Number Ones by Michael Jackson
Number Ones is a greatest hits album by American recording artist Michael Jackson. It was released on November 17, 2003 worldwide and on November 18, 2003 in the United States by Epic Records and Sony Music. Number Ones was Jackson's first proper compilation album with Sony, after the release of HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I in 1995 (and after the re-release of that album as Greatest Hits: HIStory, Volume I a single-CD, only-hits edition in 2001). The album included Jackson singles that reportedly reached #1 in charts around the world. Number Ones was successful around the world, originally reaching #1 in the UK and #13 in the United States. It proved to be an enduring catalog seller, eventually returning to the top spot in the UK and US charts in 2009 after Jackson's sudden death. It stayed as the number one selling album in the United States for six non consecutive weeks and for twenty-seventh week on the Top Pop Catalog Albums chart. but as a 'catalog' title, Number Ones was excluded from the Billboard 200 denying Jackson a seventh solo No.1 album on the chart. The rules preventing titles older than 18 months to chart in the Billboard 200 were subsequently changed in the fall of 2009 due to the posthumous success of Jackson and The Beatles re-mastered re-releases. At the 2009 American Music Awards, Number Ones claimed two awards - Favorite Rock/Pop Album and Favorite Soul/Rhythm and Blues Album.
At its original 19-track length, <i>Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon</i> was a brawny last hurrah for Brooklyn MC Pop Smoke. The addition of 15 unreleased songs for the deluxe version turns the official debut of a tragically murdered star into a comprehensive archive of unrealised potential. Pop Smoke’s range expands just a little bit further here, the additions finding him dabbling in Afrobeats (“Tsunami”), downtempo R&B (“Backseat”) and spacey trap (“Be Clearr”). The expanded edition also doubles the original’s guest list, adding marquee names like Jamie Foxx, Gunna, Young Thug, Davido, Burna Boy and A Boogie wit da Hoodie. There are also verses from Brooklyn MCs and long-time Pop Smoke affiliates Fivio Foreign, DAFI WOO and Dread Woo. If there is a single song on <i>Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon (Deluxe)</i> that comes off as more disturbing than Pop Smoke could have foreseen, it is “Hotel Lobby”, where he remarks, “I got a feeling n****s tryna line me.”
