title: Mass Effect: Andromeda

text: During EA's Q3 FY18 earnings call on January 30, 2018, EA Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Andrew Wilson was asked a general question about the company's non-sports titles, which had performed below expectations. As part of his answer, Wilson noted, "...if you look at "Mass Effect" ["Andromeda"], while there was some polarizing sentiment in that franchise, it's actually performed really well, and player engagement is really strong."


title: Mass Effect: Andromeda

text: Although "Mass Effect: Andromeda" was not designed with specific plans for future installments, BioWare's original intention was to continue adding to the series. However, following the game's disappointing commercial and critical reception, reports arose that BioWare Edmonton would be taking a break from the franchise to focus on their new IP, "Anthem", and that BioWare Montreal would focus on other games under the EA umbrella, such as "Star Wars Battlefront II". In August 2017, BioWare Montreal was merged with EA's Motive Studios, casting further doubt on the future of the "Mass Effect" franchise. However, former series creative director Casey Hudson, who departed from BioWare in 2014 but returned following "Mass Effect: Andromeda"'s release, later stated that he wanted the series to continue. As of November 7, 2020, a veteran team at BioWare is working on the next chapter of the "Mass Effect" universe.


title: Only Yesterday (1991 film)

text: "Only Yesterday" explores a genre traditionally thought to be outside the realm of animated subjects: a realistic drama written for adults, particularly women. The film was a surprise box office success, attracting a large adult audience and becoming the highest-grossing Japanese film of 1991 in the country. It has also been well received by critics outside of Japan—it has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.


title: Only Yesterday (1991 film)

text: To celebrate the film's 25th anniversary, GKIDS released the film for the first time in an English-language format on February 26, 2016, featuring the voices of Daisy Ridley, Dev Patel, Alison Fernandez, Laura Bailey and Ashley Eckstein.


title: Only Yesterday (1991 film)

text: On August 31, 2020, it was announced a live-action special based on the manga would air on NHK's subchannels BS Premium and BS4K in January 2021. The special would be about a 64-year-old Taeko and her daughter and granddaughter.


title: Only Yesterday (1991 film)

text: In 1982, Taeko Okajima is 27 years old, unmarried, has lived her whole life in Tokyo and now works at a company there. She decides to take another trip to visit the family of her elder sister's in-laws in the rural countryside to help with the safflower harvest and get away from city life. While traveling at night on a sleeper train to Yamagata, she begins to recall memories of herself as a schoolgirl in 1966, and her intense desire to go on holiday like her classmates, all of whom have family outside of the big city.


title: Only Yesterday (1991 film)

text: At the arrival train station, she is surprised to find out that her brother-in-law's second cousin Toshio, whom she barely knows, is the one who came to pick her up. During her stay in Yamagata, she finds herself increasingly nostalgic and wistful for her childhood self, while simultaneously wrestling with adult issues of career and love. The trip dredges up forgotten memories (not all of them good ones)—the first stirrings of childish romance, puberty and growing up, the frustrations of math and boys. In lyrical switches between the present and the past, Taeko wonders if she has been true to the dreams of her childhood self. In doing so, she begins to realize that Toshio has helped her along the way. Finally, Taeko faces her own true self, how she views the world and the people around her. Taeko chooses to stay in the countryside instead of returning to Tokyo. It is implied that she and Toshio begin a relationship.


title: Only Yesterday (1991 film)

text: Studio Ghibli co-founder and the film's producer Hayao Miyazaki was intrigued by the original "Only Yesterday" manga, believing there was potential value in depicting the type of children's story it told. However, he felt he was not up to the task of adapting it into a film, but the idea remained in his mind as he directed other children's films such as "My Neighbor Totoro", and he eventually brought the idea to Takahata.


title: Only Yesterday (1991 film)

text: The story takes place within the Takase district of Yamagata City, Yamagata Prefecture. The Takase Station (and also Yamadera Station) of the JNR (currently JR East) Senzan Line is featured prominently; though it has since been rebuilt, the scenery remains mostly unchanged. During the course of the film, characters visit prominent locales, including the resort destination of Mount Zaō.


title: Only Yesterday (1991 film)

text: Unlike the typical Japanese character animation style, the characters have more realistic facial muscles and expressions due to the dialogue being recorded first (the tradition in Japan is to record it after the animation is completed) and the animators fit the animation to the spoken dialogue. Takahata also had voice actors record some of their lines together, using footage of their performances as a guide for both design and the animation. However, the scenes of Taeko's childhood past were animated before the voices were recorded, giving a subtle contrast between the anime style of her childhood and the adult "reality" of the framing story.


title: Only Yesterday (1991 film)

text: Those scenes set in 1966 with the 10-year-old Taeko are taken from the source material. Takahata had difficulty adapting the episodic manga into a feature film, and he, therefore, invented the framing narrative wherein the adult Taeko journeys to the countryside and falls in love with Toshio.


title: Only Yesterday (1991 film)

text: There is a repeated Eastern European theme in the film, particularly in the soundtrack reflecting the peasant lifestyle still present in the area and the parallels this draws with Japanese rural life. Folk songs from the area repeatedly occur in the film. For example, "Frunzuliță Lemn Adus Cântec De Nuntă" (Fluttering Green Leaves Wedding Song) is a Romanian folk song written by Gheorghe Zamfir and occurs in the film repeatedly during the landscape shots, for example arriving at the farm. Instruments used include the prominent nai played by Zamfir himself, cimbalom and violins. There is also Hungarian music in the film, using pieces of music such as Brahms' "Hungarian Dance No. 5" in a scene where Taeko is eating lunch, and making references to Hungarian musicians when she is in the car with Toshio ("Teremtés" performed by Sebestyén Márta & Muzsikás. Adaptation from a Hungarian traditional folk song). The music of Márta Sebestyén with Muzsikás is used in several scenes as well. Bulgarian folklore music is also used in the soundtrack. When Taeko is on the field, one can first hear "Dilmano, Dilbero", followed by "Malka Moma Dvori Mete". These are typical Bulgarian folklore songs and the lyrics of both are connected to topics mentioned in the film – the life of farmers and marriage.


title: Only Yesterday (1991 film)

text: Taeko recalls her childhood favorite puppet show which was an actual puppet show that aired every weekday on NHK from 1964 to 1969.


title: Only Yesterday (1991 film)

text: "Only Yesterday" was the highest-grossing Japanese film on the domestic market in 1991, grossing at the Japanese box office. The 2016 English-language release later earned $525,958, including $453,243 in the United States.


title: Only Yesterday (1991 film)

text: The film received widespread critical acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 100%, based on 56 reviews, with an average rating of 8.39/10. The critical consensus states ""Only Yesterday"'s long-delayed U.S. debut fills a frustrating gap for American Ghibli fans while offering further proof of the studio's incredibly consistent commitment to quality." It has a score 90 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 19 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Only Yesterday (1991 film)

text: Nicolas Rapold, of "The New York Times", gave the film a positive review, saying, "Mr. Takahata's psychologically acute film, which was based on a manga, seems to grow in impact, too, as the adult Taeko comes to a richer understanding of what she wants and how she wants to live." Glenn Kenny of RogerEbert.com awarded it a similarly positive review, saying "Like "Kaguya", it functions as a highly sensitive and empathetic consideration of the situation of women in Japanese society—but it's also a breathtaking work of art on its own." Kaikyaku of NihonReview.com stated: "This film knows what it strives to be and executes it well. Though it won't be for everyone, it represents the quality and artistry that Studio Ghibli is known for."


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (, ; ; 5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a 19th-century French author, remembered as a master of the short story form, as well as a representative of the Naturalist school, who depicted human lives, destinies and social forces in disillusioned and often pessimistic terms.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: Maupassant was a protégé of Gustave Flaubert and his stories are characterized by economy of style and efficient, seemingly effortless "dénouements". Many are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s, describing the futility of war and the innocent civilians who, caught up in events beyond their control, are permanently changed by their experiences. He wrote 300 short stories, six novels, three travel books, and one volume of verse. His first published story, "Boule de Suif" ("The Dumpling", 1880), is often considered his most famous work.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: Henri-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant, born on 5 August 1850 at the late 16th-century Château de Miromesnil (near Dieppe in the Seine-Inférieure (now Seine-Maritime) department in France), was the first son of Laure Le Poittevin and Gustave de Maupassant, who both came from prosperous bourgeois families. His mother urged her husband when they married in 1846 to obtain the right to use the particule or form "de Maupassant" instead of "Maupassant" as his family name, in order to indicate noble birth. Gustave discovered a certain Jean-Baptiste Maupassant, "conseiller-secrétaire" to the King, who had been ennobled in 1752. He then obtained from the "Tribunal Civil" of Rouen by decree dated 9 July 1846 the right to style himself "de Maupassant" instead of "Maupassant", and this was his surname at the birth of his son Guy in 1850.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: When Maupassant was 11 and his brother Hervé was five, his mother, an independent-minded woman, risked social disgrace to obtain a legal separation from her husband, who was violent towards her.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: After the separation, Laure Le Poittevin kept her two sons. In the absence of the father, Maupassant's mother became the most influential figure in the young boy's life. She was an exceptionally well-read woman and was very fond of classical literature, particularly Shakespeare. Until the age of thirteen, Guy lived happily with his mother, at Étretat in Normandy. At the Villa des Verguies, between the sea and the luxuriant countryside, he grew very fond of fishing and of outdoor activities. When Guy reached the age of thirteen, his mother placed her two sons as day boarders in a private school, the Institution Leroy-Petit, in Rouen—the "Institution Robineau" of Maupassant's story "La Question du Latin"—for classical studies. From his early education he retained a marked hostility to religion, and to judge from verses composed around this time he deplored the ecclesiastical atmosphere, its ritual and discipline. Finding the place unbearable, he finally got himself expelled in his penultimate year.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: In 1867, as he entered junior high school, Maupassant met Gustave Flaubert at at the insistence of his mother. Next year, in autumn, he was sent to the "Lycée Pierre-Corneille" in Rouen where he proved a good scholar, indulging in poetry and taking a prominent part in theatricals. In October 1868, at the age of 18, he saved the famous poet Algernon Charles Swinburne from drowning off the coast of Étretat.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: The Franco-Prussian War broke out soon after his graduation from college in 1870; he enlisted as a volunteer. In 1871, he left Normandy and moved to Paris, where he spent ten years as a clerk in the Navy Department. During this time his only recreation and relaxation was boating on the Seine on Sundays and holidays.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: Gustave Flaubert took him under his protection and acted as a kind of literary guardian to him, guiding his debut in journalism and literature. At Flaubert's home he met Émile Zola (1840-1902) and the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883), as well as many of the proponents of the realist and naturalist schools. He wrote and himself played (1875) in a comedy - "" - with Flaubert's blessing.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: In 1878, he was transferred to the Ministry of Public Instruction and became a contributing editor to several leading newspapers such as "Le Figaro", "Gil Blas", "Le Gaulois" and "l'Écho de Paris". He devoted his spare time to writing novels and short stories.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: In 1880 he published what is considered his first masterpiece, "Boule de Suif", which met with instant and tremendous success. Flaubert characterized it as "a masterpiece that will endure". This, Maupassant's first piece of short fiction set during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, was followed by short stories such as "Deux Amis", "Mother Savage", and "Mademoiselle Fifi".


