Harlem Nights

JACKO: HELL UP IN HARLEM
National Enquirer

The King of Pop was so scared during the film of classic Bad rock video shot on location in Harlem he held hands with his bodyguard - Wesley Snipes!

Snipes played a gang leader in the 16-minute music video in 1987 but Jacko was terrified of the notoriously dangerous rough neighborhood.

"I think Michael was a little scared being in Harlem," Snipes told GQ mag.

"We were holding hands walking down the street. I was like, 'Hang in there, Michael. Don't worry about it, brother - I got you.'

"I went from being the actor in the scene with him to body-guarding him," Snipes revealed.

"The people were calling out his name - some favorably, some not so favorably. Some were happy that Michael was in the hood; some were like, 'Yo, Mike, get the f**k out of the hood.

"And he's hearing this. They felt detached from Michael. They felt as though Michael had moved from the black community.

"He turned to me, and he says, 'Are you scared?' I was like, 'What? Scared of what?'

'You know, the people and everything. Aren't you scared of them?'

"I was like, 'Nah, Mike. I grew up here. This is all good. Are you scared?'

"He was like, 'Yeah, a little.'"

The first time I read this story I had a pretty good chuckle about being MJ being so soft that he had to hold Wesley Snipes hand but then I figured since the video was shot at night he probably just had to hold on to Wesley because he couldn't see him. Because Wesley Snipes is the darkest man in the world. Plus, why would MJ be scared of a mob of ghetto folk. Sure, he spent much of his life in a pampered L.A. manor but he had several years of life in Gary, Indiana with a father that beat him like a salvation army drum (which is coincidentally the first type of drum the Jackson 5 owned.) Given the choice between shooting a video in Harlem and spending five years with Joe Jackson in his prime I will definitely take the former.