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Jackson was the mainstream, commercial juggernaut, while Prince was the alternative, avant-garde challenger. Jackson was the polished, sophisticated prodigy from Motown, while Prince was the raw, self-taught genius from the streets of Minneapolis. In most articles comparing the artists, they were depicted as polar opposites: Jackson was the innocent man-child to Prince’s licentious rebel. A National Enquirer story in 1985 claimed Prince was using ESP to drive Jackson’s chimpanzee, Bubbles, crazy. Throughout the ’80s hundreds of articles ran with sometimes real, but mostly fictional scoops about their rivalry. This public interest, of course, only grew when it came to their cryptic relationship with each other. No other ’80s stars - not Madonna, not Bruce Springsteen, not Bono - evoked the same level of fascination from the public. Both had built up legendary mystiques by rarely granting interviews and cultivating eccentric, constantly shifting images. Both were coming off massive, record-breaking albums in Thriller and Purple Rain. In 1986, then, Prince and Michael Jackson were at the top of their respective games, the musical equivalents of Magic and Bird. Upon his return from France, riding a creative high, Prince went to work on a collection of songs intended as a three-LP album entitled Crystal Ball, which was later consolidated into the critically acclaimed masterpiece, Sign O’ the Times. Its artistic ambition, however, was clear and it yielded Prince one of the most successful singles of his career with the funky #1 hit, “Kiss”. A stylized, black-and-white romantic dramedy set in the beautiful French Riviera and directed by Prince himself, the film failed to make a splash at the box office (or among most critics). Prince, meanwhile, saw the release of his own music film, Under the Cherry Moon (and accompanying soundtrack, Parade), earlier that summer. After months of working on the set of Captain EO, the artist was now busy recording songs and conceptualizing short films for his highly-anticipated new album, Bad. Everything he touched seemed to turn to gold. In the aftermath of Thriller, artists, filmmakers and corporations alike were jumping at the chance to work with him. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola (and produced by George Lucas), it demonstrated, among other things, Jackson’s considerable standing in the industry. Earlier that month, Jackson’s groundbreaking 4-D sci-fi film attraction, Captain EO, premiered to packed crowds at Disneyworld and Disneyland. The pop stars met to discuss the proposed standoff in late September, 1986. The King of Pop versus His Royal Badness. It would have been the showdown of the decade, an epic song-video exchange between the two towering talents of a generation.