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: The decade from 1880 to 1891 was the most fertile period of Maupassant's life. Made famous by his first short story, he worked methodically and produced two or sometimes four volumes annually. His talent and practical business sense made him wealthy.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: In 1881 he published his first volume of short stories under the title of "La Maison Tellier"; it reached its twelfth edition within two years. In 1883 he finished his first novel, "Une Vie" (translated into English as "A Woman's Life"), 25,000 copies of which were sold in less than a year. His second novel, "Bel-Ami", which came out in 1885, had thirty-seven printings in four months.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: His editor, Havard, commissioned him to write more stories, and Maupassant continued to produce them efficiently and frequently. At this time he wrote what many consider his greatest novel, "Pierre et Jean" (1888).


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: With a natural aversion to society, he loved retirement, solitude, and meditation. He traveled extensively in Algeria, Italy, England, Brittany, Sicily, and the Auvergne, and from each voyage brought back a new volume. He cruised on his private yacht "Bel-Ami", named after his novel. This life did not prevent him from making friends among the literary celebrities of his day: Alexandre Dumas, fils had a paternal affection for him; at Aix-les-Bains he met Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893) and became devoted to the philosopher-historian.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: Flaubert continued to act as his literary godfather. His friendship with the Goncourts was of short duration; his frank and practical nature reacted against the ambiance of gossip, scandal, duplicity, and invidious criticism that the two brothers had created around them in the guise of an 18th-century style salon.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: Maupassant was one of a fair number of 19th-century Parisians (including Charles Gounod, Alexandre Dumas, "fils", and Charles Garnier) who did not care for the Eiffel Tower (erected in 1887-1889). He often ate lunch in the restaurant at its base, not out of preference for the food but because only there could he avoid seeing its otherwise unavoidable profile. He and forty-six other Parisian literary and artistic notables attached their names to an elaborately irate letter of protest against the tower's construction, written to the Minister of Public Works, and published on 14 February 1887.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: Maupassant also wrote under several pseudonyms, including "Joseph Prunier", "Guy de Valmont", and "Maufrigneuse" (which he used from 1881 to 1885).


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: In his later years he developed a constant desire for solitude, an obsession for self-preservation, and a fear of death and paranoia of persecution caused by the syphilis he had contracted in his youth. It has been suggested that his brother, Hervé, also suffered from syphilis and that the disease may have been congenital. On 2 January 1892, Maupassant tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat; he was committed to the private asylum of Esprit Blanche at Passy, in Paris, where he died (6 July 1893) from syphilis.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: Maupassant penned his own epitaph: "I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing." He is buried in Section 26 of the Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: Maupassant is considered a father of the modern short story. Literary theorist Kornelije Kvas wrote that along "with Chekhov, Maupassant is the greatest master of the short story in world literature. He is not a naturalist like Zola; to him, physiological processes do not constitute the basis of human actions, although the influence of the environment is manifested in his prose. In many respects, Maupassant's naturalism is Schopenhauerian anthropological pessimism, as he is often harsh and merciless when it comes to depicting human nature. He owes most to Flaubert, from whom he learned to use a concise and measured style and to establish a distance towards the object of narration." He delighted in clever plotting, and served as a model for Somerset Maugham and O. Henry in this respect. One of his famous short stories, "The Necklace", was imitated with a twist by Maugham ("Mr Know-All", "A String of Beads"). Henry James's "Paste" adapts another story of his with a similar title, "The Jewels".


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: Taking his cue from Balzac, Maupassant wrote comfortably in both the high-Realist and fantastic modes; stories and novels such as "L'Héritage" and "Bel-Ami" aim to recreate Third-Republic France in a realistic way, whereas many of the short stories (notably "Le Horla" and "Qui sait?") describe apparently supernatural phenomena.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: The supernatural in Maupassant, however, is often implicitly a symptom of the protagonists' troubled minds; Maupassant was fascinated by the burgeoning discipline of psychiatry, and attended the public lectures of Jean-Martin Charcot between 1885 and 1886.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: Leo Tolstoy used Maupassant as the subject for one of his essays on art: "". His stories are second only to Shakespeare in their inspiration of movie adaptations with films ranging from "Stagecoach", "Oyuki the Virgin" and "Masculine Feminine".


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: "I cannot at all conceive in which century of history one could haul together such inquisitive and at the same time delicate psychologists as one can in contemporary Paris: I can name as a sample – for their number is by no means small, ... or to pick out one of the stronger race, a genuine Latin to whom I am particularly attached, Guy de Maupassant."


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: William Saroyan wrote a short story about Maupassant in his 1971 book, "Letters from 74 rue Taitbout or Don't Go But If You Must Say Hello To Everybody".


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: Isaac Babel wrote a short story about him, “Guy de Maupassant.” It appears in "The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel" and in the story anthology "You’ve Got To Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe."


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: Gene Roddenberry, in an early draft for "The Questor Tapes", wrote a scene in which the android "Questor" employs Maupassant's theory that, "the human female will open her mind to a man to whom she has opened other channels of communications." In the script Questor copulates with a woman to obtain information that she is reluctant to impart. Due to complaints from NBC executives, this part of the script was never filmed.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: Michel Drach directed and co-wrote a 1982 French biographical film: "Guy de Maupassant". Claude Brasseur stars as the titular character.


title: Guy de Maupassant

text: Several of Maupassant's short stories, including "La Peur" and "The Necklace", were adapted as episodes of the 1986 Indian anthology television series "Katha Sagar".


title: Christine Collins

text: Christine Ida Collins (December 14, 1888 – December 8, 1964) was an American woman who made national headlines during the late 1920s and 1930s after her nine-year-old son, Walter Collins, went missing in 1928. During the Trial Testimony of Gordon Northcott, the State of California concluded that Collins's son had been murdered in the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders led by a man named Gordon Stewart Northcott, who was executed at San Quentin in 1930. Her search for the whereabouts of her son was the subject of the 2008 Clint Eastwood film "Changeling", in which she was portrayed by Angelina Jolie.


title: Christine Collins

text: Christine Collins was born in 1888 as Christine Ida Dunne. She married Walter J. Collins, an ex-convict using an alias. Collins was born Walter Joseph Anson, and hid his past from her. They had a son, Walter, in September, 1918.


title: Christine Collins

text: Collins' son disappeared on March 10, 1928, after she gave him money to go to the cinema. Walter's disappearance received nationwide attention, and the Los Angeles Police Department followed up on hundreds of leads without success. The police faced negative publicity and increasing public pressure to solve the case, Then, five months after Walter's disappearance a boy claiming to be Walter was found in DeKalb, Illinois. Letters and photographs were exchanged before Christine Collins paid for the boy to be brought to Los Angeles.


title: Christine Collins

text: At the reunion, Collins said that the boy was not Walter. Under pressure to resolve the case, the officer in charge, Captain J.J. Jones, convinced her to "try the boy out" by taking him home. She returned three weeks later, again saying that he was not her son. Although she had dental records and backing from friends to prove her case, Collins said Jones accused her of being a bad mother and bringing ridicule to the police. Jones had Collins committed to the psychiatric ward at Los Angeles County Hospital under a "Code 12" internment – a term used to jail or commit someone who was deemed difficult or an inconvenience.


title: Christine Collins

text: Jones questioned the boy, who admitted to being 12-year-old Arthur Hutchens, Jr., a runaway from Iowa. Hutchens was picked up by police in Illinois, and when asked if he was Walter Collins, he first said no, but then said yes. His motive for posing as Collins was to get to Hollywood so he could meet his favorite actor, Tom Mix. Collins was released ten days after Hutchens admitted that he was not her son and filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department. Collins won a lawsuit against Jones and was awarded $10,800, which Jones never paid.


