The funky, Timbaland-produced love song “Chicago,” a “contemporized” track off Michael Jackson‘s upcoming posthumous album, Xscape, has come out. With a deep-bass groove and some Auto-tuned vocals, Jackson sings about picking up a woman on a trip to Chicago, before bursting into a frenzied chorus. The hook finds Jackson singing in both a smooth voice and anguished wail, as he sings about a woman who said she didn’t have a man, but had a family, all punctuated with a classic Jackson, urgent-sounding, “lie to you, lie to me” hook. The track was originally titled “She Was Lovin’ Me” when Jackson recorded it in 1999, and it was meant to appear on his 2001 album, Invincible, but didn’t make the cut.
To put together Xscape, the album’s executive producer, Antonio “L.A.” Reid, retrieved eight previously unheard Jackson tracks from the singer‘s recording vaults and gave them to producers to add a contemporary spin to them. While Timbaland is the album’s lead producer, other producers who worked on Xscape include Rodney Jerkins, Stargate, Jerome “Jroc” Harmon and John McClain. The regular edition of the record contains these “contemporized” versions of the songs, while a deluxe version will also contain the songs in their original form.
“Michael left behind some musical performances that we take great pride in presenting through the vision of music producers that he either worked directly with or expressed strong desire to work with,” Reid said in a statement. “We are extremely proud and honored to present this music to the world.”
The disco-leaning Xscape track “Love Never Felt So Good,” which also features Justin Timberlake, came out in April; Jackson had co-written the song in 1983 with singer-songwriter Paul Anka. Xscape is due out May 13th.
By Kory Grow