I was in high school when Tupac Shakur was shot and I remember the disappointment I felt realizing that I would no longer get to hear music from one of my favorite rappers of all time. I also remember the excitement when I found out that Tupac had banked a full album before he died and it was going to be released shortly after his death, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory. Because of his then recent death, that album had a supernatural vibe to it that added to its appeal. Something was intriguing knowing that this was the last music he made and that it somehow forshadowed his death. However, since then a new Tupac album seems to come out almost every year. Unlike 7 Day Theory though, the albums since have had no creative input by Tupac himself and were nothing more than thrown together compilations published by various entities that managed to get their hands on a portion of the ridiculous amount of music the man made before he died. Each posthumous album has been significantly worse than the previous. Seriously, Tupac has to be one of the only artists in history to have more albums drop after his death than before (4 before death, 6 after with one still to be released). As recent news comes to light about plans for the the late Michael Jackson‘s estate, I feel the same thing maybe about to happen to him.

As we know at the time of Michael Jackson’s death he was in serious debt. To eliminate some of his dept he was embarking on a huge tour of Europe. Of course that never happened which means his dept remains and on top of that the promoters of the tour are out millions of dollars. So what now? Time to cash in on the man’s death of course! If you go into and major retail store you will see tons of Michael Jackson merchandise. There’s a new movie, This Is It, coming made from footage of that previously mentioned tour that never happened. It also appears that new MJ music is on the way.

Much like Tupac, Michael Jackson was constantly working on new music. Some reports say that he has somewhere around 100 finished but unpublished songs. Both R. Kelly and Akon have both said that they have a bunch of stuff they recorded with Jackson that they would like to see published. Some of those possible 100 songs will be released as a new two disc Michael Jackson album called This Is It due out on Oct. 27th. As you may guess, the album is being released as a companion to the film which debuts the very next day.

Michael Jackson fans will surely be happy to hear new material but does this mean that we are going to see the same thing we saw with Tupac? People scrambling to claim rights to songs just so they can cash in by releasing material that probably, for the sake of legacy, should have stayed unpublished?