I honeymooned in Jamaica. At one point they took us on a boat tour. During that tour they pointed out a house that apparently had previously belonged to Bob Marley. I don’t remember exactly how they phrased this, but they said something roundabout like “whenever he was in town with his friends you’d see lots of smoke coming out of that house.”
I genuinely thought they were talking about smoking meat until my wife told me I was dumb.
😂
It’s strange to see Michael Jackson before he transitioned.
.
/j
I was curious how Marley died and saw this on his Wikipedia page:
On 21 September 1980, Marley collapsed while jogging in Central Park and was taken to the hospital, where it was found that his cancer had spread to his brain, lungs, and liver. Marley’s last concert took place two days later at the Stanley Theater (now The Benedum Center For The Performing Arts) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The show must go on. Nuff respect.
Sadly he might have stopped his cancer from spreading if he would have allowed his toes to be amputated.
if he had allowed *
exactly. rastafari has quite a lot of pretty fucking stupid elements to it. not to mention how bigoted and hateful it is to queer people and women.
which sucks cuz there’s so much positivity and optimism and love in Bob Marley’s music especially. such a shame he didn’t actually embody so much of it
Did he actually espouse misogynistic and homophobic views? Christianity is bigoted and hateful to queer people and women as well, but plenty of self-proclaimed Christians pick the parts they don’t agree with out.
Yeah, I believe he did unfortunately. I remember reading about his incredibly problematic relationship with women throughout his life. I think he was a pretty flawed human, like the rest of us, who just happened to make some great, uplifting music.
Oh yeah, you see that a lot (both homophobia and misogyny) with rap music or rap adjacent music as well. Funny enough the most progressive people I’ve ever met are black dudes and most of the rappers I’m talking about who popularized this kinda thing are white (looking at u, Eminem) but to pretend like it hasn’t been deep in rap culture for a while regardless of race is not true. I’ve noticed a lot of rappers are Christians now, too. Like even project pat is a pastor or something and he was literally in a group called 3 6 mafia (666).
Idk my point exactly but I do feel like a lot of artists dabble in cultural norms like sexism and homophobia because it’s what you grow up knowing, culture meaning American/English speaking art and not like ethnic culture or anything, so of course when you start spitting bars you’re gonna probably go to money, btches, cars and fuck the haters cuz they’re weak pssy f**s you all know the rest. It’s even a big thing rn where non-black rappers are saying the N word allllll over their albums like Shorline mafia, even Immortal technique but he’s an outlier ig because he stopped saying slurs and the N word long ago, but the homophobia thing still stand with him he went way too long saying some pretty nasty shit for a leftist rapper.
immortal technique specifically is beyond forgiveness or redemption for me. that guy can fuck so very far off
Haven’t kept up with him for over a decade. What happened? I remember back then he was pretty respected.
Nah don’t listen to that person Tech is still great. He runs his own food drive in NYC and he’s out putting in the work. He said some crazy shit back in the day but he’s always real, one of the only genuinely openly communist, anti-imperialist rappers that raps about materialism n shit. And he doesn’t hate gay people and has clearly reconciled with his use of the N word as a non-black man, something a lot of modern non-black rappers do with 0 material analysis.
that Mexican OT, as much as I dig the guys music, is a good example of someone who has been told by different communities to stop saying the N word but won’t because he identifies with it even tho he’s not black and will never know what that is like, if that makes sense.
Just as much as MAGA uses biased information as sources and usually only have one link or is someone else’s opinion.
Michael was about 17 here. I feel like he has a sad smile, especially compared to Bob’s
I see it too. It is impossible to describe how popular he was in this period: he and his brothers were on tv constantly, plus making records and doing Vegas and international tours and promos and whatever else anyone wanted them to do. In the US in the early to mid 70s you literally could not go a week without hearing or seeing a reference to the Jackson 5 and especially Michael.
But what we didn’t see at the time is that he and his brothers were effectively slaves, with their dad signing them up wherever he could make a dime out of it while the kids just worked and worked and worked, plus they had to be nice to everyone, could never let their guard down, could never just be kids, could never really personally enjoy any of the money everyone else was making off them at the time. They weren’t even allowed any creative say in their earlier records: it was a shut up and sing situation.
So in this picture, Michael was exhausted and his father was still running his life, a relationship he always called physically and emotionally abusive in later years, as did his sister LaToya.
It doesn’t excuse whatever he did later in life, but he looks a bit sad and tired probably because he was.