title: Christine Collins

text: In 1929, Gordon Stewart Northcott was found guilty of abducting, molesting, and killing three young boys in what became known as the Wineville Chicken Coop murders. Northcott's mother, Sarah Louise Northcott, confessed in late 1928 to her participation in the murder of Walter Collins as being amongst her son's victims. Following her confession, she was sentenced without trial to life imprisonment for her role in Walter's death. The state chose not to prosecute Gordon Northcott for Walter's murder and instead brought him to trial for the murders of three other young boys for which there was also forensic evidence. On February 13, 1929, he was found guilty for all three murders and sentenced to death. Despite these convictions, Gordon Northcott denied killing Walter Collins, and Sarah Northcott later attempted to rescind her confession and gave other scattered and inconsistent statements. Collins, who chose to believe her son was still alive (in spite of the guilty plea entered by Sarah Northcott to a judge, and corroborating testimony by Sanford Clark, in the murder of Walter Collins), corresponded with Gordon Northcott and received permission to interview him shortly before his execution. Northcott pledged to explain the true account of her son's fate, but he recanted at the last minute and professed his innocence of any involvement. Collins was further encouraged by the appearance of another boy that Northcott had abducted and probably molested. The police initially thought the boy might have been a murder victim of Northcott's. Collins continued to search for her son for the rest of her life. Collins attempted several times to collect the money owed her by Jones, including a 1941 court case, in which she attempted to collect a $15,562 judgment in the Superior Court. She died in 1964 and was buried in Los Angeles.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: The Jesus bloodline refers to the proposition that a lineal sequence of descendants of the historical Jesus has persisted to the present time. The claims frequently depict Jesus as married, often to Mary Magdalene, and as having descendants living in Europe, especially France but also the UK. Differing and contradictory Jesus bloodline scenarios, as well as more limited claims that Jesus married and had children, have been proposed in numerous modern books. Some such claims have suggested that Jesus survived the crucifixion and went to another location such as France, India or Japan.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: Though absent from the Gospels or historical records, the concept of Jesus having blood descendants has gained a presence in the public imagination, as seen with Dan Brown's best-selling novel and movie "The Da Vinci Code" that used the premise for its plot, it is generally dismissed by the scholarly community. These claimed Jesus' bloodlines are distinct from the biblical genealogy of Jesus and from the documented 'brothers' and other kin of Jesus, known as the "Desposyni".


title: Jesus bloodline

text: Ideas that Jesus Christ might have been married have a long history in Christian theology, though the historical record says nothing on the subject. Bart D. Ehrman, chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, commented that, although there are some historical scholars who claim that it is likely that Jesus was married, the vast majority of New Testament and early Christianity scholars find such a claim to be historically unreliable.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: Much of the bloodline literature has a more specific focus, on a claimed marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. There are indications in Gnosticism of the belief that Jesus and Mary Magdalene shared an amorous, and not just a religious relationship. The Gnostic "Gospel of Philip" tells that Jesus "kissed her often" and refers to Mary as his "companion". Several sources from the 13th-century claim that an aspect of Catharist theology was the belief that the earthly Jesus had a familial relationship with Mary Magdalene. "An Exposure of the Albigensian and Waldensian Heresies", dated to before 1213 and usually attributed to Ermengaud of Béziers, a former Waldensian seeking reconciliation with the mainstream Catholic Church, would describe Cathar heretical beliefs including the claim that they taught "in the secret meetings that Mary Magdalen was the wife of Christ". A second work, untitled and anonymous, repeats Ermengaud's claim. The anti-heretic polemic "Historia Albigensis", written between 1212 and 1218 by Cistercian monk and chronicler Peter of Vaux de Cernay, gives the most lurid description, attributing to Cathars the belief that Mary Magdalene was the concubine of Jesus. These sources must be viewed with caution: the two known authors were not themselves Cathars and were writing of a heresy being actively and violently suppressed. There is no evidence that these beliefs derived from the much earlier Gnostic traditions of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, but the Cathar traditions did find their way into many of the 20th-century popular writings claiming the existence of a Jesus bloodline.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: The late 19th-century saw the first of several expansions on this theme of marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, providing the couple with a named child. The French socialist politician, Louis Martin (pseudonym of Léon Aubry, died 1900), in his 1886 book "Les Evangiles sans Dieu" ("The Gospels without God"), republished the next year in his "Essai sur la vie de Jésus" ("Essay on the life of Jesus"), described the historical Jesus as a socialist and atheist. He related that after his crucifixion, Mary Magdalene, along with the family of Lazarus of Bethany, brought the body of Jesus to Provence, and there Mary had a child, Maximin, the fruit of her love for Jesus. The scenario was dismissed as 'certainly strange' by a contemporary reviewer.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: The late 20th century saw the flourishing of a genre of popular books claiming that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a family. Donovan Joyce's 1972 best-seller, "The Jesus Scroll", presented an alternative timeline for Jesus that arose from a mysterious document. He claimed that, after being denied access to the Masada archaeological site, he was met at the Tel Aviv airport by an American University professor using the pseudonym "Max Grosset", who held a large scroll he claimed to have smuggled from the site. Relating its contents to Joyce, Grosset offered to pay him to smuggle it out of the country, but then became spooked when his flight was delayed and snuck away; he was never identified and the scroll was not seen again. According to Joyce, the 'Jesus Scroll' was a personal letter by 80-year-old "Yeshua ben Ya’akob ben Gennesareth", heir of the Hasmonean dynasty and hence rightful King of Israel, written on the eve of the fall of the city to the Romans after a suicide pact ended Masada's resistance. It was said to have described the man as married, and that he had a son whose crucifixion the letter's author had witnessed. Joyce identified the writer with Jesus of Nazareth, who, he claimed, had survived his own crucifixion to marry and settle at Masada, and suggested a conspiracy to hide the contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls in order to suppress this counter-narrative to Christian orthodoxy.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: Barbara Thiering, in her 1992 book "Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Unlocking the Secrets of His Life Story", republished as "Jesus the Man", and made into a documentary, "The Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls", by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, also developed a Jesus and Mary Magdalene familial scenario. Thiering based her historical conclusions on her application of the so-called Pesher technique to the New Testament. In this work of pseudo-scholarship, Thiering would go so far as to precisely place the betrothal of Jesus and Mary Magdalene on 30 June, AD 30, at 10:00 p.m. She relocated the events in the life of Jesus from Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem to Qumran, and related that Jesus was revived after an incomplete crucifixion and married Mary Magdalene, who was already pregnant by him, that they had a daughter Tamar and a son Jesus Justus born in AD 41, and Jesus then divorced Mary to wed a Jewess named Lydia, going to Rome where he died. The account was dismissed as fanciful by scholar Michael J. McClymond.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: In the television documentary, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus", and book "The Jesus Family Tomb", both from 2007, fringe investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici and Charles R. Pellegrino proposed that ossuaries in the Talpiot Tomb, discovered in Jerusalem in 1980, belonged to Jesus and his family. Jacobovici and Pellegrino argue that Aramaic inscriptions reading "Judah, son of Jesus", "Jesus, son of Joseph", and "Mariamne", a name they associate with Mary Magdalene, together preserve the record of a family group consisting of Jesus, his wife Mary Magdalene and son Judah. Such theory has been rejected by the overwhelming majority of biblical scholars, archaeologists and theologians, including the archaeologist Amos Kloner, who led the archeological exavation of the tomb itself.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: The same year saw a book following the similar theme that Jesus and Mary Magdalene produced a family written by psychic medium and best-selling author Sylvia Browne, "The Two Marys: The Hidden History of the Mother and Wife of Jesus".


title: Jesus bloodline

text: The Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars involved in the quest for the historical Jesus from a liberal Christian perspective, were unable to determine whether Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a matrimonial relationship due to the dearth of historical evidence. They concluded that the historical Mary Magdalene was not a repentant prostitute but a prominent disciple of Jesus and a leader in the early Christian movement. The claims that Jesus and Mary Magdalene fled to France parallel other legends about the flight of disciples to distant lands, such as the one depicting Joseph of Arimathea traveling to England after the death of Jesus, taking with him a piece of thorn from the Crown of Thorns, which he later planted in Glastonbury. Historians generally regard these legends as "pious fraud" produced during the Middle Ages.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: In 2014, Simcha Jacobovici and fringe religious studies historian Barrie Wilson suggested in "The Lost Gospel" that the eponymous characters in a 6th-century tale called "Joseph and Aseneth" were in actuality representations of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The story was reported in an anthology compiled by Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor, along with covering letters describing the discovery of the original Greek manuscript and its translation into Syriac. In one of these, translator Moses of Ingila explained the story "as an allegory of Christ's marriage to the soul". Jacobovici and Wilson instead interpret it as an allegorical reference to actual marriage of Jesus, produced by a community holding that he was married and had children.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: Israeli Biblical scholar, Rivka Nir called their work "serious-minded, thought-provoking and interesting", but described the thesis as objectionable, and the book has been dismissed by mainstream Biblical scholarship, for example by Anglican theologian, Richard Bauckham. The Church of England compared "The Lost Gospel" to a Monty Python sketch, the director of communications for the Archbishop's Council citing the book as an example of religious illiteracy and that ever since the publication of "The Da Vinci Code" in 2003, "an industry had been constructed in which 'conspiracy theorists, satellite channel documentaries and opportunistic publishers had identified a lucrative income stream'." "The Lost Gospel" was described as historical nonsense by Markus Bockmuehl.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: Early Mormon theology posited not only that Jesus married, but that he did so multiple times. Early leaders Jedediah M. Grant, Orson Hyde, Joseph F. Smith and Orson Pratt stated it was part of their religious belief that Jesus Christ was polygamous, quoting this in their respective sermons. A number of the early church leaders claimed to be the lineal descendants of Jesus by such a marriage. The Mormons also used an apocryphal passage attributed to the 2nd-century Greek philosopher Celsus: "The grand reason why the gentiles and philosophers of his school persecuted Jesus Christ was because he had so many wives. There were Elizabeth and Mary and a host of others that followed him". This appears to have been a summary of a garbled or second-hand reference to a quote from Celsus the Platonist preserved in the apologetics work Contra Celsum (""Against Celsus"") by the Church Father Origen: "such was the charm of Jesus' words, that not only were men willing to follow Him to the wilderness, but women also, forgetting the weakness of their sex and a regard for outward propriety in thus following their Teacher into desert places."


