Jaafar Was SHOCKED After DISCOVERING Michael Jackson’s 5 Greatest Magic Tricks – Hw
That was the first one that I felt like I was watch I don’t know what I was watch I just knew it was it was magical especially once he he does the lean. That blew my mind seeing him do the lean and I I always thought he had superpowers. Well, you know, as an as an uncle and in until I really thought until I had the knowledge of it was trick it was a trick for with the shoes that he had.
Jaafar and I have one thing in common. We both thought Michael Jackson knew magic. To learn Michael’s secrets, Jaafar built an entire research room just to understand Michael Jackson. Every wall was covered in his quotes, his handwriting, and a full timeline of his life. I’m creating this research room where I put everything I can find on Michael.
All his dislikes, all of his likes, what he what he loves, what he loves to eat, what he doesn’t like, you know, so I just wanted to familiarize myself with everything about Michael in a place where he lived and where I grew up as well. It’s a timeline. From 1962 all the way until 1996, which is the year I was born.
And it’s very inspiring. He studied private journals, poems, and personal affirmations nobody else had access to. And the deeper he dug, the clearer it became. Michael’s performances were never just talent. They were engineered illusions built on psychology and secrets nobody caught. These are some of the secrets Jaafar learned during his research.
When Michael Jackson premiered the 45-degree lean in the Smooth Criminal music video, people around the world lost their minds. It looked like he was floating, like gravity had just given up on him. And for years fans debated how he did it. Some thought wires, some thought of magnets, some thought of pure core strength.
But Jaafar, digging through the archives, discovered the truth. And it’s even more genius than anyone imagined. Little little nuances is you may not know until you really break down every frame for frame. So, that was the most difficult to learn, honestly. Michael Jackson didn’t just invent a dance move. He invented a whole system.
Working with his wardrobe designers, Michael Bush and Dennis Tompkins, Jackson developed specially designed shoes with a V-shaped groove cut into the heel. Beneath the stage, a metal peg would rise at the exact right moment. The dancer would slide the heel forward, locking the shoe onto the peg. Suddenly, the performer was anchored to the stage, free to lean far beyond what physics should allow.
These boots were made not just for walking. One thing we worked with Michael is if it, you know matter what it was, and I hate to say what it cost or the the processes took to get to it, if it didn’t work the way he danced, it came off. The move was so innovative that in 1993, Michael Jackson actually received a US patent for a method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion.
The patent was filed four years after the move was first performed. That meant anyone could have stolen the idea, but Michael didn’t care about the patent protection. And the lean wasn’t just engineering. It required incredible physical strength. The dancer’s core, back, and leg muscles had to work hard to keep the body straight at that extreme angle.
One small mistake, and you’d fall flat on your face. In fact, during a 1996 concert in Moscow, one of the stage pegs failed to retract from Michael’s heel and he fell on stage. That moment, though embarrassing, proved the engineering was real and dangerous. During the Dangerous World Tour from 1992 to 1993, Michael Jackson shocked audiences with one of the most jaw-dropping stage exits ever conceived.
At the end of every show, during Man in the Mirror, Michael would put on an astronaut suit, strap on what looked like a rocket belt, and literally fly out of the stadium. He’d soar over the crowd, gliding effortlessly before disappearing through the roof. The audience went crazy. It seemed like real magic. But when Jafar started researching, he discovered the truth, and it was straight out of a Hollywood movie.
Michael Jackson didn’t fly that jet pack. The man in the air was a professional stuntman named Kenny Gibson, one of the few people in the world trained to operate a real Bell rocket belt. At the time, Gibson was the only person who had a working rocket belt. He joined the Dangerous Tour for 43 shows. Here’s how it worked.
Michael would put on the helmet and astronaut suit on stage. Then, through a hidden trapdoor, he’d descend into the stage structure. He’d be whisked away in a getaway car while Gibson, wearing an identical suit, would begin the countdown. Gibson would take off, fly over the crowd, and exit through the roof.
The most genius part? Gibson was instructed to keep the mystery alive. For years, he refused to confirm who was flying because Michael wanted the illusion to live forever. Michael Jackson didn’t just perform at the 1993 Super Bowl, he multiplied himself in front of 133 million people. Two giant screens lit up on opposite ends of the Rose Bowl, and out of nowhere, Michael appeared on one, rising up like he’d been beamed down from space.
Smoke, a flash, and suddenly he’s standing there dancing like he’d just materialized. Then, the exact same thing happened on the second screen. Same pose, same reveal, like there were two of them at once. And just when the crowd couldn’t process that, the real Michael launched straight up from the stage itself and stood frozen like a statue for a full 90 seconds.
