I meant to write on having my first positive experience with suya last night. We went to a different spot and it turned out to be rather tasty, but I awoke to the news that MJ had died and I didn't have the mood for it.
Nothing I can write here will be that unique or different from the millions of words that have and will be written over the next few days. To put it simply, MJ was and is a legend. He is, beyond argument, the greatest, in terms of popularity and influence, artist that has ever been, and probably ever will be. This morning, it's been our normal stream of varied people stopping by our office and all of them have mentioned Michael and how sad it all is. The radio hear in Calabar is blasting "Billie Jean", "Beat It", and other of his hits while mourning his death. There are not many artists that will receive a near universal, global coverage and have billions of people acutely feel the loss. When we lost Heath Ledger, the surprise and anguish were real and vast, but he could not come close to the depth and breadth of feeling that our loss has. And that is because MJ was unique.
I'm currently sitting at my desk listening to Thriller on repeat, because I was too stupid to put my other albums on my machine, and I am vainly trying to download some tracks from varied sites but my internet here can't even handle the downlaoding of a 5mb sound file, so I am left with his greatest album only, hardly a loss, but depressing nonetheless.
While James Brown and George Clinton may be the most sampled of musicians, it is fair to argue that Michael Jackson is the most covered and emulated artist in the history of music. To borrow a phrase, til the other side, Mike.
4 comments:
Seriously shocking. What was even more shocking, though, were the blase responses I received from some folk when mentioning the news! However you felt about MJ as an individual (as if folk actually knew him), his influence on music and pop culture as a whole is undeniable.
What's really sad is that now that i've had some time to think about it... it's not that shocking at all. fifty years old is not young for a guy who did what MJ did, and he probably had had more stress in his life by the time he was 20 than most people have in a lifetime. Still watched his biggest music vids up until the other day, now i'll be watching a lot more of them.
you really think he was more emulated than elvis? isn't mj an elvis emulator himself?
mlah
Wow. Even in death there are haters. If Michael Jackson emulated Elvis, what in the world does one say about how he brazenly stole from the black artists of the day????? Please let us praise and respect him for his timeless music, compositions and showmanship.
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