Ya fly as hell, swagger right, brown skin poppin’, ya know just how to talk to me, know just how I like it.
Ya turnin me on, ya turnin’ me on…
Almost a year ago, I wrote about Keri Hilson being the next R&B “it” girl and since the release of her debut album In A Perfect World… she has become exactly that.
I’ll try not to gush, because on some levels I like her despite myself. A beautiful voice, catchy song-writing, dance music, legs for days…The girl is hot hot hot and I might actually go purchase the album.
In the meantime, I’ll just play “Turning Me On” until I can’t stand it anymore.
It wasn’t grief like that for a personal friend, but rather the sense that this person had contributed so much to the soundtrack of my life. He was a cultural icon the world over and had spent his entire life creating and sharing beautiful music with a message of love.
What I love is that in his death, no one chose to focus on the controversies surrounding Michael Jackson’s later years. There was an outpouring of love, which is exactly what he had given the world for so long.
One person asked if MJ would go to heaven or hell and wondered whether or not he had made peace with his demons. I believe MJ’s demons hunted him until the day he died and that his hell was here on earth. Pop critic Robert Hilburn wrote a beautiful piece on MJ’s wounded heart, from which he never recovered. If he only knew how much we really loved him…
Dennis Romero of DanceBlogga noted that Michael Jackson’s Thriller was the best selling studio album of all time and has told me time and time again, that Off the Wall was his favorite Michael Jackson album. How funny that “Off the Wall” should be the song stuck in my head from the moment I heard of MJ’s passing.
MJ was a major influence on music and culture. So many in my generation grew up listening to his music. Hell, every R&B boy from Usher to Chris Brown to Ne-yo and Akon, has gotten their moves from Michael Jackson.
The afterlife only matters to the living. Untimely or not, June 25, 2009 will be remembered as the day Michael Jackson died. And all I can say is that life ain’t so bad at all, when you live it off the wall.
