We all know that MJ was very compeitive and it's been pretty well documented that MJ tended to not appreciate his direct compeitors who were simultaneously successful (Prince, Madonna, even Terrance Trent D'Arby...I heard once that he even didn't much respect Paula Abdul when she was a pop star) during the same time had something out. "Don't Be Cruel" (which was the #1 selling album of 1989) came on the heels of "Bad" and "Bobby" came during the same time as "Dangerous." I mean yeah Bobby turned into a media joke and lost all of his reverence with his troublesome behavior and after he married Whitney, but during the DBC era, he was literally thee "it" R&B-guy who crossed over, could and did dance as much as MJ did and had white/pop America in the palm of his hands. Do you think Michael ever looked at Bobby Brown during his peak years and felt a tinge of annoyance by all the attention he got?

[Edited 6/4/14 20:58pm]

Doubt it. Yes they were big pop/r&b artists but I think they were different stylistically. Bobby Brown had much more of an "edge" to him with a hip hop feel to his music and personal style. MJ was more pop and softer.

It might be true, MJ always wanted to be the best at what he does. Bad wouldn't be that badass if it wasn't for Prince mega stardom in the mid-80s... Anyway that's something I don't like about MJ, it proofs that he rarely cares about quality, and wants just to be as huge as he was before. Prince, on the other hand, went weird and showed everybody his artistry.

Shawy89 said:

It might be true, MJ always wanted to be the best at what he does. Bad wouldn't be that badass if it wasn't for Prince mega stardom in the mid-80s... Anyway that's something I don't like about MJ, it proofs that he rarely cares about quality, and wants just to be as huge as he was before. Prince, on the other hand, went weird and showed everybody his artistry.

+100

rlittler81 said:

Shawy89 said:

It might be true, MJ always wanted to be the best at what he does. Bad wouldn't be that badass if it wasn't for Prince mega stardom in the mid-80s... Anyway that's something I don't like about MJ, it proofs that he rarely cares about quality, and wants just to be as huge as he was before. Prince, on the other hand, went weird and showed everybody his artistry.

+100

-200 on the MJ part

And Bad would've looked more badass had it not been for Prince.

the Bobby Brown "success" is new to me...

I have never before considered him that successful - Bobby Brown, he wasn't not in the superiour league like Prince, Madonna and MJ. Those 3 artists were the great trio in the 80's, right?

And, of course with Prince was the most important with no less than 10 brilliant albums (if you count The Black Album also).

Second in importance: Michael Jackson with those brilliant 2 albums (Thriller + Bad), no offense, both albums are masterpieces.. but imo he can't be no. 1 with only 2 album releases.

Third: Madonna, actually she's gotta be a weak link in the trio artistically, but you and I can't deny she was "incredibly successful".

Bobby Brown?

nah noone took him that seriously, I very much doubt MJ felt "threatened".... I don't think MJ even notised him, like he sure did with Prince.

Ps) to you MJ fans here, don't hate me now... Prince will always be the most important, imho...

Like someone else mentioned, I think the only person Michael was really worried about success wise (besides maybe Prince during Purple Rain Era) was himself. People comment on MJ only releasing 2 albums during the 80's. The thing is though.. The success of Thriller alone is in a sense "frightening" once you have created the biggest selling album in history, the only thing you can do (success wise) is have everything you ever do compared to it. Like the Bad album, it was EXTREMELY successful, estimated 30 million copies sold worldwide, first album to have five #1s, but because it was the follow up to Thriller, people automaticly labeled it some kind of "failure" because it didn't live up to Thriller. Because of Michael's influence not onlt musically, but also in music videos, dance, and Iconography (red leather jacket, high waters, one glove, etc) I don't think he would have been "threatened" by Bobby Brown. The only person i think MJ was ever really threatened by (besides himself) was Prince during the Purple Rain Era.

thedance said:

the Bobby Brown "success" is new to me...

