EntertainmentHas Beyoncé Overtaken Michael Jackson as the Most Important Black Artist of Our Time?

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If it takes a living legend to know one, then Dionne Warwick must be one of our greatest experts on what makes an icon. And as the 78-year-old singer sees it, none of today’s biggest superstars – not Adele, not Taylor Swift, not even Beyoncé – would yet qualify for the I-word.

“I love her to death and can appreciate her talent,” she says of Bey the new issue of Essence magazine. “But that iconic status? It’s a long road.”

Warwick’s words offer a clue as to where she might stand on a debate recently waged on the Joe Budden Podcast: Has Beyoncé surpassed Michael Jackson to become the most important black artist of our time?

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Michael Jackson is Michael Jackson , Beyoncé is Beyoncé . They both are legends. So when i say Beyoncé is the greatest artist , vocalist, performer, and entertainer ever, i mean it. Beyoncè said nobody compares to Michael Jackson herself so idk why y’all go through these gymnastics to prove

Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, and dancer. Dubbed the "King of Pop"

Queen Bey certainly would qualify as a legitimate successor to the King of Pop. Like Jackson, she’s sold millions of records, racked up an impressive string of hits, and amassed a sizable fan base and fortune. Jackson’s 2009 death left a hole in the hall of hallowed black music stars that Beyoncé was primed to fill.

Is that Mission: Impossible, or Mission: Accomplished … and then some? Has the next Michael Jackson now surpassed him in standing in the black community? “Leaving Neverland” and the stain its sexual abuse allegations tattooed on Jackson’s reputation have left his legacy vulnerable. The scene would seem to be set for a new supreme musical hero – or heroine – to take over.

In some ways, Jackson’s and Beyoncé’s origin stories are eerily similar. Both were raised in red states (Beyoncé in Texas, Jackson in Indiana) by fathers who played a heavy hand in their early careers. Both broke out from successful groups to become even bigger sensations on their own. Both boosted their reps with groundbreaking music videos. Both assumed the title of music royalty.

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Michael Jackson never had the true benefit of music being available online for purchase or streaming. But, Beyoncé has one thing working for her if this was a true comparison; Bey never had any controversy She has made history as the first black face of a major international fashion brand

Michael Joseph Jackson (29 August 1958 – 25 June 2009) was an American singer-songwriter, dancer, businessman, and philanthropist. Often referred to by the honorific nickname "King of Pop", Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records.

But where one is celebrating and making black history, the other is black history – five decades of it. Beyoncé has driven some of the pivotal pop culture moments of this millennium – from “Independent Women” to “Single Ladies” to “Lemonade” to her Coachella “Homecoming” performance – but nothing in black entertainment in the last half century can match the impact of Jackson and “Thriller,” the all-time best-selling album by a black musician. That both have been so difficult to mute post-“Leaving Neverland” is a testament to their artistry and enduring importance.

Beyoncé is an undeniable creative force, but she’s first and foremost an entertainer. Her talent as a singer and performer is often jaw-dropping, but it takes a village to make a Beyoncé hit. Jackson was more of a self-contained, independent artist. He worked with accomplished producers but composed many of his greatest hits solo. As he proved with his career-making moonwalk on “Motown 25” in 1984, he didn’t need a battalion to leave a lingering impression.

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‘Me and Michael had our own language,” says Harrison Funk. “The buzzword was always the same. Impressed by his versatility, Jackson employed Funk as the official photographer for the Jacksons’ Jackson attempted to persuade Funk to ride it for a 10th time but by then the photographer felt sick

Michael Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer who spent over four decades in the public eye, first as a child star with the Jackson 5 and later as a solo artist .

His perennial success has been against substantial odds. In future centuries, he will serve as an example of how to remain a beloved star despite ever-mounting negative press. “Leaving Neverland” may have damaged his legacy irreversibly, but it’s impossible to erase him from black history.

Perhaps he has the edge over Beyoncé because he came to prominence during a different era, before fragmentation and declining sales compromised artists’ ability to transcend demographics and before social media inflated our perception of popularity. Jackson had broader mass appeal that spanned all races, ages, continents, and languages.

Jackson was a black revolution, and that was its opening shot heard around the world. It still reverberates today, louder than any musical salvo Bey has yet fired.

This isn’t to understate Beyoncé’s musical and cultural significance. In paying homage to black womanhood, she’s brought it into white living rooms in a way no other performer before her has. Though her black consciousness can seem choreographed and calculated at times, especially when compared to earthier forerunners like Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, and Mary J. Blige, Bey dares to go there in a way Jackson — who became figuratively and literally more colorless as time went by — never did.

