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The Discussion of MJ's Unreleased Tracks

Bill Bottrell on the beginning of the Dangerous sessions:

"Michael and I started at Ocean Way. We only did 6 days before MJ bailed because the lounge where he set up office smelled of mildew. I did GTR overdubs on TYLA. We moved to Westlake C where John came in and fussed around with Turning Me Off."

- X.com, Nov. 24, 2025
 
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^ just copy&paste'ing the text again- just in case Bill decides to delete his posting

Michael and I started at Ocean Way. We only did 6 days before MJ bailed because the lounge where he set up office smelled of mildew. I did GTR overdubs on TYLA.
We moved to Westlake C where John came in and fussed around with Turning Me Off.
 
It might be real. It sounds a bit sped up though, since Wayne's voice normally isn't that high pitched.

Edit:
Okay it's real, here's a snippet featuring the original pitch:
 
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Soldier of Love said:
Thanks for mentioning that!
So, I used a bunch of vintage sources to compile my list. I bookmarked most of them for future reference. I literally have over a HUNDRED bookmarks on my browser, and about half of them are probably related to research I was doing. I would take a while to go through them all, but I'll list some of the most important ones:

First, World Radio History is PACKED with archives of vintage music trade magazines. Billboard alone was extremely helpful, as they used to have a section dedicated to artists that were currently in the studio. Other helpful magazines were Cash Box, Mix Magazine, R&B Report, Musician Magazine, Record World and EQ Magazine. There are news reports on Stevie Wonder producing The Jackson 5 at Record Plant, the recording of Triumph, Janet recording her first album, Rockwell recording "Somebody's Watching Me", the recording of "We are the World, you name it! I feel that these are EXTREMELY overlooked resources that are very helpful in anyone researching recording session dates.

I also found many newspapers on sites such as Google News Archive, and Newspapers.com. There are many more newspaper websites out there, but many of them require a paid subscription, which is why I haven't looked through many of them. Nevertheless, the ones I found were very helpful. Such as a newspaper from July 25, 1985 (if I remember correctly), which reported that Janet was in the Twin Cities the previous week recording with Jimmy and Terry.

Finally old fan websites are EXTREMELY helpful! Janet had some wonderful fan sites that are sadly defunct now. These sites stay up to date on where Janet was, and what she was doing. That was how I was able to speculate what studios she was in and who she was working with at different times. These sites have mostly been archived in the Wayback Machine. One is called Janet-Xone, another is called Friends of Janet. There was also a great Jackson website from the late '90s early '00s called Planet Jackson that had A LOT of updates on the progress of Michael's Invincible album!

And of course, I watched interviews, listened to podcasts, and watch behind the scenes footage to learn more. You guys should check out these links!
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That's some very deep research you've done. Do you have trackers for The Jacksons and Michael or is it just Janet?
 
Soldier of Love said:
I also did a quick search on O'Bryan Burnette II, and he apparently signed with A&M following the release of his 1986 album. So, "Oughta Be with Me" was probably "Rhythm Nation" sessions, which makes sense because Janet was shopping around for different producers before finally sticking with Jimmy and Terry in the end.
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Or it's possible that "You Oughta Be With Me" was for his ill-fated album with A&M, since he switched after December 1986 (when his album was released) and possibly left before 1987 was over (or even early in 1988) due to a change in management.
 
ChanceToDance said:

Is this real?
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Nothing against Lil Wayne, I quite him and his verse is tight, but I'm glad this wasn't released.

I don't mean to always bash the Estate all the time but honestly are they crazy? They had a perfectly good unreleased COMPLETED song in Xscape, why did it need a rap verse? Ironically along with APWNN, it's the most complete song on the album

Blue Gangsta could have done with a rap verse to serve as a bridge, for example. There is probably a few songs that need a bridge or more to them, were a rap verse might help it along but Xscape wasn't one of them.
 
SmoothCriminal1995 said:
Nothing against Lil Wayne, I quite him and his verse is tight, but I'm glad this wasn't released.

I don't mean to always bash the Estate all the time but honestly are they crazy? They had a perfectly good unreleased COMPLETED song in Xscape, why did it need a rap verse? Ironically along with APWNN, it's the most complete song on the album

Blue Gangsta could have done with a rap verse to serve as a bridge, for example. There is probably a few songs that need a bridge or more to them, were a rap verse might help it along but Xscape wasn't one of them.
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TBH Rodney's Beat was a great fit for a Rap Verse. I can justify their decision.
 
SmoothCriminal1995 said:
Nothing against Lil Wayne, I quite him and his verse is tight, but I'm glad this wasn't released.

I don't mean to always bash the Estate all the time but honestly are they crazy? They had a perfectly good unreleased COMPLETED song in Xscape, why did it need a rap verse? Ironically along with APWNN, it's the most complete song on the album

Blue Gangsta could have done with a rap verse to serve as a bridge, for example. There is probably a few songs that need a bridge or more to them, were a rap verse might help it along but Xscape wasn't one of them.
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I feel like I'm one of the few fans who can't stand the majority of the remixes. Slave to the rhythm, xscape, do you know where your children are, blue gangster and a place with no name are some of the absolute best unreleased songs they had and they absolutely butchered them IMO.

