The Double-Dip Mentality

[Doc]

Mr Jackson's pre "Thriller" appearance was no obstacle to his making plenty of dough.  :D  Fame has its hazards.

I read your characterization of these various "artists" as victims of some conspiracy.  (Am I reading something into that?)  My take is that some of them are victims of their own egos and greed.  That said, agents and star makers, clever people, have been playing talented and naive people like cheap banjos for a very long time.  Greed knows no ethnicity, no color line, no nationality. ;-)

What might Public Enemy have said, lyrically, about the damage greed can do?  Perhaps something like:

"Fight the Power!
Fight the Power of Greed!"

Occhi
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Ah, but he made Thiller, bleached his skin considerably, put on a lot of makeup to look even lighter, shot the album cover, and then sold more records than he knew what to do with. Also, the powers that be got Michael to get rid of his afro and his nose... You will notice that he had his nose narrowed on the Thriller cover. He crossed that "white wall." Barry Gordy did the white bread treatment on Diana Ross back in the 70s to clean her up... And sure enough, more white folks bought her albums. Barry Gordy was good at that. Taking poor black folks from the streets of Detroit with hopes and dreams, snaring them in contracts that are pretty much selling their souls, and then he would "scrub the black out of them." Fix their hair, refine them, voice lessons to correct black pronounciations, accents, and consonants, and put them through a sort of finishing school to make them appeal to the white audience as much as possible.

And Public Enemy did write a song about greed. Almost everything they sing.