Michael Jackson - "Dangerous"

The last stand of the king. In the progression of the king of pop persona this is where Jackson brought back the one glove except it was not a sequin one, it was similar to a white wrist brace that went about halfway up his forearm. His hair was now always long and curly and pulled back in a ponytail. The crotch grabbing dance moves started and his skin now had lost almost all of its pigment.

This is Michael Jackson's last album in a string of nearly flawless hits as king of pop. While he did release the "HIStory" album four years later and it was a multiplatinum smash with a number of hits (including "You are not Alone" the first ever single to debut at #1)  "HIStory" was really the end of his seemingly endless success and showed that his overwhelming fame was wearying him.

"Dangerous" is a better album than "HIStory." Jackson parted ways with Quincy Jones after his last album and has hooked up with producers Teddy Riley, Bruce Swedien and Bill Bottrell who are also Jackson's song writing collaborators throughout the album. "Dangerous" has a harder edge than any of his previous releases. Many of the songs took a rough street quality mixed it with hard rock (Slash guest stars on several songs) with a dash of Rap incorporated in a couple of the songs (by Heavy D and L.T.B. ) for good measure. There are a number of winning tracks on the album "Jam," "Why you Wanna Trip on Me," "Remember the Time" and "Gone Too Soon" (Jackson at his ballad best). Interestingly though with all the collaborations on this album the three best and best remembered songs are ones Jackson composed by himself: the excellent "Black or White," "Will you Be There" and the undeniably catchy "Heal the World."

There are flaws, it is over long with some really dull songs in there, the cover is interesting and strange all at the same time. Yet, one has to only look at the influence this album has had on current artists. At the time Jackson got a fair amount of flack for the Rap guest stars, yet every other pop song today has copied his model of having a popular Rapper rap in the middle of the song (Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, No Doubt are just a few examples).

Overall this is a very good album, that still went mulitiplatinum in the middle of the Grunge explosion, that is often overlooked in favor of his three previous albums. "Dangerous" is one of the first CDs I ever owned and it is a very strong piece of music; the last really excellent album of Michael Jackson's music career.