A new memoir from hit music producer L.A. Reid reveals that music legend Michael Jackson had a cold side, as he claims the late singer was mean to Prince and acted cruelly toward his older brother Jermaine.
According to the New York Post, in the new book, Sing to Me, Reid alleges that Michael Jackson was extremely dismissive of his older Jermaine, and wasn't nice to fellow singer and longtime rival Prince.
In the book, Reid wrote about when he was working with Jermaine on a music album, alongside Kenny 'Babyface' Edmonds in the 1990s.
At some point, Michael Jackson's manager called Reid and Edmonds to discuss writing songs with the King of Pop.
At the time, Reid said they told Jermaine they were flying to Los Angeles for a quick project and never mentioned who they would be working for.
The two music producers took a helicopter at Burbank Airport to Neverland Ranch, where an assistant met them with a nondisclosure agreement.
'Nobody got to see Michael without signing one,' Reid explains in the book. Once they signed it, they were taken to his library on the property where they discussed music and also went on a tour of Neverland.
Nearing the end of the tour, they brought to a screening room where they were showed footage of a 1983 James Brown concert where Michael Jackson was called on stage as a guest.
Jackson obliged the request from Brown and took to the stage where he 'danced a few steps' before telling Brown that Prince was also in the crowd.
Brown then proceeded to call Prince on stage as well, but Michael Jackson was reportedly happy that his appearance didn't go great.
'Prince [couldn't] make his guitar work, frantically stripping off his shirt and trying tricks with the microphone stand and making all these poses,' Reid explains in the book according to the Post.
'After Michael's dazzling star turn, Prince fell as flat as he could, and Michael enjoyed laughing at the video.'
But Michael Jackson was not done making fun of Prince. After that moment, Jackson reportedly started playing a scene from Prince's movie, Under The Cherry Moon, to laugh even more at his rival.
Reid and Edmonds enjoyed a lunch at Neverland where 'Michael's pasta was all cut in the shapes of Disney characters.'
Shortly after it was arranged for Reid and Edmonds to fly to Los Angeles where they would write songs with Jackson for three weeks.
But when Jermaine found out about Reid and Edmonds working with his younger brother, he was angry and wanted to be released from LaFace Records, the label owned by Reid and Edmonds at the time.
When Michael Jackson learned what happened with his older brother, he told Reid that Jermaine would get over it.
''That's not really the problem,' I said. 'The problem was that he wants off the label now,' Reid explains in the book according to the Post.
Michael Jackson then asked if his brother signed a contract, to which Reid told him yes.
''Then he'll have to live with it because those are the rules,' Michael said and walked out,' Reid recounted.
'That Michael Jackson was one shrewd man,' Reid writes in the book.
'He was not wrong, but you didn't expect that from Peter Pan. You expect a little compassion or something. No. Cold as ice.'
Eventually the situation was resolved with Jermaine in Atlanta, however, when they went back to working with him on his album, things became complicated again.
Reid claims that Jermaine told the due: 'I want to make a song about my brother. I want to talk about how he's treated me through the years, like how every time I find producers like you guys, he takes my producers. He doesn't care about his family or anybody but himself.'
Though they didn't want to produce a song dissing the King of Pop, they did not really have a choice because they had to make their artist happy.
Jermaine's song, Word to the Badd!, was picked up by radio stations across the country, but it reportedly enraged his younger brother who called Reid upset about it.
''You have to stop this,' [Michael] said. 'You're the head of the label. You have to kill this. This isn't good,'' Reid explains in the book according to the Post.
Jermaine called Reid to tell him that the song would stay on the radio after discussing the issue at his mother's house with his brother.
But Michael called after to tell Reid again that he need to stop the record from being played.
'The record disappeared off the air, as if it had never been there in the first place. I don't know what Michael did. I don't know if Michael did anything, but it went away in a flash,' Reid writes in his new book according to the Post.
Reid's new book will hit store shelves and be available for purchase online February 2.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...os-rival-Prince-messing-up.html#ixzz3yzI4Gzpu
