>dogg, mike's biggest album is full or corny ass shit that
>hasn't stood the test of time, sonically. no one wants to have
>honest critiques of mike's shit. it's full of corny synths
>that quincey pulled from prince in the first fuckin place and
>used them to create a sonic palate of corny ass disney music
>that became MICHAEL JACKSON SOUND post-off the wall. thriller
>and bad are silly ass cartoons. if music had nutritional
>value, them shits were TWINKIES, my nigga. that's why niggas
>focus on mike's VISUALS...he fuckin danced and niggas love
>that magic and they associate that shit to the music, which is
>ultimately an AFTERTHOUGHT. it kills me that no one be telling
>the truth about mike's legacy. like i'm supposed to say he was
>a musician and songwriter because he'd make the beat with his
>voice and a producer and REAL musicians would flesh that shit
>out into a FINAL PRODUCT!?!?!? FUCK NO i ain't giving credit
>for that. that's ridiculous.


Thriller is an album from 1982...

...that sounds like an album from 1982.

It's the pop sound of the LA studios scene, circa that era, with more R&B. The peak of the corniness on that album (IMO) was the title track. And that's really because of the lyrics and the theme around them (the Vincent Price shit). If the song was "Starlight" as it was originally written

1) that song would be NOT memorable and the inarguable "dud"
2) the album might have been called something else. "Beat It" or some shit.

I don't even think of the synthesizer parts when I think of Thriller. They are not the forefront. The only song that really goes hard on the drum machine was "Wanna Be Starting Something". It's a very organic, conventional instrument using ass, contemporary album for the most part. Mike wasn't trying to be "edgy" here. He was speaking to his pop roots harder than ever.

With Thriller, I think of that one-time in history that a Black artist could go MOR and not sound like some shit, because there was more "R&B" in the sound (even the white artists who crossed over from the other side followed suit in this regard).


However, one could make the "synth" argument for 1999, more than they could Thriller. I wouldn't agree with them, because I think what Prince was doing with synths on that album (and the satellite albums from The Time and Vanity 6) is genius (esp. the Time's album). He actually was a paradigm shift. "Nah, fuck this live band shit, I got one in my show, but on my record? Linn and Oberheim, Bruh". That's the "new wave" in Prince. But really, the only people who really notice the genius of what Prince was doing from an engineering perspective are those who you find on gearslutz.com or here in the Lesson (for example).

Further more, the "Disney" argument applies more to Bad (ESP. if you include the visuals of some of those videos). Time has made me a little kinder to that period of Mike's career, but I really wish he could do-over his life (and some of his music) from the Pepsi fire forward. Mike has some classic pop records and singles on that record, but the album cuts.... rrrgh, man. I feel like he was resting on his laurels a lil. Or rather, his idea of transcending wasn't the kind that I was particularly into. But I was a kid then, and even then I knew that I preferred "Thriller" Mike a lot more than that period. It was a sign of the times.

Where I give Prince props is that he at least tried to be interesting in a way that other artists weren't in that time. Parade, SOTT, even Lovesexy (the Black Album if it were released when it was supposed to be, moreso).

Then Prince started acknowledging the outside world ("Mistake #1" - Megatron), occasionally going into his "zone" to drop a bonafide hit or at least a good album track. but for all his '80s grandeur, Prince kept fuckin' around doing shit he shouldn't have been doing (musically). Just like Michael. 1984 might have been Prince's Pepsi Fire. That much stardom... he might have Cuban B'd it for a few years, but when he stopped being the critical darling, he kept reaching trying to be a "star". fuckin' around with cut-rate rappers. getting away from the world HE created. looking a damn fool. this was BEFORE Larry came into the picture. of course, afterward, we see what happened.