Kenneth "Kenny" Burns (born 23 September 1953) is a former Scotland international footballer, most famous for his time with Nottingham Forest, where he played a vital role in their European Cup successes.

Burns was born in Glasgow, and started his career with Rangers as an apprentice but left for Birmingham City aged 17, in 1971. He arrived at the Blues as a defender, but was converted to striker after Bob Latchford left in 1974,^[1] and earned the first of his 20 international caps in that role soon afterwards.^[2] However, after joining Nottingham Forest for £150,000 in 1977, he was converted back into a central defender by Brian Clough and Peter Taylor.

Burns proved a great success in his new role and was voted FWA Footballer of the Year in 1977-78, as Forest won the First Division title. He was an influential figure in the side's European Cup campaigns over the next three seasons, his defensive partnership with Larry Lloyd instrumental to Forest's victory in the 1979 and 1980 tournaments. He also managed to score in the second leg of the 1979 UEFA Super Cup final victory against Barcelona. At one time he was renowned for his 'wild man' image and while maintaining an aggressive nature, he also possessed a shrewd football brain and was always likely to score vital goals.

Burns left the City Ground in 1981 when Forest accepted a £400,000 offer from Leeds United for him. He stayed with the Yorkshire side until 1984 and played with Derby County, Notts County (on loan), Barnsley and Elfsborg in the latter stages of his professional career.

He went on to represent a string of non-league clubs as player or player-coach, finishing up as assistant manager of Telford United in 1993.^[1][3]

Honours[link]

Nottingham Forest

• Football League First Division (1): 1977–78
• European Cup (2): 1979, 1980
• European Super Cup (1): 1979
• League Cup (2): 1978, 1979
• FA Charity Shield (1): 1978
• Anglo-Scottish Cup (1): 1977
• Nottingham Forest Player of the Year (2): 1977–78, 1980–81
• FWA Footballer of the Year (1): 1977–78

References[link]

External links[link]

• Kenny Burns at scottishfa.co.uk

v t e Scotland squad – 1978 FIFA World Cup 1 Rough 2 Jardine 3 Donachie 4 Buchan 5 McQueen 6 Rioch 7 Masson 8 Dalglish 9 Jordan 10 Hartford 11 Johnston 12 Blyth 13 Kennedy (c) 14 Forsyth 15 Gemmill 16 Macari 17 Johnstone 18 Souness 19 Robertson 20 Clark 21 Harper 22 Burns Coach: MacLeod

Eldra Patrick "El" DeBarge ^[1] (born June 4, 1961) is an American R&B/pop singer-songwriter, known as the lead singer and co-founder of the R&B/soul music family group DeBarge throughout the early to mid-1980s. As a solo artist, he is best known for the hits "Who's Johnny" and "Love Always" and for his collaborations with Tone Loc, Quincy Jones, Fourplay and DJ Quik. DeBarge is a three-time Grammy nominee.^[2][3]

Life and career[link]

Early life[link]

A native of Detroit, Michigan, El was the sixth of ten children born to Robert Louis DeBarge, Sr. (1932–2009) and Etterlene (née Abney) DeBarge. DeBarge was already singing in his local church choir and playing piano as a child. Later after his family moved to Grand Rapids, he and the rest of his family began performing at their uncle's Pentecostal church. At thirteen, his parents divorced after a difficult and stormy marriage. El is of African American, English, French Canadian and Native American descent. Growing up, he was closest to eldest brother Bobby and began imitating his brother's vocal styling.

For several years, El spent time being in private study with music educator Ricky Callier. By 1975, El had begun to express a desire to become a performer. El became a father for the first time at fifteen. He would eventually father eleven children. In 1977, he dropped out of high school and began performing with his elder brothers in clubs and venues in Michigan. That year, Gregory Williams, a member of brother Bobby's group, Switch began mentoring El and brothers Marty and Randy, helping to record early recordings as part of the SMASH imprint. By 1979, eldest sister Bunny joined her brothers and Williams sent a demo of the siblings' recordings to Motown CEO Berry Gordy, who immediately signed the group, then known as The DeBarges, to the label.

