It took no time for Diddy to churn out the craptastic collabothon that is “Better On The Other Side,” the MJ-tribute track that features Game, Chris Brown, Boyz II Men, and (probably for gospel gravitas) Marion Winans. Diddy’s spoken word “you were the one who made us realize we could moonwalk,” implies metaphor, but doesn’t really get into it. With other insightful lyrics like “I’m Michael Jackson, you’re Michael Jackson, we all Michael Jackson,” there’s nothing to be gained from this other than perhaps the redemption of Chris Brown, whose chorus, which contains the song’s title, is the best thing about the track. It’s certainly not the name dropping of DJ Skee. Not very tasteful. According to Mashable, the track notched over 100,000 plays in the first day of its release. You can listen/download here.
50 Cent has taken the opportunity of Jackson’s death to compare himself to him (this photo is from his site, not our lab). He’s the King of Rap, in case you didn’t know, and as he opens his track “Where You Are” with a declaration of “I’m number one!” there’s no question of irony. Thankfully, most of the track gives way to an interpolation of a classic Jackson 5 “I Wanna Be Where You Are.” It’s actually a tight jam.
But it’s not just the hip hop community that has busted out the one-glove love. Jay Brannan recorded a sincere and well-performed cover of “Man in the Mirror” (well-timed to the July release of his covers album) that has earned almost 80k YouTube views since Thursday.
Over the weekend the dance music world got into the memorializing. Claude von Stroke dropped his edit of “Billie Jean” in New York (Resident Advisor has posted a clip) and Simian Mobile Disco played “Gonna Be Starting Something” in LA.
But if you want to just relax and remember, the good people over at BamaLoveSoul posted a track from Osunlade, the house/soul artist. You can also listen on his MySpace. Dwele has posted a video of some in-studio live-looping for what is to be his tribute track. The nice thing about both of these songs is that they don’t aim to mimic or rework any of Jackson’s cataloge. They’re just soft smooth jams made with the memories of MJ in mind.
To help you organize your downloads, here’s a quick five point rating system based on Michael milestones of what we’ve heard so far…
mamase mamasa ma ma coo sa (5): Jay Brannan
Bubbles (4): 50 Cent
kissing Lisa Marie on MTV (3): Osunlade, Dwele
Liza’s man of honor (2): Diddy, et al
kid diddling allegations (1): title yet unclaimed
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