{"id":3095,"date":"2012-06-01T09:47:47","date_gmt":"2012-06-01T13:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/?p=3095"},"modified":"2022-01-18T14:28:31","modified_gmt":"2022-01-18T22:28:31","slug":"michael-jackson-vs-prince","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/?p=3095","title":{"rendered":"Michael Jackson Vs. (?) Prince &#124; Black Music Month"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Michael_Jackson-vs-Prince.jpg\"><\/span><br \/>\nI once told the audience that, one day when things got slow, we\u2019d do a Michael Jackson vs. Prince discussion. Of course, the show ended before we could. So, to start a series here at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/\">BomaniJones.com<\/a> for Black Music Month, I\u2019ll bring the discussion here. With each entry, look at the links closely, as I\u2019ll connect many of the references to YouTube and Spotify so you can check the songs yourselves.<br \/>\nTo be clear, this won\u2019t be about who\u2019s better or anything like that. While they\u2019re bound by race and contemporaneity, getting into \u201cbetter\u201d is futile. They are, however, very different, and that lends to people having impassioned debates about whom they prefer.<br \/>\nThe question becomes why those discussions are so heated. Among black artists, this is as close to a Beatles-Stones argument as you\u2019ll get. That fits well. You had the Beatles, with their immaculate and ahead-of-its-time production, plus the ability to make gigantic pop hits without sacrificing any quality or, in many cases, edge. On the other side are the Stones and all the nasty shit they wanted to talk about. \u2018Twas sex, drugs and rock \u2018n roll for the Stones, and it was all those things in explicit terms. The Beatles <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=A7F2X3rSSCU\">danced around the topic of LSD in 1967<\/a>. The Stones, pretty clearly, <a href=\"http:\/\/open.spotify.com\/track\/2PzU4IB8Dr6mxV3lHuaG34\">talked about an ill-fated attempt to sleep with a menstruating woman the year before<\/a>. All that\u2019s to say that which band someone picks usually isn\u2019t just about what music they\u2019re into. It\u2019s about what they\u2019re into on a macro level.<br \/>\nNow tell me that doesn\u2019t fit while people discuss Michael Jackson and Prince. And it all hit me Wednesday while listening to one song.<br \/>\n***<br \/>\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/embed.spotify.com\/?uri=spotify:track:1hu2s7qkm5bo03eODpRQO3\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"300\" height=\"380\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/open.spotify.com\/track\/1hu2s7qkm5bo03eODpRQO3\">\u201cWanna Be Startin\u2019 Somethin\u2019\u201d<\/a> might be MJ\u2019s best song. If you were to ask me today, I\u2019d say it\u2019s the best song on Thriller. Further, with its place as the album\u2019s first track, it\u2019s a big reason people hold the album in such high esteem. You put it in, press play, and just that fast it\u2019s on. It\u2019s James Brown for the early \u201880s. You can hear it in the phrasing, the hook, the bridge, the groove&#8230;just everything. It\u2019s not songwriting genius or anything. It\u2019s just foot-on-the-gas energy that makes it impossible not to move something. Your head, your ass&#8230;whatever isn\u2019t tied down, \u201cWanna Be Startin\u2019 Somethin\u2019\u201d is gonna get to it.<br \/>\nThat\u2019s a song Prince just can\u2019t do. He certainly can do James Brown. <a href=\"http:\/\/open.spotify.com\/track\/4Syn1a4Irz0UbbR44s7CqB\">\u201cSexy M.F.\u201d<\/a> may as well be a James Brown song. You can hear those guitar licks all the way through his catalog. But when it came to doing perfect, tight pop\/soul songs, the only person in the same league as J.B. was Michael.<br \/>\nThe operative word there is \u201cperfect,\u201d for it\u2019s both a blessing and a curse. Of course, perfection is everyone\u2019s goal, but perfection requires so much practice and planning. Every single detail has to be on time. Every word, grunt and run has to be on point. Basically, making a perfect song is capturing a moment that, as a listener, you know damn well only happened once. In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt1465515\/\">that MJ documentary I appeared in<\/a>, keyboardist Michael Boddicker talked about how Michael would, in his soft voice, tell the band that he needed \u201c10 more takes.