I was about five when Michael Jackson’s Thriller album came out. My folks didn’t listen to a lot of R&B, especially not my dad. Yet, they listened to Thriller. I would hear it in the extremely hot backseat of my parents’ car while they ran errands when I was growing up in Florida. It would take up good sections of our road trips. It was a constant.

The other thing I remember about this era was how MTV would run the concert film of this tour late at night, around 9 or 10 PM, sometimes multiple nights a week, as a bit of a bridge to their overnight stuff. I was hooked on the performance, how effortless and cool it looked. Michael was just dope in those days.