Busby's Favorite Michael Jackson albums: From Least to Favorite

Time flies doesn't it? It's been 3 years since the death of the King of Pop, and it is STILL surreal to realize that he is really gone.  However, even in death MJ's legacy still lives on and it is stronger then ever.  So right now I'm going to rank my favorite Michael Jackson albums from my least to greatest.  The only albums I'm ranking are the albums that EVERYBODY knows.  I'm not going to rank his posthumous one, that one is just filled with controversial.  Now y'all can agree or disagree but in the end, this is MY blog, so this is MY opinion.  So if you wanna be startin something about it, then I'll show you who is really Bad, so you can just beat it.  Anyway, here are my favorite Michael Jackson albums of all time...

7. HIStory: Past, Present, & Future Book I

HIStory was a double disc album, with the first disc being his greatest hits and the second disc being original material.  Now as much as I try to listen to this album all the way through I always end up turning it off halfway through.  The album had a very STRONG beginning with Scream, They Don't Care About Us, Stranger In Moscow, This Time Around (feat. Biggie), and Earth Song.  However, after that the album kinda just goes into filler mode.  I was never really a fan of D.S and Money, and I always wondered why he put Come Together on the album even through he already released it before.  I mean the album kinda picks up towards the end but I always end up skipping songs.  To this day, I still always seem to either turn it off, or just end up pressing the forward button. 

6. Blood On The Dance Floor: HIStory In The Mix

To this day I wish this album should have just stayed an EP.  I REALLY hate the remixes that were put on this album too (with the exception of the Tony Moran's HIStory Lesson Mix and the Scream Louder Flyte Time Remix). The rest of the remixes were just garbage and should have just been put on the b-side of singles.  The original 5 tracks is what really makes this album one of Mike's best works.  It is also his most darkest material to date, with songs like Morphine and Is It Scary.  In my opinion Is It Scary is one of my all time favorite MJ records.  Kinda messed up they didn't promote the album the way it was suppose to.  However, MJ STILL made HIStory and BOTDF became one the highest selling remix album of all time.  Can't be mad at that...**shrugs**

5. Invincible

This was MJ's final album that he recorded, now I know a lot of people don't really like this album. However in my opinion, this album was pretty damn underrated.  Rodney Jerkins laced Mike with a ton of good instrumentals.  Besides the main single You Rock My World, Invincible came with a ton of very good records. With songs like Unbreakable, Heartbreaker, 2000 Watts, Privacy, and Threatened.  Rodney Jerkins showed that MJ still had it (Like his mojo ever left him anyway). Also Break Of Dawn is a very underrated baby making song, and it really should have gotten more praise.  One of my all time favorite Mike record from that album is the Marsha Ambrosius penned Butterflies, which STILL gets love to this day.  In my opinion this album aged well and it's a damn shame that Sony pulled the plug on the promotion.

4. Bad

What other albums do you know where 5 out of the 11 tracks topped the billboard charts? Oh you said Katy Perry? Well...shit...that is nice and all, but Michael Jackson was the FIRST one to do it!  From the title track all the way to the bonus track this album KNOCKS.  Besides the classic records, the one song I really wished Mike released as single is the Stevie Wonder collaboration record Just Good Friends.  To this day I wish the estate would release the footage of them when they performed the song live, oh well maybe one day.  Bad is one of Mike's best albums, and it is crazy to think that this year will be the 25th anniversary of it's release.  25 years later, the album still holds up well.  Now, if ONLY the estate re-released a 25th anniversary 3 disc combo pack of Moonwalker...

Now my top 3 was REALLY hard to choose...I was going back and forth with it for a good while on how to rank them...but here it goes....

3. Off The Wall

The first album where Mike and Quincy connect to make one their classic records.  I'm gonna say this and I'm gonna end mine, if you don't dance to the first 30 seconds of Don't Stop Till You Get Enough, then you are NOT about that life..AT ALL.  It's crazy how much this album still holds up well to this very day.  I guarantee you if you play Rock With You, Workin' Day & Night, Get On The Floor, or Burn This Disco Out in the club, niggas would lose their fucking minds!  She's Out Of My Life still makes a nigga get teary eyed when listening to it.  The smooth Stevie Wonder penned record I Can't Help It is also one of my favorite tracks of all time.  All in all this is straight up good music, and it is crazy the album still holds up well today.

2. Dangerous

Now this was the first Michael Jackson album I ever listened to when I was kid.  I'm gonna keep it real, I played this CD until it got scratched up.  Teddy Riley gave that New Jack Swing swag to MJ and he swagged it the FUCK out.  I know Heavy D's verse from Jam by fucking HEART, same with that random ass rap verse from the Black or White record.  Matter a fact, who WAS that random rapper on Black Or White?  That dude just dropped one verse and then just fucking disappeared.  He is probably chilling with Jay Electronica somewhere. Who can also deny how good Remember The Time was? Especially with the video filled with black excellence? One of the records that I really wish Mike would have released as a single was Can't Let You Get Away.  I could have seen that song topping the urban charts if giving the right video and promotion. 