\u201d Dammit, they were going to get it right before they left. Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones didn\u2019t make imperfect records. They made highly produced, shiny hits. They could be emotionally resonant and\/or sexy, and even somewhat sexual, but they\u2019d be perfect, and they\u2019d sound like everyone involved knew they were perfect.<br \/>\nBut is anything perfect about real life?<br \/>\n***<br \/>\n<strong>::Receive Bomani&#8217;s Blog, Videos, and Podcast.\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/j.mp\/emailjonesblog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;\">Subscribe to The Email Jones<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span>.<\/strong><br \/>\nThe last sentence was the part that hit me, what made me really think about what I think is the biggest difference between MJ and Prince, what makes me so much more of a Prince fan than I am of MJ. And it\u2019s that perfection.<br \/>\nOr, more accurately, Prince\u2019s lack thereof.<br \/>\nNo, I\u2019m not saying that Prince never did anything flawless or as high-quality as <a href=\"http:\/\/open.spotify.com\/album\/2ANVost0y2y52ema1E9xAZ\">Thriller<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/open.spotify.com\/album\/4c4zsGZwtoTXOPGlDXTmw8\">Off The Wall<\/a>. But with all that perfection, often MJ deviated from anything I could consider to be real. When you listen to Thriller, you can easily get lost in the song. But when the song is over, welcome back to the regular world. In fact, not even welcome back. The truth is that you never left.<br \/>\nSo, when I was driving and \u201cWanna Be Startin\u2019 Somethin\u2019\u201d came on, I was all about it. I was screaming at the top of my lungs and moving in a way I probably wouldn\u2019t if someone could see me in my non-dancing glory. I was in love with the guitar on the bridge, the drum and bass programming, MJ\u2019s voice&#8230;all of it.<br \/>\nBut there was never a moment where I wasn\u2019t perfectly aware that I was in a car, on my way to work. I didn\u2019t go anywhere. I just had a helluva soundtrack for the ride.<br \/>\nGo farther into Thriller, and it\u2019s still the same for me. It\u2019s hard to separate the B-side of the album &#8212; \u201cBillie Jean,\u201d \u201cBeat It,\u201d \u201cHuman Nature,\u201d \u201cP.Y.T.\u201d and \u201cThe Lady In My Life\u201d &#8212; from everything surrounding the Thriller phenomenon, but at every step, we\u2019ve got a bunch of amazing songs packaged to make an amazing record. And that record might sound better than any I\u2019ve ever heard. Besides the boring-as-all-get-out \u201cThe Girl Is Mine,\u201d the good-but-not-great \u201cBaby Be Mine,\u201d and \u201cThriller,\u201d you\u2019ve got overwhelming heat on every other song.<br \/>\nYou can say the same about lots of <a href=\"http:\/\/open.spotify.com\/album\/4GE64Gcm59UQC6mtgjn4IK\">Bad<\/a>. \u201cThe Way You Make Me Feel\u201d is irresistible. \u201cMan in the Mirror\u201d does every single thing one could in a studio to make you feel, and it makes the hair stand up on my neck every time I hear it. When he\u2019s on, nobody\u2019s ever been that good. And while it gets slept on &#8212; largely because Teddy Riley just wasn\u2019t as pop-centric as Q &#8212; Dangerous has moments that do the same.<br \/>\nAnd as soon as I turn all those songs off, it\u2019s over. They were what they were always intended to be &#8212; top-notch pop music. There were records to be broken, videos to be shot&#8230;and you can hear it all in the mix. The strides toward grandeur are a part of the sound.<br \/>\nBut, while MJ might be more a more talented performer than anyone who ever lived, but the music rarely felt organic after Off The Wall. I\u2019m not so into music for inorganic stuff. I\u2019d also be willing to guess that\u2019s the same for other folks who love Prince as much as I do.