Like many geniuses, Michael Jackson had major issues, but his music moved people. I mean literally, you could wield a MJ song and move crowds of people. I’ve seen it. Indeed, I am one of the fortunate DJs to have experienced that sublime moment where the crowd is riding your set and you feel the music controlling the crowd. For a bedroom DJ like myself, it’s a rare thing and I’m ever grateful to Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough” for allowing me those beautiful moments. I’d groove along until the peak hours and then mix the high horns over the rolling bass line of Grandmaster Flash’s “White Lines” and well, whaddayakno, people moved. I was finally a magical wizard! Muahahaha! It was pretty awesome and no other song guaranteed such an enthusiastic response. Here’s the White Lines to Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough bit from my DJ Toro archives.

His hooks are addictive, but oddly not ear-wormish. The sheer breadth of his 40 years of musical production and definitive dance style crowned him the King of Pop. He also served as the tragic poster child of surgical options for victims of extreme internalized racism. And speaking of children…

Although never convicted of child sexual molestation charges, his large settlement payments and convoluted and painful attempts to explain his behavior revealed a man living in some Neverland light years from the rest of the world and its moral conventions. His isolation was creepy and sad. I would not allow my children to play with MJ. I thought to myself, here is a man who should not be hanging out with children. Next thing you know he’s hanging his own child out of a window, shrouded his kids in veils and given them names befitting storybooks (Prince, Prince II, Blanket), not the real world.

Michael Jackson had a freakish personal life, but aaawww, his music was freakish too.

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