However, my favorite MJ song of all time is Who Is It.  I've said it once and I'll say it again, that was one of Mike's best produced beats of all time!....OF ALL TIME FAM!

1. Thriller

I mean really? Do I REALLY have to explain this album?  If you have never listened to this album, then you lost at life.  Crazy to think that this LP had only 9 tracks, it was a few minutes away from being a EP.  For over 40 minutes you listened to HIT RECORDS from track 1 to track 9.  I mean seriously, do I REALLY have to explain this album? Do I really have to explain how it is the highest selling album of ALL TIME? Do I have to explain how Michael laid the blueprint on how to do music videos with the titled track? Do I REALLY have to explain how he changed the game with just one dance move? Naw I shouldn't explain that..you should know that already...

R.I.P MJ..3 years later..and the world STILL misses you...

~~Mr. Busby~~

Gone Too Soon (MJ 1 year Later)

I remember the day like it was yesterday, I can still see it so vividly, it was a Thursday. I was with my babysitting my little nephew for the day, and I decided to take him the movies. He wanted to see that God awful movie Transformers 2, so I was like whatever. While we the movie was on, I was on twitter, tweeting my life away. I then saw a tweet that House Shoes retweeted from Breaking News that said "Michael Jackson rushed to the hospital, updates coming soon". So i kinda just shrugged it off and was like whatever he is probably exhausted from rehearsing for the This Is It concerts, so I was thinking "eh he will be ok, probably have to postpone a few shows". Then I saw ?uestlove retweet from Breaking News saying "Michael Jackson rushed to hospital after suffering cardiac arrest" then I was like "oh no, that don't sound good". After that I kept refreshing the twitter page, and then I kept seeing updates that said he wasn't looking good. After that, my mind was COMPLETELY off that bitch ass movie. My phone was dying, so I was hoping that I got an update that he was going to pull through. I was wrong, after that I saw a tweet from Mistah Fab saying "WTF?!? MICHAEL JACKSON DIED?!!?" then I refreshed the page again, and then I saw the update that I will NEVER forget, "TMZ Confirms, Michael Jackson dead at age 50" then my heart sank. I left the theater, and called my mom, and then called my homie's parents. I was in disbelief, I then looked at a random stranger and just said "yo, Michael Jackson died.." he looked at me and said "shut the fuck up!". I went back into the theater, and I got a text from my home girl saying "Michael Jackson died :(", and then i heard people's cell phones vibrating. My day was officially fucked up after that.

I have been a Michael Jackson fan since I was little. I was first introduced to him, in my day care center. The nanny had the Moonwalker video on VHS, and she used to play that movie on a daily basis. I enjoyed EVERYTIME she played that tape, it caught my attention from the first frame all the way to the ending show where you see MJ wink. I watched in amazement on how he danced like I never seen ANYONE dance before. I watched him sing like nobody I have ever HEARD before, man it was crazy! What I also remember about that film was when it did the little montage of his career from J5 to Bad, it played only like 10 seconds snippet of the song, I thought that was genius because it gave me a good idea on what the songs were going to sound like. After that, I couldn't get enough of MJ, I was always glued to MTV watching damn near all his videos. Well almost all his videos, I remember when I was kid, the Thriller scared the SHIT out of me. I watched the video once when I was little and that was it, scared me for my childhood. However, when I got older I realized how sick that video really was.

I remember every time I would go to the mall with my mom, if I see a hat that reminded me of MJ's fedora, I was gonna put it on and do my MJ. My mom would always yell at me because I would always throw the hats the same way he did in his Billie Jean performances. MJ was a MAJOR part of my childhood, he introduced me to my love for music. He introduced me to how music should be made, he introduced me to how a MUSIC video should be made. Man I remember at one point, I thought MTV meant Michael Television because all they played was his videos. I remember how mad I was at MJ for canceling his concert on HBO. I know the nigga was sick and all but i remember crying because I was REALLY looking forward to that shit, and it still makes me mad to this day.

I could go on and on about this but I would probably crash this blog site. Michael Jackson is somebody that comes once in a lifetime, and I feel blessed that I was able to witness his greatness at its peak. After he died, MTV actually played videos again, people were blasting his music again. I remember the day after he died, my homie came through and I through on all of MJ's catalog and he was amazed on how good it sounded, duh nigga. I remember before his death, everybody would laugh at me for playing MJ all the time, now niggas want me burning CD's for them and shit.

There will NEVER be another Michael Jackson, let me say that again in BOLD letters. THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER MICHAEL JACKSON. You can have your Justin Biebers, your Chris Browns, your Ushers, but they ALL copied their swag from that man. There will NEVER be another King Of Pop, when he died, he took that title with him. MJ laid the blueprint before Hov even thought of the plan to become a legend.

By the age of 50, MJ became an icon, and his legacy will live on forever...now can I get a hee hee?



~~Mr. Busby~~