As The Velvet Rope Nears 30, Can We Finally Give Janet Jackson Her Flowers?
Nearly 30 years after The Velvet Rope, Janet Jackson’s influence can still be heard across alternative R&B.
Alternative R&B is having a moment. Kelela, fresh from the release of her critically acclaimed album, New Avatar, has cemented her legacy as a giant of the genre. The album, featuring collaborations with Pink Pantheress and Foushee, is a celebration of R&B at its best. Experimental, layered, and unapologetically black, New Avatar spotlights the textured intellectualism of a genre that's too often typified as the opposite. Steve Lacy has found comparable success with his latest project, Oh Yeah?, a psychedelic exploration of Lacy’s inner tumult - and what it means to be a 21st-century lover boy.
With the positive reception of these albums and recent sell-out tours from peers like FKA Twigs, alt-R&B is making a jump into the mainstream. For a genre that has conventionally been fringe, the move is laudable. Before celebrating the genre’s success, let’s be careful not to erase those who laid the blueprint for today’s generation, foremost among them, Janet Jackson.
As an artist who continues to push the boundaries of R&B, Jackson is undeniably a musical great. The recipient of 5 Grammy awards, 11 Billboard Music awards, and an induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, her résumé places her alongside the likes of Madonna, Whitney Houston, and another Jackson, who happens to be her big brother. Despite these accolades, Jackson’s artistic legacy is often underappreciated. Whilst Madonna is widely celebrated as the queen of pop, Jackson’s name doesn’t hold such weight in R&B - it’s time to correct that.
In 1986, Janet, the youngest of the Jackson siblings, was already a public figure, largely due to her last name. This changed with the release of her third album, Control. Produced alongside her long-time producers, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Control established Jackson as an independent artist, with a visionary sound that broke from the polished pop-soul of the Jackson 5 and rejected the glossy pop dominating the decade. For the first time, Janet was unmistakably - Janet. Her sound was neither R&B, nor funk, nor jazz, nor rap; it was something novel, an originality that catalysed the new jack swing of the 80s and 90s.
Over the following years, Jackson released two more albums, Rhythm Nation 1814 and Janet. They established Jackson as an artist unafraid to speak her mind; against the backdrop of Reagan’s conservative America, she sang about racism, poverty and social inequality; by Janet., she was exploring sex, intimacy and female desire with equal frankness. Retrospectively, these albums appear daring, bold, and punchy, all of which is true. And yet, Jackson had yet to truly embrace her status as a cultural trailblazer. Her following album, The Velvet Rope, would cement her status as an artist without inhibitions.
An album of inherent contradictions, The Velvet Rope was written whilst Jackson was battling intense depression, and yet, showcased her music at its most fearless. Produced again with Jam and Lewis, the album features a sample from Joni Mitchell’s ‘Big Yellow Taxi,’ a solo by violinist Vanessa Mae, and a snippet of Mike Oldfield’s ‘Tubular Bells’, famously used in The Exorcist. Jackson’s previous three albums had all been intentionally outward projects. They were calls for women to reclaim sexual, political, and financial freedoms, commentaries on the public injustices of the time. If her previous albums were megaphone statements, The Velvet Rope was Jackson inviting us to sit down, turn up the radio, and listen to what’s really been going on. Following the album’s release, she told The Washington Post, “I needed this album for myself, for people to know what was going on with me.”
Jackson’s skill lies in telling an intensely personal story, whilst allowing the audience space to insert our own sentiments; it’s both a peek into her world and an invitation for us to share ours with her. In ‘Free Xone,’ Jackson welcomes us into her sonic utopia. She imagines a reality with “one rule, no rules / one love, free zone / let’s get free.” Unlike her previous work, ‘Free Xone’ is not a direct call to change - its power lies in its imagination. It’s reflective of The Velvet Rope Jackson, subdued - yes, questioning - sure, but still resolute in her belief in a better, alternate reality.
Jackson’s musical legacy, particularly the daring precedent set by The Velvet Rope, continues to form the artistic blueprint for alt R&B today. The album, which celebrates its 30th anniversary next year, has been cited as a direct influence for SZA’s Ctrl and Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange. The Velvet Rope made space for female musicians of colour to centre tenderness, vulnerability and fragility in their music. Beyoncé’s Lemonade, Rihanna’s Anti, Summer Walker’s Over It, and the aforementioned New Avatar are illustrative examples of the creative freedom secured by Jackson’s ingenuity.
The album pioneered an experimentalism that underpins alternative R&B today. Its willingness to pair R&B with folk, jazz and electronic influences widened our understanding of what the genre could be. The album’s daring sound was accompanied by a new aesthetic that revolutionised the cultural imagination of how a black woman should look. Jackson was pierced, tattooed, her hair dyed a crimson red. She adopted a darker, more alternative style, one that had conventionally been associated with white artists.
Culturally, The Velvet Rope was an incremental revolution. Beyond music, it helped bring a more alternative vision of black femininity into mainstream pop culture. Whilst its immediate commercial impact was smaller than that of Jackson’s other work, its singularity lies in its capacity to make room for others. Artists like Syd, Willow, and Arlo Parks are examples of black female singers who intentionally embody an alternative aesthetic and have been able to move into the stylistic freedom The Velvet Rope helped push into the mainstream.
Until now, this article has intentionally omitted the 2004 Super Bowl nipple incident. During the now-traditional Super Bowl halftime show, Jackson’s naked breast was exposed by her co-performer, Justin Timberlake. Jackson, who was then at the peak of her powers, saw her music blacklisted from several music platforms, lost a lucrative offer to star in a Hollywood blockbuster, and lost her invitation to that year's Grammy Awards. Timberlake would go on to both attend the Grammys and win awards for Best Vocal Pop Album and Best Pop Vocal Performance.
Despite its notorious position in pop culture history and the material impact it had on Jackson’s career, I hesitate to include it in an article on her legacy. In an industry that relentlessly profits on the commercialisation of black bodies, why are we still so hung up over a nip-slip? Yes, the incident was shocking for the time, but was it any more confronting than Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’, or much of Timberlake’s more racy work? - I don’t think so. As time passes, and our collective memory of Nipplegate fades with it, let’s take a moment to finally give Jackson her flowers. For an artist so readily maligned and thoughtlessly discredited, we owe Janet a collective “I’m sorry, Ms Jackson,” if only there were a song for that…