@Richard Dreyfuss)
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u201cI held him and promised him that I would do everything I could take save him. That I would love him no matter what.u201d

— Richard Dreyfuss (@Richard Dreyfuss)
1658372178

u201cHe was the first person born in California with peters anomaly. We spent months in hospitals with him and years raising money for charities Jeramie led for less fortunate kids than Ben.u201d

— Richard Dreyfuss (@Richard Dreyfuss)
1658372178

I am incredibly proud of all my children. https://t.co/Z2Vf1bafVw

— Richard Dreyfuss (@RichardDreyfuss) July 21, 2022

The actor’s photos are touching because they show the parents experiencing the incredible beauty of the birth while struggling to make sense of the unexpected.

“I held him and promised him that I would do everything I could [to] save him. That I would love him no matter what,” the “Mr. Holland’s Opus” star wrote.

Ben would later be diagnosed with Peters anomaly, a rare genetic condition that causes a clouding of the cornea and eye-structure abnormalities. Over the first year of Ben’s life, he would have multiple eye operations and would eventually lose all sight in his left eye.

He explained what life’s like with one eye in a blog post his father shared at the end of his tweet thread. It’s a raw open letter to himself that details how his struggles with being different evolved as he developed.

It’s a revealing glimpse into the interior monologue of someone who knows he’s being stared at but everyone is too polite to bring it up.

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“Eventually you come around to the idea that much more noticeable than the eye itself is your reaction to it,” he writes. “You couldn’t make eye contact with anyone for decades. Upon this realization, you decided to make piercing eye contact with everyone.”

Ben is a journalist who was in charge of audience development at Mother Jones for eight years. He has a popular Substack blog called “Good Faith” where he discusses the intersection of politics and social media from the unique perspective of a liberal with no problem pointing out progressive excesses.

Richard Dreyfuss’ photos of his son’s birth show that all the fame and acclaim in the world can be quickly dispatched when we see that there is something wrong with a child. But on a deeper level, they are an intimate look at the faces of parents whose lives have been upended in a moment they expected would be wholly joyous.

It’s a moment that many parents have unfortunately had to weather and hopefully, the photos will give them comfort knowing that the despair will soon be overcome by love.

Does anyone remember the show Doogie Howser, M.D. or am I just aging myself? I used to watch that show religiously, but even as a kid, I realized that could never happen. Kids can’t be doctors! Please don’t tell 13-year-old Alena Analeigh Wicker that because she will prove you wrong. Alena has just made history as the youngest Black person in the U.S. to be accepted into medical school.

Most parents want their children to do good things in their life. They hope they will accomplish any dreams and goals they set out to do while cheering them on along the way. Which is what Alena’s mother, Daphne McQuarter, does constantly. The pair travel around the world as part of Alena’s mission for her organization Brown STEM Girls, which works to help girls of color explore futures in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women are still in the minority in STEM careers, representing just 27% of all STEM workers. When broken down further, only about 5% of women of color have careers in STEM.

How does one get accepted into medical school at just 13? “I was bored,” Alena told the The Washington Post. “The high school work was so easy for me that I ended up graduating from high school at 12 years old.”

After that, she was accepted into Arizona State University and Oakwood University and is currently a junior at both schools finishing up degrees in biological sciences. After a single engineering course, which she ended up dropping, the future doctor changed direction realizing that engineering was not something she was passionate about. As she told Ebony, it was a trip to Jordan with her organization that made her conclude that viral immunology is where she wanted to be, so she took the next step and applied for medical school.

See on Instagram

The teen posted about her acceptance on her Instagram page, sharing a picture of the letter from the University of Alabama’s Heersink School of Medicine for 2024. On average, only 7% of applicants get accepted to medical school in America, and just 7% of those accepted are Black. Clearly, she is amazing, this achievement topping her previous accolades of being nominated for Time’s Top Kid of the Year and being NASA’s youngest intern. Is there anything she can’t do?

See on Instagram

If you’re worried she’s missing out on her childhood, have no fear. Though she is scheduled to complete medical school by 18, Alena still makes time for her friends and does age-appropriate activities like going to the arcade and playing soccer. In her Instagram post, she reflected, “Statistics would have said I never would have made it. A little black girl adopted from Fontana California. I’ve worked so hard to reach my goals and live my dreams.”

Alena is determined to succeed and it’s clear that she has no plans of slowing down anytime soon. Here’s wishing her all the best in medical school. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll see her picture next to the cure for something big.

We live an era so advanced that we now have to specify that a new Teen Wolf is Teen Wolf: The Movie and not Teen Wolf (as in the TV show) which was based on Teen Wolf (as in the movie). According to creator Jeff Davis, who revealed the trailer at Comic-Con, this might as well be a “short Season 7” of the hit show because of how many characters are involved. In fact, making the film was his compromise for Paramount+, who wanted another batch of episodes. It is now fulfilling the Holy Grail of television: six seasons and a movie. Hopefully there’s a hashtag for it.

According to the synopsis, “A full moon rises in Beacon Hills and with it a terrifying evil has emerged. The wolves are howling once again, calling for the return of Banshees, Werecoyotes, Hellhounds, Kitsunes, and every other shapeshifter in the night. But only a Werewolf like Scott McCall (Posey), no longer a teenager yet still an Alpha, can gather both new allies and reunite trusted friends to fight back against what could be the most powerful and deadliest enemy they’ve ever faced.”

