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James Earl Jones, voice of Mufasa in ‘Lion King,’ dies at 93

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James Earl Jones, a versatile and award-winning American stage and screen actor who used his booming deep voice to bring the iconic “Star Wars” villain Darth Vader to life, has died, his representatives said Monday. He was 93 years old.

From the works of Shakespeare and August Wilson, to his indelible voiceovers in the blockbuster space saga and as Mufasa in the Disney classic “The Lion King,” Jones earned fans with his ability to play both the everyman and the other He won three Tony awards including a lifetime award, two Emmys and a Grammy, as well as an honorary Oscar, also for lifetime achievement.

In 1971, he became only the second Black man nominated for an Academy Award for best actor, after Sidney Poitier.
All of these accolades were hard-won, as Jones, who was born in segregated Mississippi on January 17, 1931, had to overcome a childhood stutter that often led him to barely speak at all.

“Stuttering is painful. In Sunday school, I’d try to read my lessons and the children behind me were falling on the floor with laughter,” Jones told the Daily Mail in 2010.

Reciting his own poetry, at the prodding of an English teacher, helped him to gain control of his voice, which would later be used to strike fear among millions in “Star Wars” as Darth Vader.

Jones did not physically portray the character — David Prowse wore Vader’s black cape and imposing face mask, while Jones offered the voice, oozing the evil power of the Dark Side.

“I am your father,” Vader tells Luke Skywalker, portrayed by Mark Hamill, in a pivotal fight scene in “The Empire Strikes Back” — a twist etched in cinema history.

“He created, with very little dialogue, one of the greatest villains that ever lived,” “Star Wars” creator George Lucas said in 2015 at a ceremony honoring Jones in New York.

▪︎AFP

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Entertainment

Davido : I Never Imagined I Will Get This Big

… I feel like every successful person that attains a great level of success can’t explain the feeling.

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Grammy nominee and multiple awards winner, David Adeleke aka Davido has explained that he didn’t imagine he was going to become a global star at thr initial stage of his career.

Davido made this known in a recent chat with Apple Music during the promotion of his fifth album entitled ‘5ive.’

“Never imagined it here. Forget it. I’ll be lying to you. Never imagined it. So when things were just happening over time, we were just taking in the strides like, “Damn, this is getting lit.”

We sold out 1,000. We sold out 2,000. Damn, we sold out 30, 40… Yeah, so it’s never really… I feel like every successful person that attains a great level of success can’t explain the feeling. You know what I’m saying?

“I think just generally in life when good things are happening so quick, you don’t realize. I actually remember the first time I was sitting in front of my laptop opening Logic and sitting down like, “Damn, I want to make it. I actually want to be a musician. This is what I want to do.”

“Watching MTV Cribs, watching people go on tour. I was a big YouTuber. I used to watch YouTube a lot. I used to watch vlogs. Tour vlogs, so it’s like Soulja Boy vlogs, just people about just being popular and being a star.

I used to watch all that stuff, so I saw it transition into reality for me. Do you understand?

“From the beginning, from showing my friends the culture, showing my friends like, “Come listen to this Nigerian music.”

And then, actually falling in love with the genre, falling in love with music, knowing that my family’s not going to accept this, but I’ll still do it anyway, not knowing that I’ll be one of the ones to pioneer it.”

Credit: The Nation

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Timaya, Kizz Daniel, to Spice Giants of Africa Festival in Kigali

In a statement, Ujiri disclosed that the festival will bring together 320 young athletes from 20 African nations and more than 20,000 spectators for a week of community, culture, basketball, education, and entertainment.

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This year’s Giants of Africa Festival will be a celebration of basketball, entertainment, and service to the community.

The week-long festival will be held in Kigali, Rwanda, from July 26 to August 2, with such stars as Kizz Daniel, Uncle Waffles, Timaya, and others lined up to spice the show.

Giants of Africa is a non-profit organisation dedicated to empowering African youth through basketball.

It was founded by Nigeria’s Masai Ujiri, who is the Vice-Chairman and President of the Toronto Raptors Basketball Club of Canada, which plays in the NBA.

In a statement, Ujiri disclosed that the festival will bring together 320 young athletes from 20 African nations and more than 20,000 spectators for a week of community, culture, basketball, education, and entertainment.

” The festival will unite communities, spark potential, and drive transformative change across the continent. Explaining the year’s celebration, Ujiri said in a statement: “Like these kids, I grew up on the continent. As Africans, we know the landscape and what the kids go through.

We know they dream just like we did, and it really inspires me because those kids have so much more talent and intelligence; they have ways to communicate now that we didn’t.

This festival is about showing them that there is a path. We want them to never stop dreaming.”

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“Free my guy”, Davido calls for the release of VeryDarkMan

In a tweet, Davido highlighted the positive impact VDM has had on people’s lives, despite the controversies surrounding him

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Afrobeats star Davido has expressed solidarity with social media activist VeryDarkMan, who is currently detained.

The arrest reportedly occurred shortly after he visited a branch of a new generation bank to complain about alleged unauthorised transactions from his mother’s account.

In a tweet, Davido highlighted the positive impact VDM has had on people’s lives, despite the controversies surrounding him.

The Grammy nominee noted that the outpouring of support for VDM is encouraging and motivates him to do more for the masses.

“Outside all the noise, it’s good to see that the good one does impact lives, and people appreciate it!

The support I’m seeing for VDM everywhere is encouraging, making one want to do more for the masses.

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