You must not be in the US, because Bobby was really popular in the late 1980's and was all over the radio and MTV. I think the Don't Be Cruel album sold around 6 million. Sounds like a success to me. Bobby was pretty much the first act who really crossed over to pop radio and got regular airplay with New Jack Swing. Remember The Jacksons, Mike, & Jermaine released New Jack records (2300 Jackson Street, Dangerous, and You Said). Janet's Rhythm Nation was kind of New Jack too and so was that song LaToya did with Full Force. Mike had to have heard Bobby's record, because he initially worked with Bobby's producers LA & Babyface, but then went with Teddy Riley from Guy. They got Bobby to do the Ghostbusters 2 theme and he also had a cameo in the movie. Bobby's popularity is kind of forgotten today, and New Jack Swing in general is not given that much recognition. You mentioned Prince. In US sales, Vanilla Ice's To The Extreme sold around 10 million, which is more than all of Prince's albums except Purple Rain. Madonna, Mike, & Prince weren't the only popular acts in the 1980s.

Shawy89 said:

It might be true, MJ always wanted to be the best at what he does. Bad wouldn't be that badass if it wasn't for Prince mega stardom in the mid-80s... Anyway that's something I don't like about MJ, it proofs that he rarely cares about quality, and wants just to be as huge as he was before. Prince, on the other hand, went weird and showed everybody his artistry.

The fuck o.O how does that he prove he didn't care about quality you dumbass. You need quality to be as big as you were before by making an album of killer and no filler which is exactly what Bad was. And he was succesful... at it's release it was the 2nd biggest selling album of all time.

3...2...1...

purplethunder3121 said:

3...2...1...

MJ must have noticed him, hence hiring Teddy Riley for Dangerous. I doubt he felt too threatened. Allegedly he was more concerned with Terence Trent D'Arby at the time.

Dilan said:

Shawy89 said:

It might be true, MJ always wanted to be the best at what he does. Bad wouldn't be that badass if it wasn't for Prince mega stardom in the mid-80s... Anyway that's something I don't like about MJ, it proofs that he rarely cares about quality, and wants just to be as huge as he was before. Prince, on the other hand, went weird and showed everybody his artistry.

The fuck o.O how does that he prove he didn't care about quality you dumbass. You need quality to be as big as you were before by making an album of killer and no filler which is exactly what Bad was. And he was succesful... at it's release it was the 2nd biggest selling album of all time.

It wasn't for Bad, what I've said.... It was for all his post-90s stuff (Except some really good songs he wrote that are even better than some of his 80's stuff), but as a whole, Dangerous & HIStory were weak albums, at the time a dance track was cooler than everything else MJ ever did wether it was the bassline of Billie Jean or the funk of Working Day and Night.... his sound became so commercial.. Not to mention that the artistic grow from Dangerous to HIStory CANNOT be compared to the grow from Off The Wall to Thriller, and from Thriller to Bad. (Bad is actually a great album, better than Off The Wall & Thriller IMO).

In a way, I feel MJ lost that Motown vibe, that soul aspect he had back in the 80's.... On tour, he sucked vocally.... His live shows rarely showed any of his legendary artistry (MJ dance nazis I'm talking about music)... 90's MJ was pretty much lost in all of that commercial sound, that image he provided himself with, he just wasn't THAT artistic he was with Bad & Thriller.

[Edited 6/5/14 11:16am]

i think mj's desperate atempt to top thriller hurt him artistically.i loved the dangerous album but he was so caught up in the hype the music kinda got lost.his moto seemed to be 'bigger is better'.

thedance said:

the Bobby Brown "success" is new to me...

I have never before considered him that successful - Bobby Brown, he wasn't not in the superiour league like Prince, Madonna and MJ. Those 3 artists were the great trio in the 80's, right?

And, of course with Prince was the most important with no less than 10 brilliant albums (if you count The Black Album also).

Second in importance: Michael Jackson with those brilliant 2 albums (Thriller + Bad), no offense, both albums are masterpieces.. but imo he can't be no. 1 with only 2 album releases.

Third: Madonna, actually she's gotta be a weak link in the trio artistically, but you and I can't deny she was "incredibly successful".

Bobby Brown?

nah noone took him that seriously, I very much doubt MJ felt "threatened".... I don't think MJ even notised him, like he sure did with Prince.

Ps) to you MJ fans here, don't hate me now... Prince will always be the most important, imho...

Wow 5 years after his departure and MJ still got folks hating/threatened... Boy's a Baaaad Mutha..