title: Jesus bloodline

text: Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln developed and popularized the idea of a bloodline descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene in their 1982 book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" (published as "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" in the United States), in which they asserted: ". . . we do not think the Incarnation truly symbolises what it is intended to symbolise unless Jesus were married and sired children." Specifically, they claimed that the "sangraal" of medieval lore did not represent the "San Graal" (Holy Grail), the cup drunk from at the Last Supper, but both the vessel of Mary Magdalene's womb and the "Sang Real", the royal blood of Jesus represented in a lineage descended from them. In their reconstruction, Mary Magdalene goes to France after the crucifixion, carrying a child by Jesus who would give rise to a lineage that centuries later would unite with the Merovingian rulers of the early Frankish kingdom, from whom they trace the descent into medieval dynasties that were almost exterminated by the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars, leaving a small remnant protected by a secret society, the Priory of Sion. The role of the Priory was inspired by earlier writings primarily by Pierre Plantard, who in the 1960s and 1970s had publicized documents from the secretive Priory that demonstrated its long history and his own descent from the lineage they had protected that traced to the Merovingian kings, and earlier, the biblical Tribe of Benjamin. Plantard would dismiss "Holy Blood" as fiction in a 1982 radio interview, as did his collaborator Philippe de Cherisey in a magazine article, but a decade later Plantard admitted that, before he incorporated a group of that name in the 1950s, the very existence of the Priory had been an elaborate hoax, and that the documents on which Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln had relied for inspiration had been forgeries planted in French institutions to be later "rediscovered". The actual lineage claimed for the portion of the Plantard and "Holy Blood" bloodline that passes through the medieval era received highly-negative reviews in the genealogical literature, being viewed as consisting of numerous inaccurate linkages that were unsupported, or even directly contradicted, by the authentic historical record.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: "The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail", a 1993 book by Margaret Starbird, built on Cathar beliefs and Provencal traditions of Saint Sarah, the black servant of Mary Magdalene, to develop the hypothesis that Sarah was the daughter of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. In her reconstruction, a pregnant Mary Magdalene fled first to Egypt and then France after the crucifixion. She sees this as the source of the legend associated with the cult at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. She also noted that the name "Sarah" means "Princess" in Hebrew, thus making her the forgotten child of the ""sang réal"", the blood royal of the King of the Jews. Starbird also viewed Mary Magdalene as identical with Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus. Though working with the same claimed relationship between Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Saint Sarah that would occupy a central role in many of the published bloodline scenarios, Starbird considered any question of descent from Sarah to be irrelevant to her thesis, though she accepted that it existed. Her view of Mary Magdalene/Mary of Bethany as wife of Jesus is also linked with the concept of the sacred feminine in feminist theology. Mary Ann Beavis would point out that unlike others in the genre, Starbird actively courted scholarly engagement over her ideas, and that "[a]lthough her methods, arguments and conclusions do not always stand up to scholarly scrutiny, some of her exegetical insights merit attention . . .," while suggesting she is more mythographer than historian.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: In his 1996 book "Bloodline of the Holy Grail: The Hidden Lineage of Jesus Revealed", Laurence Gardner presented pedigree charts of Jesus and Mary Magdalene as the ancestors of all the European royal families of the Common Era. His 2000 sequel "Genesis of the Grail Kings: The Explosive Story of Genetic Cloning and the Ancient Bloodline of Jesus" is unique in claiming that not only can the Jesus bloodline truly be traced back to Adam and Eve but that the first man and woman were primate-alien hybrids created by the Anunnaki of his ancient astronaut theory. Gardner followed this book with several additional works in the bloodline genre.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: In "Rex Deus: The True Mystery of Rennes-Le-Chateau and the Dynasty of Jesus", published in 2000, Marylin Hopkins, Graham Simmans and Tim Wallace-Murphy developed a similar scenario based on 1994 testimony by the pseudonymous "Michael Monkton", that a Jesus and Mary Magdalene bloodline was part of a shadow dynasty descended from twenty-four high priests of the Temple in Jerusalem known as "Rex Deus" – the "Kings of God". The evidence on which the informant based his claim to be a "Rex Deus" scion, descended from Hugues de Payens, was said to be lost and therefore cannot be independently verified, because 'Michael' claimed that it was kept in his late father's bureau, which was sold by his brother unaware of its contents. Some critics point out the informant's account of his family history seems to be based on the controversial work of Barbara Thiering.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: The best-known work depicting a bloodline of Jesus is the 2003 best-selling novel and global phenomenon, "The Da Vinci Code", joined by its 2006 major cinematic release of the same name. In these, Dan Brown incorporated many of the earlier bloodline themes as the background underlying his work of conspiracy fiction. The author attested both in the text and public interviews to the veracity of the bloodline details that served as the novel's historical context. The work so captured the public imagination that the Catholic Church felt compelled to warn its congregates against accepting its pseudo-historical background as fact, which did not stop it from becoming the highest-selling novel in American history, with tens of millions of copies sold worldwide. Brown mixes facts easily verified by the reader and additional seemingly-authentic details that are not actually factual, with a further layer of outright conjecture that together blurs the relationship between fiction and history. An indication of the degree to which the work captured the public imagination is seen in the cottage industry of works that it inspired, replicating his style and theses or attempting to refute it.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: In Brown's novel, the protagonist discovers that the grail actually referred to Mary Magdalene, and that knowledge of this, as well as of the bloodline descended from Jesus and Mary, has been kept hidden to the present time by a secret conspiracy. This is very similar to the thesis put forward by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln in "Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" though not associating the hidden knowledge with the Cathars, and Brown also incorporated material from Joyce, Thiering and Starbird, as well as the 1965 "The Passover Plot", in which Hugh J. Schonfield claimed that Lazarus and Joseph of Arimathea had faked the resurrection after Jesus was killed by mistake when stabbed by a Roman soldier. Still, Brown relied so heavily on "Holy Blood" that two of its authors, Baigent and Leigh, sued the book's publisher, Random House, over what they considered to be plagiarism. Brown had made no secret that the bloodline material in his work drew largely on "Holy Blood", directly citing the work in his book and naming the novel's historical expert after Baigent (in anagram form) and Leigh, but Random House argued that since Baigent and Leigh had presented their ideas as non-fiction, consisting of historical facts, however speculative, then Brown was free to reproduce these concepts just as other works of historical fiction treat underlying historical events. Baigent and Leigh argued that Brown had done more, "appropriat[ing] the architecture" of their work, and thus had "hijacked" and "exploited" it. Though one judge questioned whether the supposedly-factual "Holy Blood" truly represented fact, or instead bordered on fiction due to its highly conjectural nature, courts ruled in favor of Random House and Brown.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: A presentation of analogous concepts within a Mormon context was published in 2006: "Dynasty of the Holy Grail: Mormonism's Sacred Bloodline" by art historian Vern Grosvenor Swanson. Formatted as a footnoted scholarly study and claiming to be the culmination of almost three decades of research, the work was framed in part as a response to "a fuzzy gnostic, leftwing, liberal, and adamantly feminist bias" regainding the divine feminine and sacred marriage that pervaded the recent literature on the subject, and that the author viewed as "idiologically corrosive to faith in Jesus Christ." He nonetheless drew heavily from the same pseudohistorical grail framework as "Holy Blood", combining it with concepts related to British Israelism, beliefs of the early Mormon fathers, and modern genetic genealogy.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: Swanson presents a Jesus who was the son of an English- or Irish-born Mary, and who visited England to study Druidism before wedding Mary Magdalene. After Jesus' death, Swanson portrays his widow as taking her children by Jesus, whom he refers to as the 'Shiloh Dynasty', to England, and that one of these became a direct male-line ancestor of Joseph Smith, to whom the author also attributes a matrilineal derivation from the same Shiloh Dynasty. He claims that in uniting patrilineal and matrilineal descents from the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, a marriage that itself, according to Swanson, healed a longstanding breach between the houses of Judah and Ephraim, Joseph Smith was not only a prophet but the 'Davidic king of all Israel', and that all of the Mormon presidents and high leaders were members of this lineage either by birth or ritual adoption. Reviewers found aspects of his argument problematic, particularly his utter rejection of the work of Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln as authentic history, while at the same time using their work as a basis for the 'Holy Grail' portion of his own reconstruction.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: The 2008 documentary "Bloodline" by Bruce Burgess, a filmmaker with an interest in paranormal claims, expands on the Jesus bloodline hypothesis and other elements of "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail". Accepting as valid the testimony of an amateur archaeologist codenamed "Ben Hammott" relating to his discoveries made in the vicinity of Rennes-le-Château since 1999; Burgess claimed Ben had found the treasure of Bérenger Saunière: a mummified corpse, which they believe is Mary Magdalene, in an underground tomb they claim is connected to both the Knights Templar and the Priory of Sion. In the film, Burgess interviews several people with alleged connections to the Priory of Sion, including a Gino Sandri and Nicolas Haywood. A book by one of the documentary's researchers, Rob Howells, entitled "Inside the Priory of Sion: Revelations from the World's Most Secret Society - Guardians of the Bloodline of Jesus" presented the version of the Priory of Sion as given in the 2008 documentary, which contained several erroneous assertions, such as the claim that Plantard believed in the Jesus bloodline hypothesis. In 2012, however, Ben Hammott, using his real name of Bill Wilkinson, gave a podcast interview in which he apologised and confessed that everything to do with the tomb and related artifacts was a hoax, revealing that the 'tomb' had been part of a now-destroyed full-sized movie set located in a warehouse in England.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: Claims to a Jesus bloodline are not restricted to Europe. An analogous legend claims that the place of Jesus at the crucifixion was taken by a brother, while Jesus fled through what would become Russia and Siberia to Japan, where he became a rice farmer at Aomori, at the north of the island of Honshu. It is claimed he married there and had a large family before his death at the age of 114, with descendants to the present. A Grave of Jesus ("Kristo no Hakka") there attracts tourists. This legend dates from the 1930s, when it was claimed that a document was discovered written in the Hebrew language and describing the marriage and later life of Jesus. The document has since disappeared.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: In South Asia, the founder of the reformist Ahmaddiyya religious movement, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908), likewise claimed that Jesus survived the crucifixion and escaped the Levant, but instead placed his subsequent activities in Afghanistan and India. Specifically, he identified Jesus as the holy man, Yuzasaf, buried at the Roza Bal shrine in the Kashmir Valley of Srinagar. Fida M. Hassnain, as part of a 1970s study of this myth that brought it to the attention of western popularizers, found that the guardian of the shine claimed to be a direct descendant of Jesus and a woman named 'Marjan'.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: In reaction to "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail", "The Da Vinci Code", and other controversial books, websites and films on the same theme, a significant number of individuals in the late 20th and early 21st centuries have adhered to a Jesus bloodline hypothesis despite its lack of substantiation. While some simply entertain it as a novel intellectual proposition, others hold it as an established belief thought to be authoritative and not to be disputed. Prominent among the latter are those who expect a direct descendant of Jesus will eventually emerge as a great man and become a messiah, a Great Monarch who rules a Holy European Empire, during an event which they will interpret as a mystical second coming of Christ.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: The eclectic spiritual views of these adherents are influenced by the writings of iconoclastic authors from a wide range of perspectives. Authors like Margaret Starbird and Jeffrey Bütz often seek to challenge modern beliefs and institutions through a re-interpretation of Christian history and mythology. Some try to advance and understand the equality of men and women spiritually by portraying Mary Magdalene as being the apostle of a Christian feminism, and even the personification of the mother goddess or sacred feminine, usually associating her with the Black Madonna. Some wish the ceremony that celebrated the beginning of the alleged marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene to be viewed as a "holy wedding"; and Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and their alleged daughter, Sarah, to be viewed as a "holy family", in order to question traditional gender roles and family values. Almost all these claims are at odds with scholarly Christian apologetics, and have been dismissed as being New Age Gnostic heresies.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: No mainstream Christian denomination has adhered to a Jesus bloodline hypothesis as a dogma or an object of religious devotion since they maintain that Jesus, believed to be God the Son, was perpetually celibate, continent and chaste, and metaphysically married to the Church; he died, was resurrected, ascended to heaven, and will eventually return to earth, thereby making all Jesus bloodline hypotheses and related messianic expectations impossible.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: Many fundamentalist Christians believe the Antichrist, prophesied in the Book of Revelation, plans to present himself as descended from the Davidic line to bolster his false claim that he is the Jewish Messiah. The intention of such propaganda would be to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of Jews and philo-Semites to achieve his Satanic objectives. An increasing number of fringe Christian eschatologists believe the Antichrist may also present himself as descended from the Jesus bloodline to capitalize on growing adherence to the hypothesis in the general public.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: The notion of a direct bloodline from Jesus and Mary Magdalene and its supposed relationship to the Merovingians, as well as to their alleged modern descendants, is strongly dismissed as pseudohistorical by a qualified majority of Christian and secular historians such as Darrell Bock and Bart D. Ehrman, along with journalists and investigators such as Jean-Luc Chaumeil, who has an extensive archive on this subject matter.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: In 2005, UK TV presenter and amateur archaeologist Tony Robinson edited and narrated a detailed rebuttal of the main arguments of Dan Brown and those of Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln, "The Real Da Vinci Code", shown on Channel 4. The programme featured lengthy interviews with many of the main protagonists, and cast severe doubt on the alleged landing of Mary Magdalene in France, among other related myths, by interviewing on film the inhabitants of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the centre of the cult of Saint Sarah.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: Robert Lockwood, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh's director for communications, sees the notion of the Church conspiring to cover-up the truth about a Jesus bloodline as a deliberate piece of anti-Catholic propaganda. He sees it as part of a long tradition of anti-Catholic sentiment with deep roots in the American Protestant imagination but going back to the very start of the Reformation of 1517.


