Quincy Jones Says Michael Jackson’s ‘XSCAPE’ Was ‘About Money’

Quincy Jones made some of Michael Jackson’s biggest hits, but he’s not a fan of his new stuff.
In an interview with the Canadian public radio station CBC (via Billboard), Jones says that the posthumous MJ album, XSCAPE, which was spearheaded by L.A. Reid and used older unreleased vocal tracks, was a ploy to make some cash.
“They’re trying to make money. And I understand it,” he said. “Everybody’s after money, the estate, the lawyers. It’s about money.”
Related: Listen: Michael Jackson’s ‘Love Never Felt So Good’ Gets EDM Remix
When asked if it bothered him that they were planning to continue to release older recordings, Jone said, “Yeah, but it’s not my business anymore. They’re not our business.”
Last October, Jones filed a $10 million breach-of-contract lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court in connection with Jackson’s projects released after the singer’s death in 2009. In his complaint, Jones said that master recordings he worked on were “wrongfully edited and remixed” to deprive him of profits. In the court papers, Jones also says that he has been denied credit for his work on the late singer’s releases and that MJJ Productions and Sony Music have entered into side deals taking profits that should have been included in the calculation of royalties.
Related: Watch a Michael Jackson Hologram Perform ‘Slave To the Rhythm’ at Billboard Music Awards
Jones isn’t the only one who believes this posthumous album was orchestrated to make a little dough. The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney, whose band’s new album, Turn Blue, came out the same week as XSCAPE, told Rolling Stone that XSCAPE was “bulls–t” and that it was only released because “L.A. Reid needed a new boat.”
In a recent interview, Reid said there were definitely more Michael Jackson albums in the works, but gave no details of when those would be expected to come out. He also promised that a collaboration between the King of Pop and Justin Bieber was on its way.