Three appearances, three different corners of the stadium, and nobody saw how any of it connected. Remember, this was 1993. No CGI, no deep fakes, no editing tricks people could Google and explain in 5 minutes. So, when Michael appeared on that first screen and just rose into frame out of nowhere, the stadium had no idea what they were watching.
On January 31, 1993, Michael Jackson performed at the 27th Super Bowl halftime show at the Rose Bowl. What he did that day changed live entertainment forever. Michael appeared on stage, and then he froze, completely still. No movement, no music, no dancing, just silence for 90 seconds. In front of 72,000 people inside the stadium and 133 million watching on television, Michael stood motionless.
The anticipation was unbearable. And then when he finally moved, the explosion of energy was unlike anything television had ever recorded. This wasn’t just a dramatic pause. This was a psychological weapon, a lesson in crowd control. Michael knew that withholding a performance creates more tension than immediate satisfaction.
By freezing, he forced the entire audience to lean in, to hold their breath, to make the moment matter. That was the greatest Super Bowl halftime halftime show of all time. I love watching them. Michael Jackson. So good. Michael Jackson. You can’t beat that. And it worked. Michael Jackson became the first performer ever to boost television ratings during the halftime break.
He didn’t just perform, he commanded 72,000 people with a single silent pose. This MJ, Michael Jackson, at 133.4 million viewers. 32 years ago. MJ performed at the Super Bowl in 1993 and he pulled these numbers. This is pre-internet, before the internet, pre-stream, before streaming was a thing.
MJ pulled these numbers without the internet, without streaming apps, without social media. You had to have a cable box or a TV set to watch him perform. And MJ pulled this number without all that. No internet, One of the most iconic moments in Michael Jackson’s live shows was his emotional breakdown during Man in the Mirror.
He’d get down on his knees, he’d start to cry. He’d look completely overwhelmed by the message of the song. And the audience would feel it, really feel like they were witnessing something profoundly personal. But when Jaafar dug deeper, he discovered something fascinating. Michael wasn’t just feeling the emotion, he was projecting it. Here’s the truth.
Michael Jackson could cry on command every night, during every performance. He’d tap into his deep feelings about humanitarian causes, about his own struggles, about the message of the song, but he’d also use the moment strategically. One of Michael’s most breathtaking moments was his rise above the audience on a mechanical crane.
During songs like Earth Song, Michael would step onto a metal platform and sweep over the crowd. To the audience, it looked like a miracle. It looked like something else entirely, engineering with invisible safety straps embedded in Michael’s jacket that held him firmly against the steel pole. He wasn’t in danger, but then came Munich.
During a 1999 benefit concert, the mechanical bridge collapsed. Michael fell 27 ft to the floor below. He suffered serious back injuries, but he did not stop the performance and was hospitalized later. The magic had a cost. Every impossible moment Michael created on stage came with risk. He pushed his body to the limit.
He endured pain. He kept performing even when the danger was real. On March 25, 1983, Michael Jackson performed Billie Jean at the Motown 25 television special. When he did the moonwalk for the first time, the whole world was shocked because people had never seen anything like it. Michael didn’t invent the moonwalk.
The move known as the backslide existed in street dancing circles for years. Michael was taught the move in 1981 by soul dancers Geron Casper Candidate and Derek Cooley Jackson. Where did the moonwalk come from, actually? Well, the moonwalk came from these beautiful children, these black kids who live in the ghettos and, you know, the inner cities, who are brilliant.
They just have that natural talent for dancing. Any of the new hot the running man, any of these dances, they they come up with these dances. All I did was enhance the dance. So, what Michael’s moonwalk different? It was the presentation. The way he timed it to the snare drum. The way he moved his shoulders. The calm face.
The setup, teasing with small steps, holding the room with a still glance, and then unleashing the glide in one clean line. He made it feel newly minted. When Michael Jackson released the Thriller music video in 1983, the zombie transformation sequence terrified and amazed audiences. His eyes turned yellow, his teeth sharpened into fangs, his face transformed into something monstrous, all under the full light of the moon.
For millions, it looked like pure magic. Jafar discovered the transformation was entirely practical. It was created by legendary Hollywood special effects artist Rick Baker, who used foam latex prosthetic masks. No CGI, just incredible artistry. Baker’s team created full life casts of Michael’s face, then built progressive stages of the transformation.
The final effect was achieved through stop motion replacement photography and cross dissolves in the editing room. No wires, no computers, just old school movie magic. During his live shows, Michael Jackson would sometimes change outfits in less than 15 seconds. To the audience, it looked like magic.
