From the album HIStory, an uncharacteristically aggressive song, with vocals to match.

When Michael Jackson started hanging around Jordan Chandler, the boy at the center of the 1993 child molestation allegations, his estranged father, Evan, quickly made moves to get back into his son’s life, mainly to get favors from Jackson. When Jackson’s relationship with the Chandlers, particularly Evan, deteriorated around mid-1993, Evan then attempted to privately extort Jackson with the accusations, before eventually going public with them just as Jackson began the third leg of his Dangerous world tour.

Jackson denied the allegations, and was never charged, but ended up settling a civil suit with the Chandlers in 1994, due to essentially being railroaded into having a civil suit take place before a criminal one, which would’ve jeopardized his right to a fair criminal trial. Tellingly, despite the settlement still allowing for a criminal trial to go forward, the Chandlers stopped cooperating with the police after the settlement, and Thomas Sneddon, the allegedly biased District Attorney on the case whom Jackson also had choice words for, saw to it that Californian law was changed so a civil trial couldn’t go ahead of a criminal one – a change that eventually got Jackson tried by jury in 2004 on similar charges, but ironically may have played a role in his acquittal.

After the civil suit settlement, Jackson began recording sessions for what eventually became HIStory, and wrote and recorded “This Time Around” in response to Chandler’s actions, and not only subliminally dissed Evan Chandler, but made it clear he wasn’t going to be taken advantage of again. Evan would attempt to sue Jackson again for breaching the settlement’s confidentiality agreement with HIStory, but the case was thrown out.

Jackson reached unparalleled heights in his music career, hence the hysteria around his life, and the many people who repeatedly tried to rip him off. Notorious B.I.G can relate to this, and drops a verse about how they both share similar problems.

Despite only making average sales by Jackson’s standards, HIStory pushed 20+ million copies – a top 100 in all time album sales.