Brittany Luce

His nose looked a bit slimmer than it had on the thriller cover, his chin more chiseled, and his complexion was now completely white.

However, he always maintained that this was the result of having developed hyperpigmentation caused by the skin disorder vitiligo.

So he got there through bad, which was his attempt to remind the public that he was still down.

The title track has an 18-minute-long short film that's directed by Martin Scorsese, and Jackson plays Daryl, a student at an elite, predominantly white boarding school who returns home to the rough streets of New York City.

And there, he reconnects with his Black and brown friends from the hood.

And one of those friends is played by then-newcomer Wesley Snipes, and all of them clown him for going soft and not wanting to do hood rat things with them.

The friction between oddball and musical genius was strong for Michael in the late 80s and into the 90s.

The era of bad and dangerous.

MJ was 20 plus years into his career by then.

In pop terms, he was an elder statesman and no longer cool.

He was, however, getting progressively weirder.

And everyone was noticing.

In a classic sketch from the comedy show In Living Color, comedian Tommy Davidson parodied Jackson in the video for Black or White.

OK, but enough black people were still rocking with him, even as some of us were also laughing at him.

John Singleton directed Eddie Murphy, Magic Johnson and supermodel Iman to play out a fantasy of ancient Egypt in the now classic video for Remember the Time.

That was from 1992.

And that same year, the Jacksons' An American Dream dropped, and its finale topped the Nielsen ratings with about 24 million viewers tuning in live.

That week, it beat out shows like Roseanne and Murder, She Wrote.

And then, in 1993, Jackson performed at the Super Bowl halftime show, laying out the template for the spectacle that it's become today.

He was also honored by the NAACP with the Entertainer of the Year Award, presented by Wesley Snipes.