One moment he’s wearing one outfit, the next he’s in something totally different. Now, look how smooth he get into his clothes for Dangerous. Look how fast bro just go back there and switch into his Dangerous outfit. We 15 seconds in. Look how fast he going. Look at the distractions in the mid- in between. Yeah. And just like that, he in it.
Designers Michael Bush and Dennis Tompkins created specially designed jumpsuits with hidden zippers, Velcro fastening strips, and elastic seams. In the darkness backstage, wardrobe assistants would quickly pull away the outer layers, revealing the new outfit underneath. It was a choreographed dance backstage, just as precise as the choreography on stage.
After months of research, training, and discovery, Jaafar Jackson didn’t just learn how Michael danced. He learned why Michael Jackson became impossible to replace. And that’s exactly what Michael’s fans have always said about him. It’s always funny when people try to compare superstars to Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson is the biggest star to ever walk this earth.
If you disagree, think about your star. Okay, you got it? Who is it? Yeah, I I thought so. Yeah, they’re not bigger than Michael Jackson. Every movement had a purpose. Every moment was designed. Every magic trick was actually a carefully engineered illusion built from hours of rehearsal, painful sacrifice, and relentless perfectionism.
And the most shocking thing Jafar discovered, Michael Jackson wasn’t performing magic, he was building it every night for decades. Sacrificing his body, his privacy, and his peace of mind to create moments that would outlive him. Now Jafar walks onto the same stage, dances the same moves, feels the same energy, but he carries something Michael never had, the knowledge of how the magic was made.
And somehow that makes him respect the illusion even more. Which Michael Jackson performance or magic trick amazed you the most? Drop it in the comments. We’d love to hear what blew your mind. If you enjoyed this video, make sure to hit that like button, subscribe to the channel, and turn on notifications so you never miss another video. Thanks for watching.
I will see you in the next video.
QQ4 Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The friendship began on a live television program in November of 1986 in the 11 seconds after Bob Dylan called Keith Richards music derivative on camera. Keith Richard’s response to that assessment, one sentence said without anger, without performance, with the specific directness of a man who has nothing to prove and knows it made Bob Dylan laugh.
Then made Bob Dylan go quiet. then made Bob Dylan say two words that people who know Bob Dylan say he almost never said to anyone. This is the story of those 11 seconds and the 40 years that followed them. The program was a live music interview special broadcast on an American network on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The format was simple.
Two musicians, a host, an hour of conversation about music and the state of it. The producers had assembled the pairing of Bob Dylan and Keith Richards with the specific calculation of television producers who understand that two people with equally strong and potentially incompatible views about what music is and what it should do will produce better television than two people who agree about everything.
The calculation was correct, though not in the way the producers had anticipated. Bob Dylan was 45 years old in November of 1986. Bob Dylan had released Empire Burlesque the previous year and had been on the road for most of the intervening period as part of the True Confessions tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Bob Dylan was in November of 1986 in one of the most prolific and restless phases of a career that had consisted almost entirely of prolific and restless phases. A career that had moved through folk, rock, country, gospel, and back again, that had been declared finished at least six times by the music press, and at each time continued with the serene indifference of a river to the opinions of people standing on its banks.
Bob Dylan had been redefining what music could be. Since 1962, Bob Dylan had invented and reinvented himself so many times that reinvention had become his defining characteristic, not in the superficial sense of a performer changing costumes, but in the deeper sense of a musician who had never allowed his work to settle into a form that could be anticipated or categorized from the outside.
Bob Dylan understood influence and originality and the relationship between them better than almost anyone alive in 1986. Bob Dylan had spent 24 years thinking carefully and specifically about where music came from and where music was going and what it meant that those two things were always in constant conversation with each other.
Keith Richards was 42 years old in November of 1986. Keith Richards had been playing guitar professionally since 1962. Keith Richards had built a career on a foundation of American blues and rhythm and blues. A foundation that Keith Richards had studied with the systematic devotion of someone who understood that the tradition he was building on was not incidental to the music he was making, but essential to it.
that you could not understand what Keith Richards did without understanding where Keith Richards had come from and what Keith Richards had been listening to since he was a teenager in Dartford with American Import Records and a secondhand guitar and no teacher except the recordings themselves. Keith Richards had never pretended otherwise. Keith Richards had in fact spent considerable energy across his career making the lineage explicit, naming the artists, citing the recordings, insisting on the acknowledgement of influence that the mainstream music
industry had a long history of suppressing or ignoring or crediting to the wrong people. If anything, Keith Richards was more transparent about his sources than most musicians of his generation. Keith Richards had always said openly that the Rolling Stones came directly from the blues, that Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson and the specific tradition of the Mississippi Delta were not background influences, but foundational ones.