The biggest reveal of the trailer [SPOILERS AHEAD!] is the return of a beloved character who was killed off a few seasons back.

That would be Allison (Crystal Reed), who saved Isaac (Daniel Sharman) before dying in Scott’s arms. How is she back? We’ll find out when the movie hits Paramount+ later this year.

(via Deadline)

Whether you think Not Okay is a comedy or a horror movie might depend on your age (or at least how online you are). The follow-up film from Blame writer/director Quinn Shephard is a comic cautionary tale that looks like a happier version of Black Mirror. That might make it more dangerous.

Zoey Deutch plays Danni Sanders, a photo editor for a trendy online Buzzfeed clone, who wants so, so badly to have a trillion followers updooting her every whim. With few options to stand out in the digital crowd, she fakes a trip to Paris to impress social media celeb Colin (Dylan O’Brien) and scores big with her blue screened visits to cafes and touristy traps. But then a terrorist attack happens, everyone thinks Danni is a fortunate survivor, and she’s happy to sell the lie in exchange for newfound fame.

She’ll probably be able to keep the lie going and live happily ever after, right? Right? Although going to a support group and meeting actual survivors like Rowan (Mia Isaac) probably wasn’t the best idea for kidding a lid on things.

Creators are just getting started with explorations of what social media is doing to us, even as the non-fictional world is just starting to study the long-term effects (not great, Bob!) of living our lives completely in public. Up to now, social media has been the breeding ground for horror films, the colorful icing on modern love stories, and the subject of documentaries, but Not Okay looks like it goes the hardest yet at influencer culture — a world smothered in pink sauce and bottomless need. It hits Hulu July 29th.

Fans of Haim and Taylor Swift received a pleasant surprise tonight. During Haim’s concert at the London O2 arena, the sisters’ longtime besty made a surprise appearance. While the ladies of Haim are currently on an international tour supporting their third album, Women In Music, PT. III, Swift hasn’t toured since her 2018 Reputation tour.

“I haven’t been on stage in a very long time,” said Swift as she arrived on stage. “It’s nice…it’s nice, it’s very nice. When I heard my girls were playing in London at the O2, I thought, ‘I’m going to have to see that.’ And it looks like there’s about 20,000 other people who also thought that. So we had a thought. If we were to do some sort of mash-up, we could possibly maybe get you to sing the loudest you have sung all night – which is a big challenge because you have been singing very loudly – extraordinary work.”

Swift joined Haim in a performance of their song, “Gasoline,” which they mashed up into Swift’s “Love Story.”

Over the years, Haim has joined Swift on her 1989 tour, and they have collaborated on a cut from Swift’s ninth studio album, Evermore called “No Body, No Crime.”

Check out a clip of the performance above.

The mass shooting in a Buffalo supermarket back in May was devastating for both the city and the country at large. It is especially difficult as there have been several shooting victims to mourn over the course of this year, but moments of unity and generosity make the process a bit easier. Metro Boomin recently extended a wealth of generosity to his longtime fan Aaron Salter III by paying off his and his mother Kimberly’s mortgage in full.

Salter III is the son of the late Aaron Salter Jr., known as the security guard and retired police offer who died attempting to save other civilians in the tragic event. His son shared a post on Instagram this past Wednesday (June 20), holding a sign that said “Paid In Full.” The caption reading:

“How many producers you know look out for people when they need it most? Gotta say thanks to my favorite producer @metroboomin he called me and asked if he could help me during my tragic loss and did just that! No more mortgage Paid in full!!! Thanks @metroboomin ill never forget what you did!”

The Atlanta producer reciprocated the love in the comments with “Love always bro! My line is always open and I meant every single thing I said back when we spoke” and a red heart to close.

Check out Aaron Salter III’s grateful Instagram post above.

The fine folks at Collider noted today that Top Gun: Maverick has claimed another prize on its ascent into the stratosphere of cinematic history. The air thinner up there, and it’s filled with blue people, superheroes, and Tom Cruise’s giant teeth. It was only a week ago that the Top Gun sequel about beach football players who moonlight as Navy (not Air Force!) pilots tossed Transformers: Age of Extinction out of its top spot as the highest grossing Paramount movie of all time, and now it’s thrust The Avengers into the cusp position in the Top 10 highest grossing domestic scores of all time. Yes, that’s a fancy way of saying Top Gun: Maverick is now 9th, and the first modern Marvel team-up is in 10th.

So far, the high-flying movie has earned $623,839,035. If it’s going to slide into the 8th slot, it’ll have to best Jurassic World‘s $653,406,625, which doesn’t seem that implausible given its outlandish longevity. Despite being out for two months, Maverick is still #4 at the box office, showing no signs of slowing down. The question is, like Moana, how far it will go.

To break into the top 5, it would have to bust Black Panther‘s $700,426,566, and hitting the top 3 requires another $100k to bust Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s $804,793,477. If it makes a penny over $936,662,225, it will take the top spot and unseat The Force Awakens.

Interestingly, its position on the list solidifies it as a thoroughly American movie. Pretty much every movie on the domestic top 10 is also on the global top 10 (or close to it), but Maverick demurs on that front, dropping all the way back to 19th. Therefore, scientifically, Jedi and superheroes are more universal than American bros screaming in planes.

(via Collider)