title: Jesus bloodline

text: Ultimately, the notion that a person living millennia ago has a small number of descendants living today is statistically improbable. Steve Olson, author of "Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins", published an article in "Nature" demonstrating that, as a matter of statistical probability:


title: Jesus bloodline

text: Historian Ken Mondschein ridiculed the notion that the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene could have been preserved:


title: Jesus bloodline

text: Chris Lovegrove, who reviewed "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" when first published in 1982, dismissed the significance of a Jesus bloodline, even if it were proven to exist despite all evidence to the contrary:


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: The Fosters is an American family drama television series created by Peter Paige and Bradley Bredeweg. It premiered in the United States on June 3, 2013, on the ABC Family (later Freeform) television network and concluded on June 6, 2018. It followed the lives of the Adams-Foster family led by a lesbian couple, Stef Foster, a police officer, and Lena Adams, a school vice principal, who raise one biological son and four adopted teenagers in San Diego, California.


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: The first season received generally favorable reviews and particular acclaim for its portrayal of LGBT themes. It also earned two GLAAD Media Awards and one Teen Choice Award.


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: On January 3, 2018, Freeform announced that "The Fosters" would end after five seasons. It concluded with a three-episode finale, which also acted as an introduction to "Good Trouble", the spin-off series starring Maia Mitchell and Cierra Ramirez.


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: The series follows the lives of police officer Stef Foster and her life partner Lena Adams, a school vice principal, and their multiethnic, blended family. Stef and Lena are the parents of Brandon, Stef’s biological son from her previous marriage, and twins Jesus and Mariana, who were adopted as children. When the series begins, the couple take in two foster children, Callie and Jude, whom they later adopt. Also part of their lives is Mike Foster, Stef’s patrol partner and ex-husband, and Brandon’s biological father.


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: Most of the show takes place at the family's craftsman-style home in the quiet San Diego suburb of Mission Bay, and at Anchor Beach Community Charter School.


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: "The Fosters" was originally conceived by openly gay creators Bradley Bredeweg and Peter Paige who wanted to write a drama that reflected the "modern American family". After originally considering a story about two gay fathers, the pair decided the subject of two men raising a family had already been done on television and began to instead consider a story about two women. When asked about the concept of two lesbian mothers raising a blended family, Bredeweg stated, "We realized that there was a kind of a vacuum when it came to stories about women raising families. So we set off in that direction. Many of our own friends are moms raising biological kids. Some of them have fostered and adopted. Suddenly, we realized that we had a story here that hadn't been told on television before." Additionally, certain elements of the series which deal with the foster care system are said to have been inspired by a troubled childhood friend of Bredeweg, who struggled in the foster system before eventually being adopted in her senior year of high school.


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: When developing the concept, Bredeweg and Paige were initially met with some resistance from Hollywood, with Bredeweg recounting, "[T]here were some people around us, some people in town who said, 'You know, it is just not going to happen. You are never going to sell this show.'" After completing the first draft of the pilot script, the team was introduced to Jennifer Lopez through a friend who worked at her production company Nuyorican Productions, which was looking to branch out into scripted television. When describing their initial pitch to Lopez, Bredeweg stated, "When we met with Jennifer, she really fell in love with it. The moment we had her, we knew that we had a force behind us."


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: Lopez's decision to become involved in the project is said to have been largely inspired by her late Aunt Marisa, Lopez's mother's gay elder sister who had faced discrimination during her lifetime due to her sexual orientation and was unable to have a family of her own. When discussing the show's concept, Lopez stated, "Although [the script] was about a non-traditional family and had some newer themes, it had some really basic themes as well about family and love and what's really important. And life can be complicated and messy sometimes and not simple. It gives a really good depiction of family in this day and age."


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: With Lopez on board, the team took the concept to several networks, including ABC Family, with Bredeweg recalling, "ABC Family was really receptive from the very beginning. Strangely, it felt a little like a match made in heaven. I mean, their slogan is 'A new kind of family.' We had a new kind of modern family, and it took off from there." On July 6, 2012, "The Hollywood Reporter," among other sources, reported that Jennifer Lopez and her production company, Nuyorican Productions, were developing the yet-to-be-titled hour-long drama for ABC Family, with Lopez set to executive produce alongside Simon Fields and Greg Gugliotta, as well as showrunners and head writers Peter Paige and Brad Bredeweg.


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: On August 23, 2012, sources reported that ABC Family had ordered a pilot for "The Fosters", a series which would tell the story of a lesbian couple raising a "21st-century" multi-ethnic mix of foster and biological children. On September 24, 2012, it was reported that Teri Polo and Sherri Saum had been cast to star in the pilot as the two leads, Stef Adams Foster and Lena Adams Foster, respectively.


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: On February 6, 2013, it was reported that ABC Family had picked up the show, with production set to begin that spring for a summer 2013 premiere. The rest of the principal cast was also announced at that time, including Danny Nucci as Stef's ex-husband Mike Foster, David Lambert as their biological son Brandon Foster, Jake T. Austin and Cierra Ramirez as Stef and Lena's twins Jesus and Mariana Foster, and Maia Mitchell and Hayden Byerly as their foster children Callie and Jude Jacob.


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: When recounting the casting process, Bredeweg explained, "[W]e spent tireless hours trying to find the right person for each role. Then they all began to line up—it was like dominos—the moment we found our Lena, the moment we found our Callie, the moment we found our Stef, it sort of all started to line up perfectly for us." On April 11, 2013, "TV Guide" unveiled the first official cast photo of "The Fosters".


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: In March 2015, it was announced that Jake T. Austin would be leaving the show. He tweeted: "I'm honored to have been a part of such a groundbreaking series, but I personally want to let you know that my time on the show has come to an end. Thank you for letting me be a part of your family, it's been a pleasure." It was announced three months later that Noah Centineo would replace Austin in the role of Jesus.


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: "The Fosters" premiered on June 3, 2013 and ran for ten episodes. On July 30, 2013, the series was picked up for a full season and an additional eleven episodes were produced, with the first season returning on January 13, 2014 before concluding on March 24. On October 11, 2013, ABC Family renewed "The Fosters" for a second season that premiered on June 16, 2014. The summer finale premiered on August 18, 2014. In July, ABC Family announced a Christmas special to premiere in December with the second half of season 2 to premiere in January 2015. The third season premiered on June 8, 2015.