Motown mentored them with members later working and contributing songwriting, arrangements and production to the recordings of Switch, including the 1980 albums, This Is My Dream and Reaching for Tomorrow. El DeBarge's first professional recording was as background vocalist to Switch's 1979 hit, "I Call Your Name". He later helped to arrange music for several Switch songs including "Love Over and Over Again" and "My Friend in the Sky", which he, Bunny and Bobby wrote. The song later would be sampled by the likes of Queen Pen and Raheem DeVaughn.

Music career[link]

In 1981, The DeBarges was released after the family had worked in the studio for a year recording it. The album was noted for most of its songs produced and written by all four family members including Bobby DeBarge, who helped end the album track, "Queen of My Heart" after El had led the song for most of its tenure. The following album, 1982's All This Love featured younger brother James and saw much success with the compositions, "I Like It" and the title track. El would remain the producer and arranger for all of the group's Motown albums.

In 1983, DeBarge released In a Special Way, which spawned the hits "Time Will Reveal" and "Love Me in a Special Way" and in 1984, the band became a sensation while touring for Luther Vandross on the singer's Busy Body tour. Though the group enjoyed much success and appeared to be a family unit, there was growing tensions between El and his brothers mainly because of Motown's push to have El become the only noted star of the group, repeating a pattern that began with Smokey Robinson and The Miracles. By the end of the tour, El DeBarge was mainly called to handle the production of DeBarge's next album, Rhythm of the Night, without much help from his siblings.

Rhythm of the Night became the group's best-selling album ever though some contended that El DeBarge was the only member present on the album with the exception of the title track, which became a top five hit in several countries including the US and UK becoming the group's and El's signature song. In 1986, El DeBarge left the group and began his solo career with the release of his self-titled debut album, which spawned the hits, "Who's Johnny" and "Love Always". Three years passed, however, until DeBarge released his second album, Gemini in 1989. The album was a failure and DeBarge's contract with Motown was terminated in 1990 and he signed with Warner Bros.. In the meantime, DeBarge was featured on the Quincy Jones single, "The Secret Garden (Sweet Seduction Suite)", alongside Al B. Sure!, James Ingram and Barry White, released in 1990.

In 1992, DeBarge released his third album, the Maurice White-produced In The Storm, which featured the Chante Moore duet, "You Know What I Like", which was Moore's first professional recording. Critics noted the album for its Marvin Gaye-styled productions, with El DeBarge later admitting that Gaye was a huge influence on his musical style. He once commented that he had initially written "All This Love" as a song he imagined Gaye doing, even imitating Gaye's ad-libs during his I Want You era near the end. That same year, he had chart success on the R&B charts with a collaboration with Fourplay on their version of Gaye's "After the Dance". DeBarge's next album, 1994's Heart, Mind and Soul, was co-produced with Babyface, yielding modest charted singles such as "Slide" and "Where is My Love" (which featured Babyface on duet vocals).

While DeBarge continued to collaborate on other artists' projects including brother Chico and rapper DJ Quik among others (the duo collaborated on Quik's hit "Hand In Hand"), he didn't release any more albums between 1994 and 2009. In 2010, he finally emerged from a sixteen-year delay with the appropriately titled Second Chance, released after a series of comeback performances and appearances including a well received performance at the 2010 BET Awards. The album yielded two singles, "Second Chance" and the Faith Evans duet "Lay With You", and later resulted in three Grammy Award nominations: Best Male R&B Vocal Performance, Best R&B Song,^[2] and Best R&B Album.^[3] He remains the only member of the DeBarges to have Grammy nominations outside of the group and in the family altogether.

Personal life[link]

El was raised in Detroit and Grand Rapids as a child. El's parents had a tumultuous marriage that involved domestic abuse and child abuse on the part of El's father Robert. El has remained mum on his relationship with his father and many other elements of his family life, later documented in books written by his mother Etterlene, sister Bunny and brother Tommy. In 1976, El DeBarge became a father to his first child, a daughter named Adris. He eventually went on to father eleven children altogether. He had a set of twins that died from Dallas, Texas. El was close to his siblings, particularly his brothers Bobby and Chico. Bobby DeBarge's death in 1995 had a profound effect on El, family members later saying he has never fully recovered from Bobby's death. Since Bobby's death, he has performed several of Bobby's songs with Switch onstage, sometimes with Chico DeBarge singing along. El and several DeBarge brothers reunited in 1998 performing several DeBarge classics. El currently lives in Los Angeles.