Michael Jackson Asked New Edition For Help With Dance Moves
by Jayson Rodriguez 06/28/09
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LOS ANGELES — New Edition’s Bobby Brown was renowned for his dancing and, believe it or not, he says his royal dance moves were once requested by the legendary King of Pop himself.
According to Brown, Michael Jackson asked his group, New Edition, to help out with some dance moves back during the Boston collective’s heyday.

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“We went to his house,” Brown said, speaking at the press room at the BET Awards on Sunday night (June 28). “We were invited to teach him a couple of our moves. I’m not joking!”

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Brown, flanked by NE members Ralph Tresvant and Johnny Gill, said the group didn’t get to stick around much after dancing with Jackson, although they did get to see the video for “Thriller” before its official premiere, according to Tresvant. But what they really wanted from their encounter with Michael Jackson didn’t quite pan out.

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The late icon invited the guys to stay the night at his house but, according to Brown, their manager turned the invite down.

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“We were always upset [about that], because we couldn’t stay the night,” Brown explained. “We were upset because we wanted to stay and get to know him better. I’ve spent a lot of time around some great artists, but he was definitely the greatest artist and person I’ve ever been around.”

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Brown, along with Gill and Tresvant, honored Jackson during the opening of the 2009 BET Awards by performing a medley of Jackson 5 hits. Brown led the way as their rendition of “ABC” and “The Love You Save” got a standing ovation from the star-studded crowd, which included Beyoncé, Kanye West and Jackson family members.

[Edited 6/5/14 16:36pm]

SoulBounce’s Class Of 1992: Bobby Brown ‘Bobby’

November 16, 2012

It's impossible to talk about Bobby without mentioning Whitney. That reality applies as much to the man as it does the album. And it became the self-fulfilling prophecy that ensured Bobby was the last time you'd hear Robert Barisford Brown sound like a true star -- confident, self-assured, not anxious to prove his worth outside the shadow of his wife -- or of his former self. This isn't to say Brown hadn't battled for independent recognition before Bobby. After tussling for the New Edition spotlight with Ralph Tresvant, the group's official lead singer, he defected in 1986 and (after an underwhelming solo debut), was on a path to global superstardom.
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After the initial disappointment of King of The Stage, Brown teamed with New Jack Swing pioneers Teddy Riley, LA Reid and Babyface to record the lightning-in-a-bottle album Don't Be Cruel. Between selling eight million copies worldwide, spawning four top-10 singles (including the number one "My Prerogative"), and earning Brown a GRAMMY, Cruel was nothing but kind to him. As Brown shut down stage after stage on the album's supporting world tour, he began being hailed by
critics and industry insiders as "the next Michael Jackson."

.

But those who knew how fiercely competitive Jackson was knew he had no intention of crowning a successor, and he soon recruited Riley to help craft his own foray into New Jack Swing on the album Dangerous. But Brown was also working on Bobby, his next album with Riley at that time; and with an MC Hammer project also in the works for late-1991 release, a sort of urban-pop arms race was brewing. One from which Brown would soon withdraw, citing his own perfectionism, and not fear of the competition. Also waved away were the reports that Bobby, despite his image as the most "sex, drugs, and Rock-n-Roll" R&B artist this side of Rick James, had a drug habit.

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Instead, he was simply working hard at creating the opus that would officially elevate him to compete at the same level as his idol Michael Jackson. Plus, he'd met this really sweet girl; you may have heard of her... So with all these ingredients in the mix, expectations ran high for an epic that could realistically best Jackson's Dangerous album, which failed to live up to the astronomical commercial expectations set by previous releases. While we didn't quite get that, we still got a bunch of songs that perfectly captured the New Jack zeitgeist, even if they didn't redefine it. And I say "we" here because Bobby is where Brown left the periphery of my young mind (where he was simply one of the interchangeable fellas in New Edition, and then the "Every Little Step" guy) to become a dominant, unmistakable personality. I still remember my older sister unwrapping the tape as we prepared to hear the culmination of weeks of "Humpin' Around" MTV rotation, Right-On! magazine reports of arrests for lewd performances and CNN entertainment stories repeating mainstream America's princess-and-the-frog narrative of his new marriage to Whitney.

