DC ExtraTime: An AYTO Girl Makes "Love Not War" with Jason Derulo

BY DC CUEVA                        

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB/TK

As the calendar turned to the month of December over a week ago, it marked not only the start of the run-up to tonight's premiere of The Challenge: Double Agents, but also the start of a depressing time for those who have Netflix. This is the last month that the platform's most streamed show, The Office, will be available for those to binge, as the show's distributor NBC Universal will bring the series to its fledging rival Peacock come January 1st, joining fellow Must See TV hit Friends in leaving the biggest player in the world of streaming video on demand for an in-house startup in the streaming wars.

But on the upside of things, December also saw the start of something magical for those who follow MTV Reality in the first of several shows from the channel's vast library being made available to Netflix. Unlike its rivals in the field (including where Friends went with HBO Max), the vision ViacomCBS has when it comes to making its shows available on streaming is that it doesn't make it exclusive to its own platform -- in this case, it's CBS All Access (soon Paramount+). Case in point: reboots of Singled Out and Punk'd were available on the now-shuttered Quibi service, and Facebook Watch was the home to the most recent season of The Real World in Atlanta.

In this case, two seasons each of The Challenge, Survivor and Teen Mom are being made available on Netflix, while Catfish and Jersey Shore are available on Hulu. And on December 1st as that time of year known as cuffing season began, it also got to welcome the first two seasons of MTV's Are You The One? to its lineup much to the delight of those who have followed the entire series from day 1 - which includes this blogger. By week's end, the show vaulted to the top 10 of Netflix's most-viewed TV shows list, and that has given reason for some of the show's alumni to do something that they didn't get to do when it aired back in 2014: do live sessions on Instagram with fellow castmates just like those from later seasons have been able to do to spill the tea... we'll share you some of those flashbacks from those as we get deeper into this winter.

But this has also brought to light the many accomplishments the many AYTO alumni have achieved since they were on the show, including the handful of those who've made their way to The Challenge including Amber M. of Season 8, Devin & Nelson of the legendary Season 3 cast, and part of the next generation of female challengers Tori and Kam who are among the group of Double Agents. There are so many other things that has happened to their fellow alumni since they left that last matchup, but this time we'd rather save the time and space for that... which leads us to the latest instance of AYTO making a mark on the mainstream.

After the enormous success that was Season 1, the Season 2 cast had a huge task to follow in their footsteps. The house occupancy was increased by one more single - the 11th girl - to create a double match for one of the two perfect matches and creating a situation that, if the one match got to the truth booth and became a match to him before she did, the other would be shut out of both love and money. As it turned out, that 11th girl - Christina LeBlanc - would get to the end of the season, and for the sake of those about to watch it we'll let you check out the finale if you haven't seen it yet to see who it is.

   As for another one of the singles who made it to Puerto Rico, Tyler Abron has quietly gone on to bigger things while her fellow series alumni has gone onto Challenges, other TV shows and many music video cameos, among others. When we met her back then, MTV's bio on the native Bostonian wrote: "It's thought that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, but Tyler would rather use dynamite. She has no qualms about sharing any thought that crosses her mind—and no ability to sugarcoat it. Although honesty is a desirable trait, her style is not for the weak minded. Tyler is searching for someone who isn’t afraid to dish it back and give her a reason to think before she speaks."

   Tyler is now both a model and influencer who now has a 500k-strong Instagram following without making a return MTV engagement... but last year on here, we featured her joining two other MTV Reality love alumni - AYTO Season 5 queen Alicia Wright and Ex On The Beach 2's Janelle Shanks of Bad Girls Club fame - as they were the bachelorettes in a YouTube Dating Game with three comedians and host Ronnie Banks. And last month, she followed in the footsteps of an in-demand star on the rise in the music video world, AYTO6's Nurys Mateo, and made a cameo for one of pop's biggest stars.

Instagram @TheeDavidD

We've just celebrated the 11th anniversary of two powerhouse MTV series that debuted within a week of each other in December 2009: Jersey Shore and the Teen Mom franchise. It was also during that month that Jason Derulo dropped his breakthrough single, "In My Head" after being a producer and songwriter for Lil Wayne, Puff Daddy and Birdman, and having an early single success with "Whatcha Say" earlier that year. When he dropped his self-titled debut studio album a few months later, Jason was on his way to a decade of success with numerous chart-topping singles, albums, and a collaboration this year with BTS that also went top of the charts. And who can forget the infamous moment of him falling down a flight of stairs in front of the paparazzi at New York's Met Gala?

   Following that partnership with the world's biggest boy band that's resulted in "Savage Love" being streamed over a billion times, on the big pre-Thanksgiving New Music Friday last month Jason released his newest track "Love Not War (The Tampa Beat)." A reworking of a song by new producer NUKA, "4 Brylean (WayzRmx2018)," it brought together TikTok's biggest draw (40 million followers) with the 19-year-old from New Caledonia, a French territory in the Pacific Ocean, that has seen over 200 billion impressions on the global level, and thanks to its tropical beat it has the makings of giving Derulo another monster hit.

   A video that dropped the week before the start of a most unusual holiday season saw Billie Eilish have an entire mall to herself in her newest single "Therefore I Am" as retailers grapple with having a much more limited capacity inside their stores than usual during the year's busiest shopping season, all as the global pandemic has seen things spiraling out of control once again. With that in mind, Jason decided to bring his talents to the local shopping mall for the music video of "Love Not War," and Tyler got the play the female lead in the clip which has garnered over 7 million views on YouTube since its premiere on November 24, the week of Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

Tyler wrote in the behind the scenes Instagram pictures below, "I'm very particular about the videos I take part in and I loved this one because not only was the vibe just great, but I got to be in my acting bag and just have fun with it! 💯❣️🎥 this was the war scene 😤😭."

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A post shared by TYLER 🦋 ABRON (@tylerabron)

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Her starring in "Love Not War" with Jason is not the only collaboration Tyler's had in the past half-year: this summer, she joined the one who took Ryan Devlin's AYTO hosting gig, 106 & Park alum Terrence J., in Lake Tahoe to shot parts in an upcoming 2021 Netflix film with Mr. TIP himself: T.I.. Don't Fear is a horror film along the lines of Habitual with fellow New Englander C.T., only this one is set in a forest and sees Tip, Tyler and Terrence's characters grapple with, what else?, the COVID pandemic.

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