<br \/>\nSo what are we into it for? To get into it.<br \/>\n***<\/p>\n<p>As you may have noticed, Prince is weird. Not like MJ\u2019s weird, which has left us spending decades trying to figure out how the upbringing of a child star created the weirdo we saw over the last 15 or so years of his life.<br \/>\nNo, Prince\u2019s weird is the sort that no stories about his parents, good or bad, could explain it. He\u2019s a 5-2 dude wearing high heels and blouses who makes women melt with sheer audacity. I don\u2019t know where the hell they make those. I mean, we can find lots of stories about people who turned out unconventionally because of growing up under the microscope with pushy parents. But the only person I can think of being halfway similar to Prince is Jimmy Goldstein, and I barely know anything about Jimmy Goldstein other than that he wears funny clothes and hangs out with amazingly beautiful women.<br \/>\nAnd to this day, after all these years of listening to his music, that weird is so fascinating. Not just because Prince is strange, but because he gives the impression that he lives in a world where the stuff he does is perfectly acceptable.<br \/>\nWhere on Earth is that? I guess Minneapolis, but I know a few people from Minneapolis. They ain\u2019t like that.<br \/>\n<strong>::Subscribe to the <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/bandjyoutube\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bomani &#038; Jones<\/a> YouTube Channel.<\/strong><br \/>\nMaybe it\u2019s not an actual place. Perhaps it\u2019s simply a state of mind, an indifference to public opinion that moves Prince to behave like he\u2019s on a planet with a population of 1. But wherever that place is, I swear I go to it every time I listen to him. And when I\u2019m there, I wonder why we can\u2019t be there all the time.<br \/>\nWhere is this world where anyone can do how they please, so long as it\u2019s not hurting everyone else? Where <a href=\"http:\/\/open.spotify.com\/track\/0khi86hc79RfsRC0rrkkA2\">they masturbate in hotel lobbies and stop to carry on conversations with perfect strangers<\/a>? Where <a href=\"http:\/\/open.spotify.com\/track\/13UqaNF8STsJSGKxd12rmy\">waitresses take baths with heartbroken customers<\/a>, even if their pants are still on?<br \/>\nThe list goes on and on. The Prince catalog is full of these vignettes that, together, are a recreation of an alternate universe. Strangers meet, cut straight to the case, and get to what they want. It might be unapologetically loving as easily as it could be purely physical, superficial or substantially provocative. You wanted to dance? Well, all she wants is a boyfriend. That\u2019s where she wants to go, so no need to waste time on the floor. You\u2019re better built for one helluva night. And we know all this because everyone says so. That\u2019s an audacious place.<br \/>\nAnd nothing in this world, to me, is more sexy or exciting than audacity, and excitement is what draws me to music. Not that audacity makes Prince sexy to me, or that the audacity even has to be sexual. It just all sounds so exciting, and what better could you call a song than exciting? Think about this part of <a href=\"http:\/\/open.spotify.com\/album\/3Cijd5OjHeWBm97DsPHpgs\">\u201cDo It All Night.\u201d<\/a><br \/>\nSomeone over there<br \/>\nsays he wants to get to know you, and<br \/>\nI don\u2019t care, cuz I really wanna hold you<br \/>\nand, I\u2019m so scared<br \/>\ncuz he might do something to you that you like<br \/>\nThink that\u2019s not audacious? And it\u2019s all a rush of colliding thoughts, somehow singly focused on her while perfectly aware of the world around him. How can someone so outlandish spell out simple, normal human insecurity so clearly and fearlessly? The same guy who, on the same album, <a href=\"http:\/\/open.spotify.com\/track\/4ylO0IAVZviyGLRsFgj6Nb\">gets a woman to give him head on her wedding day<\/a>. That\u2019s who.<br \/>\nWhere can we all go to be that guy, <a href=\"http:\/\/open.spotify.com\/track\/0OfWbtiZ3fHd64VmpCSj7g\">totally divorced from our hangups<\/a>? You have sex, express your love and pray to God all for the same reason &#8212; because you fucking feel like it. It\u2019s comfortable excitement, and in your life, that sentence may be the first time you\u2019ve ever seen those two words side-by-side.