The music Keith Richards made was in direct and sustained conversation with that tradition, something Keith Richards considered not a limitation, but a responsibility and a form of respect. The interview had been running for 8 minutes when the host asked Bob Dylan about the current state of rock and roll.
Bob Dylan answered with the density and the indirection that characterized Bob Dylan’s responses to direct questions, turning the question over, approaching it from an unexpected angle, finding his way to what he actually thought through a series of observations that moved like a river rather than a road. Bob Dylan was not a straightforward interview subject.
Bob Dylan had been asked about rock and roll in hundreds of interviews across 24 years and had developed the habit of treating the question as an invitation to think out loud rather than a request for a prepared position. The producer Gerald Sherman said afterward that in the first 8 minutes of the interview, he had been slightly anxious, not because anything was going wrong, but because nothing was going anywhere in particular yet.
The interview had the feeling of two conversations happening simultaneously. Bob Dylan’s internal one and the external one visible to the cameras. And Gerald Sherman was not certain in those first eight minutes that the two conversations would converge into something. Bob Dylan talked about influence. Bob Dylan talked about originality.
Bob Dylan talked about the difference between music that absorbed a tradition and transformed it and music that absorbed a tradition and reproduced it. And then Bob Dylan made his assessment. And then Bob Dylan said with the precision of a man making a musical assessment rather than a personal judgment that the Rolling Stones work, and Bob Dylan was specific, naming Keith Richards as the guitarist whose approach he was discussing was derivative in a way that Bob Dylan found limiting.
Bob Dylan said it without hostility. Bob Dylan said it as a technical observation about the relationship between source material and the work that came from it. Bob Dylan said that Keith Richards played the blues the way the blues had already been played, rather than using the blues as a starting point for something that had not yet been played.
Keith Richards had been listening to this with the specific attention Keith Richards gave to things being said about music by people who knew music. Keith Richards did not interrupt. Keith Richards did not shift in his chair or display any of the visible signals of a person preparing a defensive response. Keith Richards listened to Bob Dylan’s complete observation all the way to its conclusion without interrupting and without displaying any visible signal of preparing a response.
Then Keith Richards said one sentence. The sentence was not a rebuttal. The sentence did not defend Keith Richards music or argue for its originality or challenge Bob Dylan’s characterization of what the blues meant in the context of rock and roll. The sentence was something else entirely, something that required a specific kind of confidence to say.
The confidence of a person who has spent long enough thinking about the same things as the person they are talking to that they can locate the exact point where their thinking diverges and say something useful about that point rather than simply defending their own position. The sentence acknowledged everything Bob Dylan had said, the assessment, the distinction Bob Dylan was drawing, the specific musical concern underlying the observation, and then turned it 90°.
Keith Richards took Bob Dylan’s own framework, the one Bob Dylan had used to analyze Keith Richards relationship to the blues tradition, and applied it back to Bob Dylan’s work with the same precision Bob Dylan had used to apply it to Keith Richards. Spare aimed. The sentence asked Bob Dylan something about Bob Dylan’s own music, about the relationship between Bob Dylan’s sources and Bob Dylan’s output that Bob Dylan had not been asked on television before.
The sentence did not attack. The sentence illuminated. Bob Dylan laughed. The laugh was not the polite laugh of someone responding to a joke. The laugh was the involuntary laugh of someone who has been genuinely surprised. The specific kind of surprise that a person of exceptional intelligence experiences when someone else’s intelligence exceeds their expectations.
Bob Dylan laughed for 4 seconds. Then Bob Dylan stopped laughing. Then Bob Dylan was quiet for 3 seconds in the way that Bob Dylan was quiet when Bob Dylan was thinking rather than performing thought. Then Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” The producer in the booth, a man named Gerald Sherman, who had been working in television for 14 years, said afterward that in 14 years of live television production, he had never heard Bob Dylan say those two words in a public forum.
Gerald Sherman said he had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions and had observed Bob Dylan in numerous other contexts and that you’re right was not a phrase that Bob Dylan deployed easily or often because Bob Dylan had spent 24 years being right about music in ways that other people eventually caught up with. And the experience of being right ahead of everyone else does not generally produce a man who says you’re right readily when someone else makes a point.
The host of the program, a journalist named Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said afterward that the 11 seconds between Bob Dylan’s assessment and Bob Dylan saying, “You’re right,” were the most extraordinary 11 seconds of television she had been present for. Patricia Wells said that what she witnessed in those 11 seconds was not a debate or a confrontation or a celebrity exchange of competing opinions.
