Speaker 1: To day's topic reflections on Michael Jackson. There's still a
Speaker 1: lot of talk about Michael Jackson, and I'm not here
Speaker 1: to gossip. I take what I hear with a grain
Speaker 1: of salt, but I do pay attention. Recently, I came
Speaker 1: across a video of Michael on stage with Jay Z
Speaker 1: and others. I'm not sure what the full story was.
Speaker 1: All I saw was him greeting the fans, but he
Speaker 1: didn't seem very happy as he walked away. Maybe he
Speaker 1: was just exhausted. This was at the Summer Jam in
Speaker 1: two thousand one, and I'm only just now seeing it.
Speaker 1: A lot was happening in my own life back then.
Speaker 1: Watching the video, it struck me, and it was strange
Speaker 1: to me that Michael was on stage with rappers. Michael
Speaker 1: wasn't someone who easily mingled with just anyone, and even
Speaker 1: famous people felt lucky if he acknowledged them. There are
Speaker 1: rumors that he even distanced himself from his own family.
Speaker 1: So when I hear various things about him, I can't
Speaker 1: say how many of them are true. I can't claim
Speaker 1: to know everything he was dealing with. What might appear
Speaker 1: one way could very well be something else. There must
Speaker 1: have been a lot going on in Michael's life for
Speaker 1: him to be on stage with jay Z. It also
Speaker 1: surprised me to see him beatboxing while watching an interview
Speaker 1: with Oprah. Rap music had become really popular, and I
Speaker 1: guess he felt he had to adapt to the changing
Speaker 1: music scene. But seeing Michael Jackson with rappers and doing
Speaker 1: beatbox wasn't the Michael I was used to knowing In
Speaker 1: the beginning, I wasn't sure if Michael Jackson really liked
Speaker 1: rap music. Back in the eighties, during the making of
Speaker 1: his album Bad, there were rumors about him and Quincy Jones.
Speaker 1: I heard that Michael once said rap is dead when
Speaker 1: Quincy suggested working with the group run DMC for that album.
Speaker 1: This disagreement was one of the reasons they parted way
Speaker 1: after the album Bad. Michael wanted more control over his
Speaker 1: music and felt that Quincy didn't understand the newer trends
Speaker 1: like hip hop. I was also surprised that Quincy wanted
Speaker 1: to work with rap music, but then I learned he
Speaker 1: actually understood street life and Quincy Jones made a rap
Speaker 1: record back in nineteen eighty nine with his Grammy winning
Speaker 1: album Back on the Block. Sometimes what we read or
Speaker 1: watch on TV doesn't show the whole picture. We often
Speaker 1: only hear part of the story, and what we know
Speaker 1: may not even be close to everything that's really going on.
Speaker 1: I'm Gail Nobles. Thank you for listening to and All
Speaker 1: Time MJ podcast, where MJ stands for Michael Jackson.