Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 6,090
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Michael Jackson praised by Time Magazine
http://time.com/88527/michael-jackso...-album-review/
Quote:
REVIEW: Michael Jackson’s Legacy Gets Honored (Mostly) on Xscape
For the first time in posthumous MJ history, the music can speak for itself
...
Timbaland, who executive-produced the album with help from Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins, Jerome Harmon, Stargate and John McClane, gave the old recordings some modern production juice, calling the process — to some press joshing — “contemporization.” But to their immense credit, unlike some recent “contemporizations” (Drake’s mopey exhumation of the Aaliyah vault comes to mind), the material on Xscape seldom sounds gimmicky, or too full of its producers’ personal brands. Even producers like Stargate, who sound so identikit-distinctive you can usually reverse-engineer songs they’ve had a hand in, go subtle. It helps that Jackson’s voice is too singularly frenzied to be overshadowed in a mix; it helps even more that occasionally, as on “Xscape,” the contemporizer and original producer (in this case, Darkchild) were one and the same. Only once on the album do things get glaring: “Blue Gangsta,” which even in its original form seemed like a concept missing its video-PR tour, is so much like beatboxed-and-screwed Timbo that it’s almost funny. Everything else is – stunningly – mostly natural.
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Again, it helps that Xscape comes frontloaded with the safest (and earliest-recorded) track, now assisted by Justin Timberlake: “Love Never Felt So Good” is an opulent, warm disco-soul floorfiller in composition and, judging by a couple couples, in practice. It evokes Off the Wall as much as dead-on 2014, because these days disco is so trendy it practically comes pre-contemporized. “Loving You” is even more earnest, and if anything, its lonely-August nostalgia is only enhanced by its extramusical conditions.
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for the king, that positive Time Magazine review
americanshameless, is that you?
