*Thinking of Michael Jackson, the words “mean” or “vindictive” don’t immediately come to mind.
But that may change after reading L.A. Reid’s new memoir “Sing to Me.”
According to the New York Post, Reid opened up in the book about the King of Pop having a somewhat of a mean streak toward one of the few artists to hold a candle to him as well as his brother Jermaine.
It was in the ‘90’s that Reid recalled flying to Jackson’s Neverland Ranch after receiving a call from the singer asking if he and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds were would come by and discuss working with him. At the time, the production duo was co-producing an album for Jermaine.
Nevertheless, Reid and Edmonds ended up at Neverland and spent a good bit of time talking music with Jackson. While the meeting itself was a worthwhile memory, Reid shared that he and Babyface got to see a side of Jackson few knew about when he gleefully showed them footage from a James Brown concert that captured Jackson and his main rival, Prince, being called up to the stage as guests. Although Jackson rose to the occasion with his appearance, Prince wasn’t as fortunate.
“Prince [couldn’t] make his guitar work, frantically stripping off his shirt and trying tricks with the microphone stand and making all these poses. After Michael’s dazzling star turn, Prince fell as flat as he could, and Michael enjoyed laughing at the video,” Reid recalled.
“After that, he put on a scene from Prince’s movie ‘Under The Cherry Moon,’ the artsy black-and-white bomb he made after ‘Purple Rain,’ and he laughed some more at Prince.”
From there, Reid, Babyface and Jackson hammered out their plans while eating lunch together as they decided to work together for three weeks on music.
All was well until Jermaine got wind of the meeting, became livid and wanted off his recording home at the time.
“Did he sign a contract?” Jackson asked after hearing about Jermaine’s reaction. Upon hearing confirmation from Reid that Jermaine did sign a contract, Jackson said, “Then he’ll have to live with it because those are the rules.”
“That Michael Jackson was one shrewd man,” Reid writes in “Sing to Me.” “He was not wrong, but you didn’t expect that from Peter Pan. You expect a little compassion or something. No. Cold as ice.”
Spilling more tea on Jackson and Jermaine, Reid went on to detail how Jermaine approached him one day with a particular song in mind.
“I want to make a song about my brother. I want to talk about how he’s treated me through the years, like how every time I find producers like you guys, he takes my producers,” Reid said as he recalled what Jermaine told him. He doesn’t care about his family or anybody but himself.”
That song Jermaine wanted to create was “Word to the Badd,” a track that eventually got national exposure on the radio before an upset Michael Jackson called Reid and Babyface to tell them to take the tune off the air.
Despite Jackson brothers meeting at their mother’s house to address the situation, Jermaine stood by “Word to the Badd” and insisted that the song would remain on the air while Michael put another call in Reid, insisting that the track be taken off the air.
As for what happened, Reid stated that two days later, “The record disappeared off the air, as if it had never been there in the first place. I don’t know what Michael did. I don’t know if Michael did anything, but it went away in a flash.”
So what say you? How do you feel about Reid’s memory of Jackson’s mean and vindictive side? Does it make you think any differently about the music icon or is your opinion unchanged?
Weigh in below:
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