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Singer Michael Jackson dead at 50

Posted by Natalie Yarbor - email

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Michael Jackson, the record-breaking, sensationally gifted "King of Pop" who emerged from childhoodsuperstardom to become the entertainment world's most influential singer and dancer, and the tabloid world's most disturbing celebrity, has died.

He was 50.

Michael Jackson's brother, Jermaine Jackson, cautioned at a hospital news conference in Los Angeles that the cause of death won't be known until an autopsy is performed.

He said Michael Jackson's personal doctor and paramedics tried to resuscitate Jackson at his rented home in Holmby Hills, not far from the UCLA Medical Center.

A team of doctors there also tried for more than an hour.

His death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre, sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s, when he was popular music's premier all-around performer, a uniter of black and white music who shattered the race barrier on MTV, dominated the charts and dazzled even more on stage.

Michael Jackson 's health had commanded as much publicity as his hit songs over the pop star's long chart-topping music career.

Plastic surgery, mysterious hospitalizations and reports of pill popping had long plagued the King of Pop.

In the early 1990s, Jackson 's dermatologist revealed the singer had a skin disorder known as vitiligo, which leads to white patches on the skin.

Over the years, Jackson underwent numerous plastic surgeries, including a nose job.

Jackson was also widely reported to be addicted to painkillers from pain he developed after he being burned while filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984.

During the 2005 molestation trial in which he was acquitted, Jackson appeared gaunt and had recurring back problems he attributed to stress.

Last year, a celebrity biographer claimed Jackson suffered from a rare respiratory disease and was in need of a lung transplant, a claim his publicists have denied.