<br \/>\nIn Prince\u2019s world, <a href=\"http:\/\/open.spotify.com\/track\/31ink8UgWSYUXz0hPasoif\">you can smack her on the ass and tell her, word for word, that you want to fuck the taste out of her mouth<\/a>. And, apparently, the only reason that would be problematic would be if you didn\u2019t mean it.<br \/>\nSometimes, you wanna fuck the taste out of her mouth. You wanna tell her that from the beginning. That\u2019s what she wants you to do. All you have to do is say it.<br \/>\nSo few of us ever do. In our worlds, that just isn\u2019t permissible. But man, how great would it be if it was?<br \/>\nThat\u2019s where I go when I listen to Prince. That\u2019s certainly a place I\u2019d love to live.<br \/>\nAnd that place, for better or worse, isn\u2019t perfect.<br \/>\n***<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why, to me, comparing these two becomes apples and oranges. Mike and Prince are doing two totally different things. MJ was going to make the biggest, best albums ever made. Prince made music, and he made it constantly. Prince\u2019s four best albums were released between 1980 and 1987. In that same time period, MJ release two albums in total.<br \/>\nThe basis of MJ\u2019s music was his talent and the production. The basis of Prince was his own unique ethos and creativity afforded by trying to spell it out. The lil\u2019 fella may have never done anything as good as Thriller. But in the end, would anyone really want that?<br \/>\nPrince indulged his own genius album after album. MJ served the market, and he didn\u2019t think his own greatness was enough to do that (unlike Prince, who almost felt like we were wrong for not buying into his awkward forays into rap).<br \/>\nThat\u2019s why I can throw Thriller on at any barbecue and be sure it\u2019ll get the party cracking. It\u2019s also why I can talk about Prince albums for hours with strangers and get different spins from each person in the conversation. I still talk to people about what they think \u201cThieves In The Temple\u201d is about. I can go on for hours discussing the juxtaposition of sexual and messianic tones &#8212; all over a once-in-a-lifetime combination of hard rock, pop, soul and gospel &#8212; on <a href=\"http:\/\/open.spotify.com\/album\/7nXJ5k4XgRj5OLg9m8V3zc\">Purple Rain<\/a>.<br \/>\nAnd I\u2019m almost positive much of that stuff came together by happenstance. I\u2019m not foolish enough to think it was all orchestrated as such. Some was, certainly. But this was just him. This was his world. This was how he saw it. The sound was how he chose to share it. And it was just so damn much to take in that, almost 30 years later, we\u2019re still figuring a lot of it out.<br \/>\nIt would be impossible to do that with such an eye toward perfection. The rough edges would be lost, when the edges are what make it all so incredible. That, in stark contrast to Michael Jackson, is Prince\u2019s perfection.<br \/>\n***<br \/>\nI\u2019m a good dude that\u2019s into that nasty shit, and I can never get enough of a world where that\u2019s the norm. All depends on what you\u2019re into. It\u2019s about what they made and how they relate to your sensibilities.<br \/>\nTo me? Perfection can be pretty boring. Prince\u2019s world is anything but. And that\u2019s why I continue to get lost in it, even if it never makes my neck jerk like \u201cWanna Be Startin\u2019 Somethin\u2019.\u201d<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/on.fb.me\/bomanijones\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I once told the audience that, one day when things got slow, we\u2019d do a Michael Jackson vs. Prince discussion. Of course, the show ended before we could. So, to start a series here at BomaniJones.com for Black Music&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4,23],"tags":[96],"class_list":["post-3095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-the-music-jones","tag-boblogs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3095\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}