Source: Dia Dipasupil / Getty
Let’s get this straight once and for all. There is no next Michael Jackson, no next Prince, no next Stevie or Aretha. There are only the artists following in their footsteps. It’s something that rapper Fat Joe should have considered before he made a questionable comparison on a recent Instagram Live.
While on the social media platform, Joe expressed that he believed that Chris Brown, who he’s collaborated with, would be viewed in the same way as Michael Jackson had he not been involved in the incident with Rihanna. As you may remember, Brown pled guilty to felony assault and making criminal threats in 2009 after a pre-Grammy Awards fight with his then-girlfriend.
“If Chris Brown never got into the controversy with Rihanna, we would be calling him Michael Jackson right now,” Joe said. “Not like Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson. He’s the most talented singer, artist, performer, hitmaker of our time. There’s nobody even close to Chris Brown. And it’s time we move past it, it’s been 20-something years. That I know of, there’s no more incidents. Man, we gonna let this lifetime go by without saying the truth?”
Joe added, “So what I’m trying to say is, it’s a shame we’re lying and we’re giving up to the king of R&B. The king of music. We thinking he could battle Michael Jackson, that’s all I’m trying to say. If you really look at his body of work, you look at all his hits, you see what he does … You remove from your mind that we don’t like it. We don’t like that he had a controversy … He was a little kid 20-something years ago.”
Brown has had other incidents since, including his former girlfriend Karrueche Tran accusing him of abuse and successfully obtaining a restraining order against him in 2017.
Comedian Faizon Love took exception on his own Instagram page, saying “Never ever will there be.”
“Listen, Chris Brown is amazing,” Love said. “I met him when he was young…and he was amazing then. But Michael Jackson, never! Apparently, there was some Michael Jackson Fat Joe was talking about that lives in the Bronx, Michael Jackson at the bodega, Michael Jackson at the pizza….I don’t know. But Michael Jackson from Indiana, never. There will never be another Michael Jackson.”
Chris Brown is one of the top-selling African American artists ever with a prolific list of sales records that he’s broken. He’s the first R&B artist in history to have more than 100 entries on the Billboard charts. He’s set marks as one of the top touring artists and one of the top digital artists, among other distinctions.
But here’s where Brown is lacking. Name a Michael Jackson record. Now, name a Chris Brown song. Depending on how old you are, a few options may immediately come to mind. But now ask a 5-year-old, a 55-year-old and a 75-year-old. Every one of them can name a Michael Jackson song. But can they do the same for Chris Brown? It’s just one example of how dominant Jackson was as a global pop artist.
His second solo album,1982’s Thriller is the greatest-selling album of all time, when fans had to walk into the record store to buy it. Jackson was nothing short of a global icon when he died at the age of 50 in 2009. All these years later, he’s still generating money from projects like Michael Jackson:The Musical, Michael Jackson One by Cirque de Soleil and his still valuable catalog.
Brown addressed the issue in an interview with Big Boy in 2023. When asked to respond to people who think he’s better than Jackson, he shook his head and said, “That’s cap.”
He added, “I stay the hell up out of it. I wouldn’t even be breathing or even able to sing a song if that man didn’t exist. So I don’t know if they look at it as the Jordan/Kobe thing but I can’t even look at it, like…he’s light years away. There is no competing with him.”
But we’ll have to give Brown this. He was truly robbed of the chance to show how much Jackson’s influence was instrumental to his career when he was dropped from the American Music Awards tribute in 2022. However, his rehearsal video went viral, for obvious reasons. Watch below.