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It was likely that storied troublemaker reputation (especially when used as a contrast to Houston's varnished sheen) that prevented Brown from letting his freak flag truly fly on Bobby. To be sure, the album started out big -- lead single "Humpin' Around" played up Brown's horndog image to LA and Babyface's ominous, theremin-like wah-wah, while the media-bashing "Get Away" brilliantly picked up where "My Prerogative" left off. But despite its moments of brilliant R&Bluster (mostly accompanied by era-appropriate attempts at rapid-fire rapping), the badass Bobby that America came to see -- the Bobby on the album's brilliant cover photo -- was absent from half of the album. With its abundance of just-okay midtempos that sounded ripped from Don't Be Cruel, to hamfisted attempts at social commentary, to a painfully saccharine Debra Winans duet (called "I'm Your Friend" -- 'nuff said), to the reggae-lite "Pretty Little Girl" that only highlighted the superiority of its Shabba Ranks and Maxi Priest-crafted progenitor "Housecall," the impossible seemed to have happened: Bobby Brown had been out-edged and out-New-Jacked by Michael Jackson.

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With its abundance of underwhelming tracks (a cardinal sin in the days of Mississippi-count fast-forwarding), I soon tossed the tape back to sis. It was a decent offering, but seemingly glorying in mundanity masked possibly as maturity. In hindsight, one could argue that non-threatening sheen was a sign Brown doth protest too much to the rumors of his drug and alcohol dependency. In fact, his much-anticipated duet with wife Whitney on "Something in Common" ended up more a milquetoast press release on their compatibility than the surefire smash it should have been. Two decades (plus a few revealing interviews and a damning reality show) later, I can only manage a pained smile as I hear Nippy coo, in her best church-lady affect, the words "I believe in old-fashioned rules and old-fashioned ways / courtesy, honesty / like in the old days." I don't doubt that she held those views to some extent (after all, she was known to on numerous occasions insist on being called Mrs. Brown, long after her career had irretrievably eclipsed her husband's), but now I know the press release was really trying to bury a much sadder story of a drug-addled, codependent, mutually destructive love. All of which was about to get much worse, as Whitney was months away from changing history with the release of her film debut, The Bodyguard, and its accompanying soundtrack.

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With the relative failure of the Bobby album (though a million-seller, it was by most accounts a commercial disappointment) juxtaposed with the dizzying heights to which Whitney was about to rocket, America was about to crystallize the image of Brown it would hold on to for the next two decades. After a failed group album with his crew of unknowns (the largely forgotten B. Brown Posse album released a year later) showed the shoddy state of Brown's coattails, Brown put his recording career on hold, as he tells it, to raise the couple's infant daughter while Houston enjoyed a three-year period as the biggest recording star in the world. But as far as the public was concerned, he'd simply decided to ride the trains of his wife's signature evening gowns, living off her sequined largesse. More domestic resentment. Failed 1997 album. Rinse. Repeat.

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And there, perhaps, is the greatest tragedy of the Bobby album. It's largely forgotten by the pop mainstream, despite its visual and sonic presentation serving as a guide for contemporaries like Jodeci and successors like Usher and Ray-J. "Two Can Play That Game" may not be mentioned on any of the 8,000 VH1 countdown shows, but those who know real R&B will always remember that Bobby had "Good Enough." Bobby was good enough.

"As a kid, I always wanted to be like Michael. That was my dream. In fact, everybody in New Edition had a Jackson in mind when we started out. Michael (Bivins) wanted to be Tito and so on. Me and Ralph always fought over Michael. He'd say he was Michael and I'd go, 'No, I'm Michael.' "

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"This was long before we ever thought it was possible. We were just kids having fun. But you eventually get over that. By the time I went solo, I wasn't trying to be Michael anymore. I was trying to be Bobby." ~ Bobby Brown 1992

No.

Derek1984 said:

No.

'Threatened'? pfft. Wasn't that by Mike on 'Invincible'? I hate the charts generally, but yeah, it's kinda great seeing MJ kick ass even in death. Nobody threatens MJ. Lock!

[Edited 6/5/14 18:04pm]

SoulAlive said:

Please use the MJ sticky, thanks