IDK maybe MJ was an oddball and probably a little nuts but when they raided his house, his porn collection was in a locked briefcase in the bathroom and it wasn’t creepy. Just normal porn magazines. So that tells me that if he was around kids and probably not a normal way, he was at least locking his porn and kept it from the kids
Yeah, that’s why I worded it the way I did. For myself, I don’t know what to believe; I just figured if I didn’t at least nod to the allegations someone would assume a position for me anyway.
And whenever the subject comes up, I can’t help but reflect that there is an absolute fuckton of cash involved no matter which direction the truth travels, and the legal burden of proof for historic child abuse claims varies wildly from state to state.
In MJ’s case, there are a small number of potential litigants, a massive amount of cash, people who stand to benefit no matter which way the wind blows, not a lot of objective proof for or against, and all of that in a situation already made murky just by the way survivor memory works. In a situation where an offender is very rich, the legal situation can get insane. And I think we’ve all seen some of that with MJ, with accusations and retractions and family members and settlements.
So I just don’t know, but if I had to give a verdict I’d say not guilty. Not just for that but also for what @Art3mis said as well.
There’s another reason too. IMO, the one characteristic that never changes in sexual abusers, especially pedos, is the extreme arrogance of entitlement. If you’ve ever had to deal with one, underneath all the tears and excuses and manufactured outrage they literally believe they have the right to that kid’s body.
But Jackson didn’t seem self-aggrandizing or entitled at all, especially not about children. Rather, as Art3mis pointed out, MJ was legitimately protective of the children around him.
And given everything he had to say about his own upbringing, he knew for himself what abuse was, and lived the hell of a survivor himself in a number of ways. It just seems more unlikely than not to me that he’d visit any kind of that same survivor hell on the children around him. As you said, MJ locked up his porn: a predator is far more likely to leave it laying around in the open deliberately, to passively normalize the idea of sexuality through the environment for any passing child. That doesn’t mean MJ couldn’t have done it in other ways, but it’s definitely not the typical “I need to find a way to coax this kid into this unwanted activity” predatory behavior.
But either way, for better or worse, I grew up with him. In the first half of the 70s in the US, you literally couldn’t turn on a tv and not see him. This is not an exaggeration. He was on every variety show, every performance show, even talk shows, and specials. Oh god so many tv specials, lol. But he had an incredibly sad life in so many ways, they all did.
I really havent done a deep dive or anything but as someone that performed as a kid and faced a lot of abuse, i believe the folks that say he was providing a safe space for the kids in a hostile world. Going against that culture in hollywood is certain to ruffle some feathers enough to spread rumors.
Macaulay Culkin and Corey Feldman seem to defend his friendship in a way that suggests he was a good friend to them. Feldman seems to not shy away from spilling the beans on the horrible things that happened to him but he defends MJ, so maybe that says something.
Honestly feldman’s defence is a big part of why i believe it. Tbcf, i was raised on mj, so i already didnt want to believe the rumors but it really just comes off as hollywood vitriol
yeah, but a glorious fro
It sucks being white not, only will I never have hair like that but as a white person I’m not allowed to as much as I’m not allowed to have dreads.
i was confused for a second why there are three hands but then i remembered that there are two persons in the picture… it is really hot today…
What a wild photo. I’ve never seen it.
Somebody with photo editing skills needs to copy the fingers and give them bunny ears.
Wait, Michael Jackson was black?
Can’t tell if sarcasm…
So I’ll answer as if not… But, yes, he was. That was one of the huge, lifelong scandals of his. The constant plastic surgeries, him denying it or coming up with excuses, everybody knowing the immense pressure of his childhood. His story really was really really sad, all the way to the end.
And even with all the scandals and very probable evils he did, he’s still considered the King of Pop.
The dancing, the music videos, the music(!)… Did you know that before him, music videos for songs basically weren’t stories at all? Yet his were all basically short films. And I’m pretty sure Thriller is still the best selling album of all time, and an absolute masterpiece.
And even today, the numbers of dances in NEW videogames that are all Michael Jackson dances.
This amazing how different his nose looked at the end there too.
The Pepsi fire really did a lot of damage.
Can’t tell if you’re joking or not
I still miss Bob
Really? You guys hang out a lot?
Michael looks unimpressed.
Two humans… not a human and an alien.
He was cute before going white, chopping off his nose, and becoming a pedo. What a weird life story.