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: On January 13, 2015, ABC Family renewed the series for a third season which premiered on June 8, with the second half set to premiere on January 18, 2016 on "Freeform". On November 24, 2015, the premiere date was pushed to a week later on January 25, 2016. On November 30, 2015, ABC Family announced that "The Fosters" was renewed for a fourth season and began airing on June 20, 2016.


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: While Canada broadcasts the series on ABC Spark, it airs on Fox8 in Australia where its second season premiered on February 3, 2015. In Turkey, the series airs on "Dizimax Drama".


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: On January 10, 2017, The Fosters was renewed for a fifth season, which included the series' 100th episode.


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: On January 3, 2018, Freeform announced that "The Fosters" was ending after five seasons. The show's two-hour 100th episode acted as a Season 5 finale, setting up the three-part limited series event that aired in June 2018. The three-episode finale will introduce a spin-off series centered around Maia Mitchell's Callie and Cierra Ramirez's Mariana.


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: On January 27, 2014, it was confirmed that ABC Family green-lighted a spin-off digital series of "The Fosters", named "The Fosters: Girls United". The five-part web series follows the residents of the Girls United home in a new country. Maia Mitchell, Daffany Clark, Cherinda Kincherlow, Annamarie Kenoyer, Alicia Sixtos, Hayley Kiyoko, and Angela Gibbs star in the series.


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: "The Fosters" received a Metacritic score of 70 out of 100 in its first season, based on reviews by eleven critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". While acknowledging its network was somewhat beholden to the "soapy" format its target demographic had become accustomed to, critics praised the series for its ability to appeal to adults and younger viewers alike, with "Boston Herald" critic Mark A. Perigard writing, "The show cannily plays to teen hopes and dreams [...] but there's story for the adults as well." "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" critic Gail Pennington echoed the sentiment, writing "Intelligent enough for adults, accessible enough for younger viewers and entertaining enough for both."


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: The series has garnered positive reception for its innovative portrayal of LGBT characters and themes. "Entertainment Weekly" critic, Sarah Caldwell wrote that "[s]eeing a lesbian, biracial couple on a family TV show is a big deal. [I]f you look at the demographics of most TV shows, it's easy to realize how important, and deliberate, this choice was." "Philadelphia Daily News" critic Ellen Gray wrote, "Stef and Lena [are] the kind of parents I've met more in real life than on television. I hope they'll be as welcome there as they seem to be welcoming." TV Guide critic Matt Rousch felt similarly, writing, "there's something refreshing about its unforced approach to redefining what a family looks like." In addition to its adult characters, the series garnered praise for its handling of 13-year-old Jude's questioning of his sexual orientation, with Hollywood.com citing Byerly's "heartwarming" portrayal when naming Jude to its list of "Favorite LGBTQ Characters on TV" in 2014. The LGBT advocacy organization GLAAD and gay-interest media outlet TheBacklot.com also commended the show's decision to introduce the character of transgender teenager Cole, portrayed by transgender actor Tom Phelan, in the second half of its first season.


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: In his review of the pilot episode, "Variety's" Brian Lowry criticized what he felt were formulaic elements, writing that what was distinctive about the series appeared to have been "extracted during the pitch meeting, indicating a show either built by committee or incorporating too many notes." Although acknowledging that Polo and Saum were competent actresses and that the show "had its heart in the right place", Lowry described the series as an "utterly by-the-numbers affair." "PopMatters" critic Maysa Hattab detected some of the same problems, writing ""[T]he Fosters" feel less like a family than a careful assembly of machine-tooled parts, as if the show were engineered for a focus group approved 'family drama' category", while conceding that the lead characters, Stef and Lena were "a likeable pair."


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: On October 8, 2012, more than seven months prior to the series debut, the socially conservative One Million Moms organization, a division of the American Family Association, condemned Lopez and the show, encouraging audiences to boycott it. The group, which has routinely advocated against the depiction of same-sex couples in the media, stated: "While foster care and adoption is a wonderful thing and the Bible does teach us to help orphans, this program is attempting to redefine marriage and family by having two moms raise these children together." They issued the following statement:


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: In response, ABC defended the television show, with ABC Family President Michael Riley countering that "The Fosters" merges perfectly with the network's "groundbreaking storytelling and iconic characters" and will feature "the same depth, heart, close relationships and authenticity that our viewers have come to expect". Other sources have also defended the show. Josh Middleton, a writer from "Philadelphia" magazine, called One Million Moms' statement "silliness" as well as "ridiculous" and said, "They obviously missed the boat on shows like "Modern Family" and "The New Normal", which have been on air—and killing it in the ratings game—for a while now".


title: The Fosters (American TV series)

text: On January 3, 2018, following the announcement of the ending of the series, Freeform announced a spin-off was in the works. It would center the lives of Callie and Mariana Adams Foster, now living in Los Angeles, a few years after the series finale of "The Fosters", which contains a five-year time jump. The spin-off was given a 13-episode order. On May 23, 2018, it was announced that the title of the spin-off series was "Good Trouble". On February 5, 2019 it was announced via Twitter that the show has been renewed for a second season. On January 17, 2020, the series has been renewed for a third season. The renewal for the fourth season was announced on September 8, 2021. The fourth season is set to premiere on Wednesday March 9, 2022 on freeform. Stream on Hulu Thursday March 10.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: Levi Bellfield (born Levi Rabbetts; 17 May 1968) is an English serial killer, sex offender, rapist, kidnapper, and burglar. He was found guilty on 25 February 2008 of the murders of Marsha McDonnell and Amélie Delagrange and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy, and sentenced to life imprisonment. On 23 June 2011, Bellfield was further found guilty of the murder of Milly Dowler.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: On both occasions, the judge imposed a whole life order, meaning that Bellfield will serve the sentence without the possibility of parole.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: Levi Bellfield was born at the West Middlesex Hospital, Isleworth, London, to Jean and Joseph Rabbetts ("née" Bellfield); he is of Romani descent. When Bellfield was ten years old, his father died from leukaemia.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: Bellfield and his siblings, Joelion, Harry, Josephine, and Maxine (two brothers and two sisters) were brought up on a southwest London council estate. He attended Forge Lane Junior School then Rectory Secondary School, Hampton, later moving to Feltham Community College.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: Bellfield's first conviction was for burglary in 1981. He was convicted of assaulting a police officer in 1990. He also has convictions for theft and driving offences. By 2002, Bellfield had nine convictions and had spent almost one year in prison for them.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: In an interview with the media, Detective Chief Inspector Colin Sutton of the Metropolitan Police, who led the murder investigation, said of Bellfield: "When we started dealing with him he came across as very jokey, like he's your best mate. But he's a cunning individual, violent. He can switch from being nice to being nasty, instantly."


title: Levi Bellfield

text: Bellfield searched for victims on streets he knew intimately. Detectives tracked down a number of ex-girlfriends, who all described a similar pattern of behaviour when they got involved with him. "He was lovely at first, charming, then completely controlling and evil. They all said the same," said Detective Sergeant Jo Brunt.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: At the time of the attacks, Bellfield ran a wheel-clamping business which operated in and around West Drayton, where he lived. Sutton speculated:


title: Levi Bellfield

text: Bellfield was seen driving around in his van, talking to young girls at bus stops, while under police surveillance. Amélie Delagrange was seen by CCTV cameras which showed her walking towards Twickenham Green after she missed her stop on the bus home. She may have stopped and spoken to Bellfield between the last two sightings of her. She was attacked shortly afterwards.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: Bellfield was arrested early on the morning of 22 November 2004 on suspicion of the murder of Amélie Delagrange. On 25 November, he was charged with three counts of rape in Surrey and West London. On 9 December 2004, he was charged with assaulting a woman in Twickenham between 1995 and 1997 and remanded in custody. Bellfield was rearrested and charged with Delagrange's murder on 2 March 2006, along with the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy and the attempted murder and causing grievous bodily harm to Irma Dragoshi. On 25 May 2006, Bellfield was charged with the murder of Marsha McDonnell.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: Amanda Jane "Milly" Dowler was a 13-year-old girl who went missing on leaving Walton-on-Thames railway station on 21 March 2002 and was found dead in Yateley Heath Woods, Yateley, six months later. In August 2009, Surrey Police submitted a dossier to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) containing evidence of Bellfield's involvement in the murder of Dowler. On 30 March 2010, Bellfield was charged with the kidnapping and murder of Dowler, as well as the attempted kidnapping of then 12-year-old Rachel Cowles on 20 March 2002. Bellfield did not give evidence at his trial and denied any involvement in Dowler's death. A jury convicted Bellfield of Milly Dowler's murder on 23 June 2011.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: Marsha Louise McDonnell, a 19-year-old woman, was beaten over the head with a blunt instrument near her home in Hampton in February 2003. The wound was inflicted shortly after she got off the 111 bus from Kingston upon Thames at the stop on Percy Road. McDonnell died in hospital two days after being admitted. Bellfield sold his Vauxhall Corsa car for £1,500 six days after the murder, having bought it for £6,000 just five months earlier.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: Kate Sheedy, then aged 18, was deliberately run over as she crossed the road near an entrance to an industrial estate in Isleworth on 28 May 2004. She survived with multiple injuries and consequently spent several weeks in hospital. Nearly four years later, Sheedy gave evidence against Bellfield when he was tried for her attempted murder. Sheedy had described the car after the attack as a white people carrier with blacked out windows and a broken wing mirror; Bellfield was found to have owned a Toyota Previa matching that description at the time of the attack.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: Amélie Delagrange was a 22-year-old French student visiting the UK. She was found at Twickenham Green on the evening of 19 August 2004 with serious head injuries, and died in hospital the same night. Within 24 hours, the police established that she might have been killed by the same person who had killed Marsha McDonnell 18 months earlier. Bellfield reportedly confessed to the murder while on remand.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: Bellfield was also charged with the abduction and false imprisonment of Anna-Maria Rennie (then aged 17) in Whitton on 14 October 2001, after she identified him in a video identity parade four years later. He was also charged with the attempted murder of Irma Dragoshi (then aged 39) in Longford on 16 December 2003. The jury failed to reach verdicts on either of these charges.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: Bellfield was found guilty of the murders of McDonnell and Delagrange, as well as the attempted murder of Sheedy, on 25 February 2008, more than three years after the last of the three attacks. The following day, he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole life order. Bellfield was not in court to hear his sentence, as he had refused to attend court owing to "unfair press coverage" following his conviction.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: On 30 March 2010, Bellfield was charged with Dowler's abduction and murder, pre-dating the earliest of the other three charges by almost a year. He was named as the prime suspect in connection with the murder in the immediate aftermath of his first trial in 2008. As a result, the inquest into Dowler's death was adjourned. On 6 October 2010, he appeared in court via video link and was formally charged with one count each of attempted abduction, (actual) abduction and murder.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: Bellfield's second trial began at the Old Bailey on 10 May 2011 and on 23 June the jury found Bellfield guilty. He was again sentenced to life imprisonment the following day and the trial judge once again imposed a whole life order. The trial of Bellfield on another charge, that of the attempted abduction of an 11-year-old girl who was offered a lift in the Walton area by a man in a red car on the day preceding this murder, was abandoned due to newspapers publishing prejudicial material.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: On 27 January 2016, Surrey Police announced that Bellfield had admitted, for the first time, abducting, raping and murdering Dowler after being interviewed about whether he had an accomplice. Bellfield later issued a denial that he made any such confession, but Surrey Police stood by their earlier statement.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: After his February 2008 convictions, Bellfield was named by police as a suspect in connection with numerous unsolved murders and attacks on women dating back to 1990 – as well as the murder of his childhood girlfriend, 14-year-old Patsy Morris, in 1980. Morris was killed one year before Bellfield's first conviction, for burglary, at age 13. Bellfield has reportedly boasted in prison of killing Morris and police said they would be investigating him for the murder in 2008 after he confessed to a cellmate.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: After Bellfield's 2008 conviction, police revealed they were reviewing the murder of 51-year-old Judith Gold in Hampstead in October 1990. Described as an "attractive and vivacious" middle-class housewife, she had died yards from her home after being hit several times in the face by an unidentified weapon. Police believed Bellfield could have been responsible for this alongside around 20 other unsolved attacks on women in London. These attacks, which took place between 1990 and around 2004, were all linked to Bellfield because the police researched the frequency of blunt-force trauma attacks on women and children using objects such as hammers and found that they were so rare that only one unsolved attack in Greater London in that time period could not realistically be ruled out as being the work of Bellfield.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: The circumstances of Gold's murder were somewhat mysterious: police were unsure why she had dressed as if for a business meeting just before she left her home at around 5:30am am on the day she was killed, Saturday 20 October 1990. She left her home above the Midland Bank in Hampstead High Street and was found battered only yards away by a paperboy in Old Brewery Mews, while it was still pitch black. The place she was found was very dark due to recent problems with street lightings at that spot. Unusually, no witnesses reported hearing any screams, struggle or anything else suspicious, and her housemates reported having not heard her get up and leave for unexplained reasons in the middle of the night. Her husband had died two years previously and she lived with her 19-year-old daughter and her family friend.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: Gold worked as an insurance and mortgage agent and also as a freelance financier, and was also known as Judith Silver. There was no sign of sexual assault and the motive also appeared not to be robbery as her handbag and jewellery were left untouched, although her very distinctive chain which she wore round her neck had been taken. The chain had been given to her by her new boyfriend, who she had met in Tenerife and who was 15 years younger than her.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: In February 1991, "The Guardian" had reported that the murder was believed to be linked to an "international financial swindle". Scotland Yard detectives said at the time that they were investigating fraudulent loan schemes that Gold may have been involved in, and it was found that she was involved in an "international advanced-fee fraud". Gold did not usually wake up early and her job did not involve working on Saturdays, and so investigators theorised that she had arranged a meeting with someone and knew the killer. Her work was described as "shadowy" and involved negotiating large low-interest loans with businessmen, which her daughter disliked her doing and which she said made her mother visibly stressed in the days before she died. The lead detective on the case said in 1994: "We're sure she got in too deep and that's what led to her death". For unknown reasons it was found that Gold had written the number of the local police station on the back of her chequebook. The day before her murder, Gold had mysteriously left the house and her daughter noticed that her car had been reversed into its parking space when she returned, something she never did, raising the possibility she had gone to meet someone then and they had driven her car back home.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: Police were informed in early 2015 that Bellfield, in his cell at HM Prison Wakefield, had admitted to unsolved rape and murder cases. The Metropolitan Police co-ordinated the subsequent investigations of ten police forces. On 9 November 2016, they issued a statement which said: "All lines of inquiry have now been exhausted and the decision has been taken to close this investigation as there is no evidence to link the individual to any case for which he has not already been convicted." It was later revealed by police that Bellfield may have lied about other murders so he could inflict pain on their families.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: Regarding the 1996 murders of Lin Russell and her daughter Megan, BBC Cymru Wales reported that Bellfield had allegedly confessed to the murders to a fellow prisoner, giving details that "would only be known by the killer". Bellfield denied the confession. A 2017 BBC Two programme, "The Chillenden Murders", in which a team of independent experts re-examined the evidence, supported the idea Bellfield should be investigated for the killings. The legal team of Michael Stone, convicted of the crimes, maintains Bellfield is the true perpetrator of the attack. In December 2017, "The Sunday Times" reported that Bellfield's ex-wife Johanna Collings had told investigators in the Delagrange case that he was with her on the day for her 25th birthday, the time of the Russell murders, and had spent all day in Twickenham and Windsor, 100 miles away from the scene of the murders which occurred at around 4.30pm. It was an alibi which detectives found credible. Collings had helped detectives convict Bellfield for his previous murders, such as in the Milly Dowler murder, giving evidence that he knew the area well, where her body was left. In regards to the Russell murders, however, she clarified in a BBC documentary in 2017:


title: Levi Bellfield

text: In February 2022 it was claimed by Stone's lawyer, Paul Bacon, that Bellfield had confessed to the murders of Lin and Megan Russell in a four-page statement with details he claimed only the killer would know. However, as well as his former wife previously saying it was not possible that he could have been in Kent on the day, a member of Stone's legal team also later admitted that there was nothing in Bellfield's statement which was not already in the public domain, suggesting he could have fabricated it using known evidence. The detective responsible for investigating Bellfield's known crimes, Colin Sutton, also stated to the press: "Knowing Bellfield as I do, this could be him playing mind games". The Metropolitan Police previously investigated allegations that Bellfield was involved in the Russell murders and found no evidence to support the claims.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: Bellfield has fathered eleven children with five different women, the three youngest with his most recent girlfriend, Emma Mills.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: In May 2022 the Ministry of Justice confirmed that Bellfield was engaged and had applied to marry while in a prison. He proposed to a woman who had started writing to him two years previously, before becoming a visitor on a regular basis. Bellfield would need the permission of the governor at HM Prison Frankland.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: The investigation that led to Bellfield's arrest was dramatised by ITV in a three-part television series that premiered in early 2019; "Manhunt" was adapted from the memoir of Colin Sutton, with actor Martin Clunes playing Sutton.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: The third episode of the eight-part series "Making a Monster", commissioned by the Crime & Investigation channel, focuses on Levi Bellfield's character and motivations.


title: Levi Bellfield

text: "The Real Manhunter" aired on Sky Crime in 2021 with the second episode exploring the Levi Bellfield investigation. Colin Sutton and his original team of Metropolitan Police detectives described everything from the moment Bellfield was identified through to his arrest, trial and conviction.


title: Rakim

text: William Michael Griffin Jr. (born January 28, 1968), better known by his stage name Rakim Allah or simply Rakim (), is an American rapper and record producer. One half of golden age hip hop duo Eric B. & Rakim, he is widely regarded as one of the most influential and skilled MCs of all time.


title: Rakim

text: Rakim is considered a transformational figure in hip hop for raising the bar for MC technique higher than it had ever been. Rakim helped to pioneer the use of internal rhymes and multisyllabic rhymes, and he was among the first to demonstrate the possibilities of sitting down to write intricately crafted lyrics packed with clever word choices and metaphors rather than the more improvisational styles and simpler rhyme patterns that predominated before him. Rakim is also credited with creating the overall shift from the more simplistic old school flows to more complex flows. Rapper Kool Moe Dee explained that before Rakim, the term 'flow' wasn't widely used – "Rakim is basically the inventor of flow. We were not even using the word flow until Rakim came along. It was called rhyming, it was called cadence, but it wasn't called flow. Rakim created flow!" Rakim released four albums with DJ Eric B.: "Paid in Full", "Follow the Leader", "Let the Rhythm Hit 'Em" and "Don't Sweat the Technique". He has released three solo albums: "The 18th Letter", "The Master" and "The Seventh Seal".


title: Rakim

text: "Paid in Full" was named the greatest hip hop album of all time by MTV in 2006, while Rakim himself was ranked No. 4 on MTV's list of the Greatest MCs of All Time. Steve Huey of AllMusic stated that "Rakim is near-universally acknowledged as one of the greatest MCs – perhaps "the" greatest – of all time within the hip-hop community". The editors of About.com ranked him No. 2 on their list of the 'Top 50 MCs of Our Time (1987–2007)'. In 2012, "The Source" ranked him No. 1 on their list of the "Top 50 Lyricists of All Time".


title: Rakim

text: Rakim is the nephew of the late American R&B singer and actress Ruth Brown. He grew up in Wyandanch, New York on Long Island. He wrote his first rhyme at seven years old, about the cartoon character Mickey Mouse. He initially aspired to play professional football. He was a quarterback on his high school football team.