Patricia Wells said what she witnessed was one musician recognizing another musician as an equal, which was in the specific context of Bob Dylan in 1986, not something that happened in public very often. The interview continued for another 42 minutes after those 11 seconds. The conversation between Bob Dylan and Keith Richards in the remaining 42 minutes was described by everyone who watched it as fundamentally different from the first 8 minutes.
The host, Patricia Wells, who had been conducting music interviews for 12 years and understood the difference between the performance of conversation and actual conversation, said that at approximately the 9-minute mark, something shifted in the studio. That the formal interview, architecture dissolved, and what replaced it was something less structured and more genuine.
Bob Dylan and Keith Richards talked about influence and originality and the blues and what it meant to build on a tradition without being consumed by it. They talked about specific recordings and specific musicians with the specificity of two people who had spent their entire adult lives thinking about these things and rarely found another person who had thought about them with equivalent care.
They talked about where music came from and where music was going and whether those two questions were actually one question or two. Patricia Wells said afterward that she had asked approximately four questions in the remaining 42 minutes because Bob Dylan and Keith Richards did not require questions. They required only a room and a camera and the shared understanding that what they were saying together was worth recording carefully.
She said it was the best interview she had ever conducted and that she had conducted the smallest part of it. After the program, Bob Dylan and Keith Richards were in the corridor outside the studio when the host Patricia Wells passed them. Patricia Wells said she did not stop because she did not want to interrupt.
She observed them for approximately 30 seconds from a distance. She said they were talking with the ease of people who had known each other for years rather than people who had met for the first time 2 hours earlier. She said that something had shifted between them during the broadcast that the broadcast had made permanent rather than temporary.
She continued down the corridor and did not look back. She said in her account of that evening that she had decided in that moment not to interrupt the conversation because some conversations are more valuable than any question a journalist might ask and that the conversation she had observed for 30 seconds in the corridor outside the studio was one of them.
She had been a music journalist for 12 years. She recognized the difference. Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have maintained their friendship across four decades. They have appeared together at various events, most significantly at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, where people who were present described them as inseparable for most of the evening, occupying the same corner of the backstage area and talking with the concentrated attention of people who only have a limited amount of time together and intend to use it
well. Bob Dylan has spoken about Keith Richards in interviews with the specific thoughtful care that Bob Dylan reserves for musicians whose work Bob Dylan considers genuinely important rather than merely culturally prominent. Keith Richards has spoken about Bob Dylan in similar terms with the specific respect of someone who recognizes in another person a commitment to music that goes deeper than career.
Neither Bob Dylan nor Keith Richards has made a public statement specifically about how the friendship began or about the November 1986 interview. Bob Dylan has not mentioned the 11 seconds. Keith Richards has not mentioned the sentence. The interview exists in the archive. The 11 seconds are there. The laugh is there. The two words are there.
What is also there for anyone who watches the interview from its beginning and pays attention to the shift that happens at the 9-minute mark is the specific moment when two people who thought they were appearing on a television program discovered they were actually talking to each other. What Keith Richards said in that one sentence has never been officially reported.
The people who were in the studio that evening, Gerald Sherman, Patricia Wells, the floor crew, the two camera operators, the makeup artist who was watching from the side of the set, have described the sentence in consistent terms. They have described its effect. They have described Bob Dylan’s laugh and Bob Dylan’s silence and Bob Dylan’s two words.
They have not repeated the sentence itself in the specific understanding that the sentence was said between two musicians on a television program and that its power resided in the specific context of that exchange and would not survive removal from it intact. What can be said is this. Keith Richards said something to Bob Dylan about Bob Dylan’s music that used Bob Dylan’s own observation about Keith Richards as its starting point and arrived somewhere that Bob Dylan had not anticipated.
Keith Richards turned Bob Dylan’s assessment 90° and showed Bob Dylan something about the music they had both spent their lives making that Bob Dylan recognized immediately as true. And Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” Two words said by Bob Dylan in public on live television in 1986 to Keith Richards in response to a single sentence Keith Richards had said about music.
Two words that Gerald Sherman, who had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions, said he had never heard Bob Dylan say in a public forum. Two words that Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said were the most significant two words she had heard in those 12 years. Not because of their content, but because of who said them and what it cost to say them and what it meant that Keith Richards had produced them in 11 seconds from a conversation that began with Bob Dylan calling Keith Richards’s music derivative. And Keith Richards and
Bob Dylan have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The sentence did its work in 11 seconds on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The work has been ongoing ever since. If this story moved you, subscribe and leave a comment below. Have you ever said something to someone that turned a potential disagreement into an unexpected and lasting connection? Tell us about it in the comments below.
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