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.
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.
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