“I keep seeing the ‘Project Mbappé’ memes. 😂 Please stop. My parents never forced me or woke me up at 6 a.m. to train. I told my dad I wanted to become a professional footballer and the best in the world. It was my dream, not his. Leave the kids alone.”
— Kylian Mbappé
Honestly, what a movement. Loose Ends, Hot Chocolate, The Real thing, Soul II Soul, Musical Youth, Mica Paris, Truce, Kruez, Sahara, Aswad, Imagination, Musical Youth, Michelle Gayle, Omar, Jaki Graham, Kofi, Peter Hunnigale, Maxi Priest, Eternal.
(This is not even a start!)
Hollywood spent 21 years pretending this didn't happen first.
Michael Jai White headlined Spawn in 1997. A Black actor leading a major comic book movie, two decades before Black Panther made the idea look brand new.
The face in this clip cost him two to four hours of makeup every shoot day. Glued-on bodysuit, yellow contacts that shredded his eyes, a mask that choked his breathing. He credited his martial arts background for surviving days most actors would have walked off.
The film was a New Line gamble. Greenlit around $20M, ballooned past $40M once early effects footage came back, because the producers believed they could match Men in Black's visuals at half the cost. It pulled roughly $88M and got buried by critics on arrival.
Now look at what it opened. Blade arrived in 1998. Luke Cage, Black Panther, the entire run of Black-led comic adaptations followed. Black Panther alone cleared $1.3 billion in 2018.
The movie people file away as a forgotten misfire was the proof of concept for one of the most valuable lanes in modern Hollywood. White carried it there first, under a mask that barely let him breathe.
It’s not even the prices themselves that get me.
It’s the feeling that every company, every bill and every service just picks a number out of thin air and hopes we’ll accept it.
Train fares, rent, insurance, fuel, groceries, energy bills… everything seems to go up year after year regardless of what wages are doing.
We’re told inflation is falling, yet somehow life keeps getting more expensive.
At what point do ordinary people simply run out of things left to cut back on?
At this point prices in The UK are just made up:
What do you mean a return train to London is £140?
How is a weekend away in England £600? I can go abroad for a week for that!
Why is a house that was £700 a month a few years ago now £1500 a month?
How is a full tank of fuel now costing more than £100?
Why is my car insurance going up every year on the same car with no claims?
How is 2 carrier bags of shopping costing me nearly £100?
We're honestly done aren't we.