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Meeting with Jermaine About "Word to the Badd"

Date range assessed by the fact that “Word to the Badd” leaked November 2, 1991

Jermaine Jackson, “You Are Not Alone: Michael, Through a Brother's Eyes” autobiography

I was upstairs at Hayvenhurst when II heard Michael in the lobby and formal, ominously hushed voices—a sound you’d normally associate with a grim summit. I came down to find him, Mother and Joseph waiting for me in the library. He looked solemn as he took the sofa seat 90 degrees to my right, our knees almost touching. He had Mother at his side, and Joseph took the sofa directly opposite me, at the far end of the coffee-table. I cannot remember a time when we’d previously had a bust-up of any kind, not even as children. So the awkwardness between the two of us was alien. First, the distance. Now the discord.

At first, we avoided eye-contact. Michael looked down. I stared at Mother. Joseph looked like he wanted to bang our heads together, but said nothing: a father intently watching his sons work something out on their own.

It was Mother who got things going, reminding us about love and how close we were; that it should never have come to this. I went first. Not with an apology, but with the undercurrents. It is a conversation that remains vivid. “We used to be close,” I said, “but it’s been eight years . . . eight years, Michael. Eight years that we haven’t spent proper time together. I’m speaking for all of us, not just me.” He looked at me. Now we had eye-contact. I continued: “In those eight years, everyone has said everything they can about this family as if they know us and know you, and we should have stuck together but you went off and—”

“And for those eight years you thought I deserved that song?” he interrupted. “That is hurtful, and I didn’t expect that . . . not from you, Jermaine.”

“I didn’t write it.”

“You sang it.”

“I sang it when I was upset, but those lyrics don’t reflect how I feel about you and you know it,” I said.

“You put your voice to those lyrics,” he said, forcing his point home.

I could see in his eyes how hurt he was, and it killed me, knowing that I was responsible. “I’m sorry I hurt you,” I said. My betrayal acknowledged I tried to explain how I had reached out to him numerous times, leaving messages, and how frustrating that felt. “Like the King Tut movie idea you ignored . . .”

“I don’t know anything about a King Tut movie,” he said, looking genuinely surprised. “I didn’t get any of those messages.”

“Doesn’t that tell you something? That the people around you are not passing on messages from us!” I said, feeling agitated all over again, renewing my suspicion that our messages were being filtered by his gatekeepers.

Michael promised to look into it.

“But that still doesn’t excuse how much time you let pass during those eight years,” I reminded him. If we’re going to do this, let’s bring it all out, I thought.

Michael went into a long-winded justification, saying it wasn’t deliberate, he was just busy. There had been a lot of traveling and touring, and recording and shooting videos. He went on and on with what I considered to be rationalising.

Eventually I had heard enough. “BUT, MICHAEL, WE’RE YOUR FAMILY! You’ve GOT to make time for family!” I yelled, and, in a fit of frustration, I slammed my fist on the coffee-table. The cups and saucers jumped on the silver tray and Michael almost leapt out of his skin. There was something so timid and fragile about him, so easily startled, that I felt bad for raising my voice. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to make you jump . . .”

Then he smiled. “Look at your face,” he said, and then he started to laugh. “You’re so uptight!” As kids, we’d laughed nervously in the most serious of situations and Michael’s chuckling, made me laugh now. With that, everyone relaxed. Everything that had seemed so serious now seemed silly and pointless, and we wrapped up the big talk by mutually accepting fault. We both stood, gave each other the biggest hug and said, “I love you,” almost in unison.

From that day on, Michael turned up at more Family Days, even if he never again became regularly available to us, as he had been in the old days. The main thing was that we had cleared the air.

To this day, some of Michael’s fans hold “Word to the Badd” against me in a way that he did not, but ultimately what mattered was forgiveness between brothers. As family, you don’t look at a dispute in the same way the public does—the issue was blown out of proportion on the outside, increasing the perception of us as a dysfunctional family. Sometimes it seemed that we weren’t allowed to argue, lest someone suggest we were a family “at war.” The truth was that our difficulties were no bigger or smaller than any other family’s, but they became magnified by my actions and Michael’s fame. Thankfully, we’ve always been able to put matters into perspective and move on. It takes a lot more than a few ill-considered lyrics to break the ties of kinship between us.

Teddy Riley, Rolling Stone (January 9, 1992)

“Michael does call his family. All this rumor about him not calling anybody, him not answering the calls – come on. I've been there plenty of times when Michael was talking to his mom, and I've spoken to his mom and I've spoken to Janet. It's a bunch of crap. That record ["Word to the Badd!!"] was a desperate attempt for fame.

"We anticipated a lot of people saying a lot of stuff about Michael," says Riley. "Hammer going after Michael and Jermaine going after Michael. We anticipated that. That's why we wrote songs like 'Trippin' ['Why You Wanna Trip on Me'] and 'Jam.' We know that people are after him, people are talking about him. But we didn't get too direct, we didn't say anybody's name. 'Cause when you're too direct, it gets boring."