The only tracks I like on this are love never felt so good, (with Justin Timberlake), chicago and loving you. All the rest = trash.
 
Soldier of Love said:
These are Bill's Hayvenhurst session calendarss from the BAD sessions:

GeEQf43akAQj0yh

GeEQf45acAAZTzA

GeEQf45a4AA12Bc


GeEQR89bcAAn3no

GeEQR87akAET4yk

GeEQR88akAIZPR8

Here's what he's posted from the Dangerous sessions:

G6dqwrPbsAAmhZW

G6dwdMsboAAtxaW

BONUS: These are all of Bill's Victory sessions that were done at Can-Am Studios:

Dec. 21, 1983
Randy
12:00-6:00
Michael
7:00-1:30
Liberian Girl

Dec. 29, 1983
Can Am
7:00 - 1am
Vocs
"Don't Look Any Further"

Jan. 4, 1984
Jermaine
7:00-11:00
Dynamite

I'm still waiting for the rest of the Victory and Dangerous sessions...
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This is incredible to read. Working on Al Capone and Smooth Criminal at the same time?
 
I can't help but think it's crazy that collectors even managed to get their hands on those leftovers from the "Xscape" sessions, at this point what is it that they don't already own? I know lately we've heard things none of us imagined we'd ever be able to hear and all but this is still insane to me lol. A "Hot Fun [D'Angelo Mix]" leak could be well within the realms of possibility.

Or even some scrapped remix we haven't heard of, there's gotta be a few out there. No one knew "If You Don't Love Me" was remixed for both "Xscape" and "Michael" albums until Bill Bottrell mentioned it in his Twitter.
 
SeriousFX said:
That's some very deep research you've done. Do you have trackers for The Jacksons and Michael or is it just Janet?
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Yeah, I did one for The Jacksons and Michael as well, but it's not quite as organized. I hadn't planned on doing individual trackers for both separately, so I just put The Jacksons and Michael solo stuff together. This was especially helpful for the Motown era songs since some songs on the J5 albums were originally recorded by Michael solo (e. g. What You Don't Know, If I Don't Love You This Way). Also, most of the unreleased songs are missing because I wanted to focus on the music that I can listen to and compare. I will add more unreleased songs later. I just quickly put down recording dates for tracks as I found them so I wouldn't lose them.

I also had to drastically update the Motown songs when I discovered the master numbers for the singles and b-sides. These numbers give you an idea of when the songs were first recorded.

I'm not able to upload the Jacksons tracker, but here's a little crude sheet that I made that gives an overview of the Jackson siblings' individual recording sessions. It doesn't include Michael and Janet since I already have trackers for them. Also, I haven't took the time to nail the individual songs, especially since many of them are hard to find info about. Nevertheless, this sheet is the closest approximation to the "other" Jackson siblings' sessions:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZXW_sjuDcxiDXnPRnYXO-bWqpIWMbpGrX7YAwqiQb6g/edit?usp=sharing
 
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nextbigthing56 said:
I feel like I'm one of the few fans who can't stand the majority of the remixes. Slave to the rhythm, xscape, do you know where your children are, blue gangster and a place with no name are some of the absolute best unreleased songs they had and they absolutely butchered them IMO.

The only tracks I like on this are love never felt so good, (with Justin Timberlake), chicago and loving you. All the rest = trash.
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You're not the only one. I can't stand ANY of the remixes. I used to listen to them sometimes years ago, but once I started listening to the original mixes, I left the remixes in the dust.
 
dam2040 said:
Let's not get into the "Quincy said it so it must be true" game.
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He was not talking about any factual info where we can criticize him for being wrong: it was his opinion in retrospect that the song didn't work. I agree, it's not a good composition.
 
ChanceToDance said:
I can't help but think it's crazy that collectors even managed to get their hands on those leftovers from the "Xscape" sessions, at this point what is it that they don't already own? I know lately we've heard things none of us imagined we'd ever be able to hear and all but this is still insane to me lol. A "Hot Fun [D'Angelo Mix]" leak could be well within the realms of possibility.

Or even some scrapped remix we haven't heard of, there's gotta be a few out there. No one knew "If You Don't Love Me" was remixed for both "Xscape" and "Michael" albums until Bill Bottrell mentioned it in his Twitter.
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I’d like to hear HFITST 2014 version. It’s gotten quite a bit of praise, which is interesting because 2 people I’ve talked to said the original is “underwhelming”
 
kreen said:
He was not talking about any factual info where we can criticize him for being wrong: it was his opinion in retrospect that the song didn't work. I agree, it's not a good composition.
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But opinions aren’t allowed in the MJ Community!!! 🤬🤬
 
SmoothCriminal1995 said:
Nothing against Lil Wayne, I quite him and his verse is tight, but I'm glad this wasn't released.

I don't mean to always bash the Estate all the time but honestly are they crazy? They had a perfectly good unreleased COMPLETED song in Xscape, why did it need a rap verse? Ironically along with APWNN, it's the most complete song on the album
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Rodney said MJ loved hip-hop so I reckon he just wanted to incorporate a verse into the song. Wasn't there a rumor that he also did a version with a 2pac verse of xscape?
 
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