Legal problems and drug addiction[link]

In 2001 he was arrested for cocaine possession and was given probation. In 2006 he was arrested again for possession of a controlled substance and was once again given probation. In 2007 he was arrested in a domestic dispute and was held without bail. The charges were later dropped. Later that year he was arrested yet again and charged with cocaine possession and given probation again. However, he was once again arrested in 2008 for possession of crack and drug paraphernalia, breaking the terms of his probation. For this violation he was immediately sentenced to two years in federal prison in California.

El has had a history of drug abuse. He stated that his addiction started after he began receiving prescription medication for toothache pain after having a tooth pulled by a dentist. Up until then, El DeBarge had been seen as reliable, especially in comparison to his siblings, whose accounts of drug abuse started during the tenure of the group. By the mid-1990s, El had become addicted, and his addiction resulted in his career faltering after its peaks in the 1980s. Following a prison sentence in which he served two years, El declared himself born again and announced that he had found sobriety after an addiction that he said had lasted nearly 25 years, stating he had also acknowledged his problems with the law in the past.

However in February 2011, while promoting Second Chance, DeBarge's label announced that the singer was canceling all public dates and appearances as he went back to rehab following a relapse.^[4] DeBarge has since returned to work and made an appearance at the 54th Grammy Awards in February 2012. He had failed to appear at the previous Grammy Awards due to his drug relapse.

On March 20, 2012, El was arrested in Encino for possession and sale of narcotics.^[5] The singer, however, will not be charged because a Los Angeles district attorney found insufficient evidence.

Discography[link]

Studio albums[link]

Compilation albums[link]

Singles[link]

Featured singles[link]

See also[link]

• List of number-one dance hits (United States)
• List of artists who reached number one on the US Dance chart

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• "Heart & Soul: El DeBarge 2010 Interview". http://www.soulmusic.com/elde20in.html. 

Boris Kodjoe
Kodjoe at Showtime's 2010 Summer TCA, July 30, 2010
Born	Boris Frederic Cecil Tay-Natey Ofuatey-Kodjoe (1973-03-08) 8 March 1973 (age 39) Vienna, Austria
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1998–present
Spouse	Nicole Ari Parker (m. 2005) «start: (2005)»"Marriage: Nicole Ari Parker to Boris Kodjoe" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Boris_Kodjoe)

Boris Frederic Cecil Tay-Natey Ofuatey-Kodjoe^[1] (born 8 March 1973), better known as Boris Kodjoe, is an Austrian-born German actor and former fashion model who works primarily in the United States. He is perhaps best known for his role as courier-turned-sports agent Damon Carter on the Showtime television drama series Soul Food and for his role as David Taylor in the film The Gospel . Additionally, he starred as Steven Bloom in the cancelled 2010 NBC action/drama series Undercovers, and as Luther in the film Resident Evil: Afterlife.

Career[link]

Kodjoe attended Virginia Commonwealth University on a tennis scholarship, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in marketing in 1996.^[2] A four-year letterman on the Rams' men's tennis team, he is currently ninth in school history with 75 career singles wins. Tied for third in doubles victories with 66, he was paired with Jonas Elmblad on 37 of them, also third all-time.^[3] His brother Patrick Kodjoe played for VCU's basketball team. A back injury ended Boris' tennis aspirations, but he was quickly signed as a model and soon after entered acting.^[4]

Named one of the "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" by People magazine in 2002, Kodjoe is perhaps best known as one of the seven regular cast members from the Showtime drama Soul Food, which aired from 2000 to 2004. He appeared in the 2002 film Brown Sugar and starred in the short-lived sitcom Second Time Around with his Soul Food co-star Nicole Ari Parker, whom he eventually married. He played the role of David Taylor, the wayward son of Pastor Fred Taylor in the October 2005 film The Gospel. He performed in a play called Whatever She Wants starring Vivica A. Fox and made an appearance on the fifth season of Nip/Tuck. His most recent role was in the 2009 science fiction film Surrogates. On December 16, 2009, it was announced that Kodjoe had been cast as the male lead, Steven Bloom, in the new J. J. Abrams television series Undercovers; the show premiered in September and was subsequently cancelled in November 2010 on NBC. Also that year, he appeared as Luther in the film Resident Evil: Afterlife.