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Michael Jackson : Black Superhero. African-American artists and intellectuals, from Jay-Z Michael had a second family: Motown was a deeply trusted brand in millions of black households. Historians always forget the third- most - important M to help black America get access to the promised land is Check out Michael Jackson ’s 20 best music videos. Thriller came out at the end of 1982, as the

Elvis was before my time whereas Michael was definitely the biggest individual star around when I was growing up and I witnessed first hand the impact of Having said that, everything I've read and seen regarding the development of rock/pop music points to Elvis as the originator of the rock star concept

Why Dionne Warwick thinks Beyonce isn't an icon yet (via (E! News)

At just 37, and 22 years into her career, she’s opening more doors and breaking down more barriers than any living black music star. She can headline Coachella in California and Glastonbury in England (the first black woman to do either) and still bring down the house at the Apollo in Harlem. Critics and fellow artists are as enamored of her as fans, and although her personal life makes headlines, unlike Jackson, her legacy is untarnished by scandal.

Jackson, for all his legendary-ness, was simultaneously a joke. The tabloid media dubbed him “Wacko Jacko,” and he was regarded as something of a mad genius, the wizard of weird. An eternal outsider, he was like the man-child who fell to earth. His oddness perhaps made him more vulnerable to the abuse allegations that have so damaged his legacy. Whether we believe them or not, most of us will never again be able to listen to Jackson’s music in the same way.

But here’s the catch: The music still holds up. It made him the biggest superstar in the world and catapulted him to near-mythic status. While Beyoncé’s Beyhive has taken unconditional fandom to extremes, the cult of Bey revolves more around her starpower than unprecedented creative brilliance. She rides musical trends with deft awareness, but she doesn’t invent them the way Jackson did.

Jackson is a 50-year-old cultural movement that remains perpetually in motion. He created the soundtrack to our lives, and even if it’s no longer blaring from every speaker, it left a mark on the black community, on the world, that’s more indelible than that of any music legend, with the exception of Elvis Presley and The Beatles.

Jackson has been gone for nearly a decade, and in some ways, his impact remains undimmed. With “Thriller,” he paved a way for black artists into the white mainstream and set an example for child stars hoping to successfully transition into adult icons. Without him, there might have been no Whitney Houston, no Janet Jackson, no Beyoncé. No black musician, living or dead, has impacted black and white culture more than Michael Jackson.

If he had never entered our lives, black music – black history – would not be the same. No matter what becomes of his reputation, his artistic contributions are untouchable. Neither scandal nor time can diminish them.

Alain Sachs: "I was the only one to know" that Michael Jackson came to see my

piece © Provided by Lagardère News The director Alain Sachs, whose play "Kean" begins at the Théâtre de l'Atelier on Tuesday, has told, at the microphone of Philippe Vandel, his amazing encounter with Michael Jackson.

Guest of Culture media this Friday morning, on Europe 1, to talk about his play Kean, at the theater of the Workshop from November 5 to January 5, the director Alain Sachs recounted the anecdote of his meeting with Michael Jackson . Or how "the king of pop" came to see his piece without anyone knowing ...

At the time, the musical The Wall Pass after Marcel Aymé, which earned Alain Sachs the Molière of the best director 1997, is played at Bouffes-Parisiens. "One day, they call me to say, 'Michael Jackson wants to come see the show.' It takes a while to make sure the information is the right one and you have to organize it in total secrecy because the lesser of its movements is tracked by billions of people ", jokes Alain Sachs at the microphone of Europe 1.

" I was the only one to know it ", specifies the director. It is he who is responsible for extinguishing the room before the beginning of the show, a little earlier than usual, to bring in the American star. "Because if people had seen Michael Jackson enter the room, we could not even start the show!"

"Francis Perrin had like a tachycardia attack"

It remains to know whether or not to prevent actors from the coming of the singer Thriller. "I told them, I have someone very important to come, that those who want to know it tell me." His actors gently mock him and the show starts with Michael Jackson and Stanley Donen, the director of Dansons en la pluie, in the audience.

Alain Sachs remembers: "Me, I spend my show hidden in the set to see Michael Jackson.And at the end of the show, I say to Francis Perrin, who had just sung and danced for two hours in front of Michael Jackson: ' It was Michael Jackson, then he made me, "very, very funny." The curtain opens, he sees Michael Jackson and there he has a tachycardia attack.

Impossible, however, for the "king of pop" to come and dine with the troupe. "His service, armed to the teeth," did not want to, says Alain Sachs, who still managed to get a photo with the singer, who congratulated him and shook his hand. "Without the gloves," says the director humorously.