Cassettes with around fifteen unreleased Michael Jackson songs were found in an abandoned storage unit north of Los Angeles, the Hollywoood Reporter reported Thursday, but these tracks may never be released.
The discovery – including a duet with rapper LL Cool J – was made by Gregg Musgrove, a former police officer, in a storage unit that belonged to Bryan Loren, a music producer who worked with the king of pop and is now untraceable according to the specialist magazine.
The recordings date back, according to the inscriptions on the cassettes, to the period 1989-1991, before the launch of the album “Dangerous” (1991) which notably included the title “Black or white”.
“I was listening to these recordings and I got goosebumps because no one had ever heard that before. Listening to Michael Jackson talking and joking was really, really cool,” Mr. Musgrove told The Hollywood Reporter of the discovered tapes.
These pieces will remain visibly unknown to the general public and will never be broadcast, according to the magazine. Because the Jackson Estate, which manages Michael Jackson’s inheritance, believes that owning the cassettes does not mean having the rights to them.
The entity has indeed clarified to the Hollywood Reporter that these tracks are not “new” and that there are original recordings “located in safes” of the estate, according to a spokesperson.
Gregg Musgrove, for his part, hopes that his finds, which he will present to auction houses, will bring him more than a million dollars. Michael Jackson has sold some 350 million records, including “Thriller,” the most purchased album of all time, and won 13 Grammy Awards. He was 50 when he died on June 25, 2009 in the Los Angeles area.