title: Rakim

text: However, after being introduced to local DJ Eric B. by his friend Alvin Toney, he began writing lyrics to fit Eric's instrumentals and chose instead to focus on a career in music. Then known as Kid Wizard, he made his first recordings live at Wyandanch High School in the year 1985.


title: Rakim

text: Rakim was initially introduced to the Nation of Islam in 1986; he later joined The Nation of Gods and Earths (also known as the 5 Percent Nation) and adopted the Arabic name Rakim Allah. He also chose to use “Rakim Allah” as his stage name, although it was most often shortened to simply “Rakim”. During his career he has been nicknamed the "God MC" because of his acclaimed status as an MC and a reference to the "Allah" in his stage name, which is the Arabic word for God.


title: Rakim

text: First meeting in 1985, Eric B. and Rakim went on to release four studio albums before their separation in 1992. The duo were described by journalist Tom Terrell of NPR as "the most influential DJ/MC combo in contemporary pop music period", while the editors of About.com ranked them as No. 4 on their list of the 10 Greatest Hip-Hop Duos of All-Time. They were nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011, although they did not make the final selection.


title: Rakim

text: After Rakim responded to Eric B.'s search for "New York's top MC", Eric B.'s friend and roommate Marley Marl allowed them to use his home studio. The first tracks they recorded—"Eric B. Is President" and "My Melody"—were released as a single/b-side on the independent Zakia Records in 1986. After Def Jam Recordings founder Russell Simmons heard the single, the duo were signed to Island Records and began recording the album in Manhattan's Power Play Studios in early 1987.


title: Rakim

text: On July 7, 1987, the duo released their debut album, "Paid in Full", on the Island-subsidiary label 4th & B'way Records. The album peaked at No. 58 on the "Billboard" 200 chart and produced five singles: "Eric B. Is President", "I Ain't No Joke", "I Know You Got Soul", "Move the Crowd", and "Paid in Full".


title: Rakim

text: While its singles attained moderate success, "Follow the Leader" performed better on music charts than Eric B. & Rakim's debut album and reached number 22 on the U.S. "Billboard" Pop Albums chart. It has been certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for shipments in excess of 500,000 copies in the United States. Released during the hip hop's "golden age", the album was well received by critics and has since been recognized by music writers as one of the most groundbreaking and influential hip hop albums of all time. American author William Jelani Cobb wrote of the album's significance, "On the heels of "Paid in Full", Eric B. & Rakim delivered a full clip of album titled "Follow the Leader" in 1988. Featuring a broader spectrum of sounds than the James Brown samples that had defined the initial release, "Follow the Leader" saw Rakim at his most lyrically fierce, issuing deft and death threats on such tracks as 'Microphone Fiend,' 'Lyrics of Fury,' and the nearly felonious 'No Competition.' The release marked the high point in the collaboration between the two and prefaced the long slide they faced in the 1990s."


title: Rakim

text: "Let the Rhythm Hit 'Em", released in 1990, was Eric B. & Rakim's third album. This album saw the duo's sound develop further, with Rakim adopting a deeper, more aggressive tone of voice, as well as more mature and serious subject matter. Musically, the production ranges from smoother soulful tracks such as "In the Ghetto" to the hard-edged assault of the title track. Though it could not support singles as popular as the duo's previous albums, it is considered by many to be the duo's most coherent album. It is one of the few albums to have received a "five-mic" rating from "The Source". In 1998, the album was selected as one of "The Source"s 100 Best Rap Albums. The back cover features a dedication to the memories of Rakim's father William and producer Paul C., who had worked on many of the album's tracks before his murder in July 1989. His protégé Large Professor completed his work. Neither receive credit in the album's notes.


title: Rakim

text: In 1992, Eric B & Rakim released their fourth and final album, "Don't Sweat the Technique". The title track was a minor radio hit. "Casualties of War" was also released as a single. "Know the Ledge" first appeared in the film "Juice" under the title "Juice (Know the Ledge)". However, Eric B. refused to sign MCA's release contract, fearful that Rakim would abandon him. This led to a long, complicated court battle involving the two musicians and MCA. The legal wrangling eventually led to the duo dissolving completely.


title: Rakim

text: After his breaking up his partnership with Eric B. in early-1993, Rakim kept a low profile, only making one notable appearance on the soundtrack to the 1993 film "Gunmen". A reshuffling in MCA caused Rakim to be dropped from the label in 1994. As Rakim continued to struggle with legal problems, he secured a deal with Universal Records and began recording his solo debut album "The 18th Letter" in 1996. In November 1997, the album "The 18th Letter" was released. Expectations were high for Rakim, as the album debuted at #4 on the Billboard 200 and was certified Gold by the RIAA.


title: Rakim

text: In June 1999, Rakim appeared on three tracks of "The Seduction of Claude Debussy" by Art of Noise. AllMusic's Keith Farley notes that "the album charts the artistic use of sampled breakbeats -- pioneered by the Art of Noise themselves -- with nods to '80s hip-hop plus their '90s equivalent, drum'n'bass."


title: Rakim

text: Rakim was signed to Dr. Dre's Aftermath Entertainment record label in 2000, for work on an album tentatively titled "Oh, My God". The album underwent numerous changes in artistic direction and personnel and was delayed several times. While working on the album, Rakim made guest appearances on four Aftermath projects, including the hit single "Addictive" by Truth Hurts and its remix (which featured a different Rakim verse from the main version), the Dr. Dre-produced "The Watcher Part 2" by Jay-Z, and Eminem's "8 Mile" soundtrack album with the track "R.A.K.I.M".


title: Rakim

text: However, Rakim left the label in 2003 and "Oh, My God" was indefinitely shelved. After Rakim eventually left Aftermath Entertainment, he stated that the reason he departed the label was because of creative differences with Dr. Dre. Rakim used a metaphorical example that Dr. Dre wanted Rakim to write about killing someone, while Rakim wanted to write about the resurrection of someone.


title: Rakim

text: Rakim retreated to his Connecticut estate to work leisurely on music. Not having released an album since 1999, he eschewed touring in favor of infrequent gigs. Rakim was able to retain the tracks he had made with Dr. Dre and, in 2006, announced that he would release a new studio album, "The Seventh Seal". The album was delayed into 2009; instead, he followed up with a live album, "", in 2008. In an interview with "Billboard" in 2007, when asked about story behind "The Seventh Seal"s title, Rakim said,


title: Rakim

text: "The Seventh Seal" was released on November 17, 2009, after several delays on Rakim's own Ra Records, TVM, and SMC Recordings and distributed through Fontana and Universal Music Group. Considered a comeback album after a ten-year gap between releases, the album features the two singles: "Holy Are You", which was released on July 14, 2009, and "Walk These Streets" which was released on October 7, 2009. It features production from several renowned hip hop artists, including Nottz, J. Wells, Needlz, Jake One, and Nick Wiz. The album sold 12,000 copies in the United States by November 22, 2009, according to SoundScan. Upon its release, "The Seventh Seal" received generally mixed or average reviews from most music critics; it holds an aggregate score of 59/100 at Metacritic.


title: Rakim

text: In 2011, Rakim performed "Paid in Full" in its entirety at the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City, in honor of the album's 25th anniversary. He was backed by The Roots.


title: Rakim

text: In 2012, Rakim announced that he and Eric B. would release a 25th anniversary edition of their 1987 album "Paid in Full", which would contain new tracks recorded by Eric B. & Rakim, by the end of 2012; Rakim announced he would release a new solo album by the end of 2012. He performed at the annual Roots' Picnic in Philadelphia in June. In an interview with "The Detroit Free Press" he announced he was in the studio with Pharrell Williams working on a new album set to be released in 2013, saying the first single will be released before the end of the year.


title: Rakim

text: In 2014, Rakim is featured on the collaborative single with American rock band Linkin Park, titled "Guilty All the Same". The song was released on March 6, 2014, by Warner Bros. Records as the first single from their sixth studio album, titled "The Hunting Party". He contributed his rhymes during the bridge for the main version of the song; however, he is not featured on the radio edit of the song. The song was officially released on March 7, 2014, for digital download.


title: Rakim

text: On April 27, 2015, Rakim announced he was working on a new album and planned to release it in the middle or end of 2015. He said "This is one of those albums where I can have fun. My last album, "The Seventh Seal", was somewhat of a conscious album. I wanted to make a statement on that album."


title: Rakim

text: In late-June 2018, a new song, "King's Paradise", was released on the "Luke Cage" season 2 soundtrack. Rakim performed the song for the first time on NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts series along with former A Tribe Called Quest member Ali Shaheed Muhammad and producer Adrian Younge.


title: Rakim

text: On October 20, 2016, it was announced via Twitter that Rakim had reunited with Eric B. after 23 years. The duo teased a potential reunion tour the next morning, hosting a poll for the fans to give their opinion on what city Eric B. & Rakim should start the tour. Four locations were the potential candidates: New York City, Las Vegas, London, and Australia. Since the announcement of the reunion, fans have speculated if the two will drop a new studio album in the near future.


title: Rakim

text: Rakim's rhyming deviated from the simple rhyme patterns of early 1980s hip hop. His free-rhythm style ignored bar lines and had earned comparisons to jazz pianist Thelonious Monk. "The New York Times" Ben Ratliff wrote that Rakim's "unblustery rapping developed the form beyond the flat-footed rhythms of schoolyard rhymes". While many rappers developed their technique through improvisation, Rakim was one of the first to demonstrate advantages of a writerly style, as with for instance his pioneering use of internal rhymes and multisyllabic rhymes. Unlike previous rappers such as LL Cool J, KRS-One, and Run-D.M.C., who delivered their vocals with high energy, Rakim employed a relaxed, stoic delivery. According to MTV, "We'd been used to MCs like Run and DMC, Chuck D and KRS-One leaping on the mic shouting with energy and irreverence, but Rakim took a methodical approach to his microphone fiending. He had a slow flow, and every line was blunt, mesmeric." Rakim's relaxed delivery results from his jazz influences; he had played the saxophone and was a John Coltrane fan.