Personal life[link]

Kodjoe was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of Ursula, a German psychologist, and Eric Kodjoe, a Ghanaian physician.^[1] His namesake is Russian poet and writer Boris Pasternak.^[5] Kodjoe's matrilineal great-grandmother was Jewish and died in the Holocaust; his maternal grandmother survived the war in hiding.^[6][7] Kodjoe's parents divorced when he was six years old^[8] and he grew up in the vicinity of Freiburg im Breisgau. He is fluent in French, English, and German, and speaks some Spanish. He has a brother named Patrick and a sister named Nadja. His height is 1.93 m (6' 4").

Kodjoe married his Soul Food: The Series co-star Nicole Ari Parker on May 21, 2005 in Gundelfingen, Germany. She gave birth to their first child, a girl, Sophie Tei-Naaki Lee Kodjoe, on March 5, 2005. Sophie has spina bifida, which was diagnosed at birth.^[9] Parker gave birth to the couple's second child, a boy, Nicolas Neruda Kodjoe, on October 31, 2006. Kodjoe and his wife are members of Cascade United Methodist Church in Atlanta, Georgia.^[10] The family resides in Atlanta, after moving from Los Angeles, California.

Filmography[link]

Kodjoe in December 2010

• Chosen Ones (1999–2006)
• Love & Basketball (2000)
• Brown Sugar (2002)
• Second Time Around TV series (2004)
• Doing Hard Time (2004)
• The Gospel (2005)
• America's Next Top Model, Cycle 4 (2005)
• What Ever She Wants (2006)
• Madea's Family Reunion (2006)
• All About Us (2007)
• Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008)
• Surrogates (2009)
• Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)
• Undercovers (2010)
• The Confidant (2010)
• clones (film) (2010)
• Take The Stand (2011)
• Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)
• Nurse 3D (2012)

Guest appearances on TV shows[link]

• Nip/Tuck (2007)
• Tyler Perry's House of Payne (2009)
• Eve
• All of Us
• Half & Half
• Boston Public
• Crossing Jordan
• Lopez Tonight (2010)
• The Steve Harvey Show

Music videos[link]

In TLC's, Red Light Special Kodjoe portrays the man licking T-Boz's foot and one of the male prostitutes. He was also in Faith Evans's Never Let Go.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Boris Kodjoe

• Official website
• Official Myspace
• Boris Kodjoe at the Internet Movie Database

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (August 2008)

Lance Darnell Gross^[1] (born July 8, 1981) is a NAACP Image Award-winning American actor currently portraying Calvin Payne in the TBS sitcom Tyler Perry's House of Payne, and other Tyler Perry productions such as the Meet The Browns film. He has also been on The Bernie Mac Show as well as Eve. Lance turned down the chance to become a professional track and field athlete in order to pursue his dream of acting.^{[citation needed]} He received a Bachelor of Arts in theater from Howard University and then trained at The Ivanna Chubbuck Studio as well as the Tasha Smith Acting Studio. He has appeared in music videos for R&B stars Rihanna's "If It's Lovin' That You Want, Mariah Carey, Letoya Luckett's "Not Anymore", T.I.'s "Got Your Back", Angela Simmons, Kelis, Mary J. Blige, Tyra B., Kirk Franklin and Solange Knowles.^[2] He co-starred in 2010's Our Family Wedding alongside Forest Whitaker, Carlos Mencia, America Ferrera and Regina King.

Filmography[link]

Awards & Nominations[link]

NAACP Image Awards

• 2008: Won - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for Tyler Perry's House of Payne
• 2009: Won - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for Tyler Perry's House of Payne
• 2010: Won - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for Tyler Perry's House of Payne
• 2011: Nominated - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for Tyler Perry's House of Payne

References[link]

External links[link]

• Lance Gross at the Internet Movie Database
• Lance Gross on Myspace

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