My Own Prison

My Own Prison is the debut studio album by American post-grunge band Creed, released on August 26, 1997. It has been certified six times platinum and is one of the top 200 selling albums of all time in the United States. The person kneeling on the album's cover is Justin Brown, a friend of the band. The picture was taken by guitarist Mark Tremonti's brother, Daniel, for a photography class. It has spent over 150 weeks on the catalog albums chart and over 110 weeks on the Billboard 200. The album received generally positive reviews from critics.

Background

For the band's debut release manager Jeff Hanson matched them up with John Kurzweg, a producer friend who, with his unobtrusive production style and talents as a song writer and multi-instrumentalist, he felt was a great fit. Together the album was recorded for $6,000, which was funded by Hanson. My Own Prison was released independently in 1997 on their own Blue Collar Records. The album was distributed to Florida radio stations, and their enthusiasm for the record helped it sell 6,000 copies in the first two months in Florida alone.

My Own

My Own is a scripted series aired on MTV. The show features a person who pretends to be obsessed with a celebrity, and a group of six contestants resembling that celebrity who compete to win a date with the obsessed person. The contestant who is believed to most closely match the celebrity wins after several rounds of competition, including a live singing performance.

The Show

The show starts with the introduction of the person who is seeking his/her singer. Then, two friends of him/her introduce themselves and tell somethings about the participant and afterwards they head to the "My Own" studio, where they meet the six challengers. Most times punch lines are said, causing laughing in the "audience". Then the trivia round starts. In this round the contestants have to answer trivia questions about the singer, followed by a mini singing and dancing round. Based on not only the results of this round but also on looks and (apparent) personality, the "chooser" chooses four contestants to pass to the next round. In the second round, the contestants show their houses and talk a bit about their hobbies and tastes, finishing every "dialog" with "that's why you should pick me as your own..." or "now that you've seen what I can do, pick me as your own...". In this part of the round the chooser and friends often laugh. Then, his/her friends take the four contestants to a competition that involves something that has to with the star in cause. Afterwards the chooser eliminates one contestant and the three that are left are going to fare against each other in a singing performance to determine the winner. The contestants are dressed like the video clip that the star appears in, they have singing and dancing training. It is a fact that each contestant has its weak and strong points. With advisory of their friends the chooser picks his/her contestant. The show has since been cancelled.

And I

"And I" is a song written by American R&B singer Ciara, and produced by Adonis Shropshire for Ciara's first album, Goodies (2004). It was released as the album's fourth and final single on August 30, 2005 (see 2005 in music) in North America.

The song was originally the third choice for the fourth single. Ciara has mentioned in an interview that "Thug Style", "Hotline" or "Pick up the Phone" would be the fourth single, but when Ciara suggested "And I" to executives at her previous record label LaFace, they were unhappy because they wanted "Next to You" to be the fourth single.

Chart performance

At the time of the U.S. release of "And I", Ciara's collaboration with Bow Wow, "Like You", and her collaboration with Missy Elliott, "Lose Control", were at the height of their popularity. "And I" peaked at 96 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and 27 on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart, which were poor positions compared to those attained by the first three singles from the album Goodies. It was not released outside North America because of this, and it is Ciara's least successful single.

Prison

A prison,correctional facility, penitentiary, gaol (Ireland, UK, Australia), or jail is a facility in which inmates are forcibly confined and denied a variety of freedoms under the authority of the state as a form of punishment. The most common use of prisons is within a criminal justice system. People charged with crimes may be imprisoned until they are brought to trial; those pleading or being found guilty of crimes at trial may be sentenced to a specified period of imprisonment. Besides their use for punishing civil crimes, authoritarian regimes also frequently use prisons and jails as tools of political repression to punish what are deemed political crimes, often without trial or other legal due process; this use is illegal under most forms of international law governing fair administration of justice. In times of war, prisoners of war or detainees may be detained in military prisons or prisoner of war camps, and large groups of civilians might be imprisoned in internment camps.

Creed

A creed (also confession, symbol, or statement of faith) is a statement of the shared beliefs of a religious community in the form of a fixed formula summarizing core tenets.

One of the most widely used creeds in Christianity is the Nicene Creed, first formulated in AD 325 at the First Council of Nicaea. It was based on Christian understanding of the Canonical Gospels, the letters of the New Testament and to a lesser extent the Old Testament. Affirmation of this creed, which describes the Trinity, is generally taken as a fundamental test of orthodoxy for most Christian denominations. The Apostles' Creed is also broadly accepted. Some Christian denominations and other groups have rejected the authority of those creeds.

Muslims declare the shahada, or testimony: "I bear witness that there is no god but (the One) God (Allah), and I bear witness that Muhammad is God's messenger."

Whether Judaism is creedal has been a point of some controversy. Although some say Judaism is noncreedal in nature, others say it recognizes a single creed, the Shema Yisrael, which begins: "Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one."