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"Dangerous"

Date of recording confirmed on track sheet (Image 001)

Teddy Riley, co-writer, producer

"Dangerous was about a woman who was just so beyond, you know, beyond the best girl he's ever been with. That was the name of the album, so we thought about doing a song called Dangerous, and Michael came up with the hook. So I said, 'Let me get into the music'. I went to my lab and put the track together.

"The track evolved: Michael came in with the hook, I did the music and then we finalised the song. We used a drum machine, the Akai MPC-60, and a lot of the sounds from that and samples I had on my sample CDs. There's no science to it, I just feel my way through the production. I always feel my way – I never do anything the same."

“Hip-Hop Wired” (July 8, 2009) (archived)

[Another] memorable moment was we were in a session and he was singing a song in the room and an anvil case kind of fell his way and I don’t know if it really fell on him, but it kind of fell his way and he heard the loud sound of an anvil case falling to the ground. You immediately heard him saying, ‘Help,’ but it was almost like him doing that ‘Ooh’ like in that “Beat It” video. You heard that high-pitched voice saying, ‘Help! Help!’ and we were like, ‘What’s going on’ and then Bruce Swedien was saying, ‘I think something fell on him.’ Then we all went in the room. We wanted to find out if he was ok first. Then when we found out he was ok, he was like ‘the loud sound just scared me.’ After we found out he was ok, we just started laughing. You got to see if a person is alright. If they’re alright, then you laugh.

Bill Bottrell, co-writer, studio engineer, Gearslutz forum (September 26, 2009) (archived)

I wrote the music to "Dangerous" while fiddling around with "Streetwalker". MJ was on tour for Bad, I was working alone at Smoketree. I did much fooling around with midi sounds and samples. It was probably 1988. What was the little E-mu box? I cut lots of versions including one nobody's ever heard, consisting of samples of me playing brushes on a galvanized trash can, in place of all the drums and perc.

I quite liked them all, but "Igno-Dangerous" was my favourite.

I never felt competition with Teddy, and when MJ suggested Teddy do a version, I had no problem.. Hey, it's all about the writing.

Teddy's version rocks and sounds like the 90's, where mine was stuck in the 80's.

Everything was in divine order.

When prince Abdulla of Bahrain played me my old epic demo, I about fell over. I hadn't heard it in 17 years!

Did they credit me?

Now I wanna go find the trash can version.

Rob Disner, runner (errands)

When the title track "Dangerous" was being recorded, Michael was injured in the studio and had to be rushed to the hospital! A temporary recording booth that we had built for him collapsed and knocked him on the head just as he started singing.

He ended up being just fine, and for a long time, we used to play an early mix of the song which started with a sample of him screaming in pain as the walls came tumbling down!