We knew her back then. Eight years ago, when the world’s best gymnast was still an Olympic hopeful, OZY profiled Simone Biles. At her house. Since then, she has won seven Olympic medals (four gold), a combined total of 32 Olympic and World Championship medals, tying her for the first of all time. Back in 2014 we got a glimpse of how Biles was coping with her newfound fame.

When OZY met with herculean Yankees superstar Aaron Judge back in spring training of 2017, the 6-foot-7 280-pound rookie had yet to earn a starting spot in right field. But, his outrageous batting-practice feats of strength convinced us that he was baseball’s next Rising Star. Judge finished that season by being unanimously selected as the American League Rookie of the Year, finishing second for the AL Most Valuable Player Award. Now the three-time All Star has more than 158 career home runs and counting.

The former track star turned pro flag football and rugby player had made a name for herself by leaving her defenders standing in cement, going viral with lightning moves, chiseled abs and a dose of social media savvy. It led to her signing with the Los Angeles Flames for the first multimillion dollar contract in women’s football history. Now she’s the face of the Women’s Football League Association.

When we caught up with Jayson Tatum in 2017, the 6-foot-8 forward was a Gatorade National Boys Basketball Player of the Year, a two-time gold medal winner with USA Basketball, and a star freshman at Duke University. Since then, Tatum became the first Boston Celtics rookie to post a double-double in his debut since Larry Bird in 1979, and eventually an NBA All-Star and superstar in the making.

Misty Copeland made headlines in 2015 as the first African-American woman to be named principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre. But in 2014 we first told OZY readers about Copeland’s inspiring story: raised the fourth of six children of a single mother, she was living in a motel room with her family when she stumbled upon a ballet class at the Boys and Girls Club at age 13. It did not take long for her teacher to spot her potential. 

For Justin Simien, the creator of Dear White People who considers being Black and queer his superpower, the unexpected has come to be expected. The world is now eagerly awaiting his entrance into the Star Wars canon: Simien is developing a show around the classic character Lando Calrissian for Disney+.

Pruitt was a college sophomore when he sat down at his computer to compose his first article for a 3-year-old website called Wikipedia. It was an act that would launch him on a journey to become by far the most prolific English language Wikipedian with now more than 4.4 million edits to his name and having recently been named by Time magazine as One of the Most Influential People on the Internet.

We caught up to a young South African comedian named Trevor Noah in 2015 before The Daily Show hired him to replace Jon Stewart. When Noah took the reins of that show, critics wondered whether he could live up to the reputation of his scathing satirist predecessor. Several years later, the question facing the comedian is much bigger: not whether he can survive in America, but whether his brand can conquer the world.

While Dua Lipa was in primary school in London, her music teacher told her she couldn’t join the school choir because, well, she couldn’t sing. Lipa was heartbroken, but years later, after relocating with her family to Kosovo, she arrived at a conclusion: Screw that. And since we caught up with the then 20-year-old singer in 2016, she has rocketed up the charts, earning a Grammy Award in 2019 for Best New Artist, and six Grammy nominations for her second album.

She is a rapper with a conscience, and she’s not going away. Noname’s biggest moment of 2020 was probably her public feud with rapper J. Cole, which she owned with a stunningly powerful 70-second diss track, “Song 33.” But far more than a diss track, it showed her depth as an advocate for causes like defund the police.  Noname (born Fatima Warner) will be a force to be reckoned with in the new year in music, activism and literature.