Oh Janet...

If there was any public figure who suffered the most deeply as the result of a post-911, moral majority America, it was Janet Jackson. My Janet. Control was one of the first albums I ever bought with my own money. I have nearly all of her videos from every album up to The Velvet Rope committed to memory. "Throb," "Anytime, Anyplace," "70's Love Groove", "If", "We Go Deep", "Empty", "Funny How Time Flies" and "Got Til' It's Gone" were and still are mix favorites. I even had a girlfriend who looked a heck of a lot like her in her youth.

The woman has more money than she'll ever get to spend. She has a catalogue of hits rivaled only by a handful of other female performers. But if there's one thing that's been crystal clear in the last four years, it's that she wants her old life back, one filled the crossover appeal she lost forever when her ringed nipple fell out of that snug and shiny top of hers.

I didn't even see the malfunction live as I was talking to a woman in the kitchen of the party while it was on TV. But I saw it later. I saw how JT instantly morphed back into the white boy from N'Sync just in time for the sound bytes to get rolling. I saw the powers that be channel all of their inferiority and suppressed sexual inadequacy toward the little sister of the superstar who beat two kiddie misconduct cases in a row.

But whereas her best move was to vanish for a few years. Do a D'Angelo, or hell, even a Rick James. Come back as slim and trim as ever and give it one more try, Janet's been throwing wild pitches at albums targeting the fans that will never leave her: black folks. And she's seemingly been missing. Damita Jo was a given as it dropped right after Nipplegate, but her latest, Discipline and the one before it (who's name is escaping me right now) came off as these obvious attempts to hit the ground running and make the world forget something they cannot. Posing for FHM and KING? C'mon baby. You're better than that!

Though I haven't heard either record in its entirely the singles have just felt so rushed, so empty, a formulaic combination of what should work as opposed to what felt right. And with Jermaine Dupri, the king of semi-memorable hits, whispering in the background and in the bedroom, there was no way the old Janet was ever going to find her footing again.

In my own opinion, her best move would have been to do a Purple Rain, drop a solid sexy ballad that no one could deny and that could put her back on the map with both audiences. But strangely enough there's been a serious lack of real ballads in mainstream music for sometime now, which is particular strange as the last few years have been heavily Prince-influenced. And Prince was always the flipside of the Jackson coin. But that's a critical investigation for another time.

I think the best choice she's made post-Nipplegate was doing Why Did I Get Married?, a flick that made some serious coin and hopefully showed Hollywood in one way or another that she still has some promise on the silver screen. At a time when the music industry is running for cover, a few flicks could have been a nice vacation while the whole world reorganized itself. But hey I'm just an after-school teacher with an opinion.

But as I looked at the poster for Discipline on my way home from a meeting this morning, Janet clad in a PVC get-up more worthy of a Vogue spread than her prior S&M/Bohemian/Rock Girl motif, I found myself missing the woman whose words and sounds helped me to fall in love and lust many a time. I miss salivating as I watched her grind on that lucky dude during the televised version of her Velvet Rope tour. I miss the way she used to whisper on the records. I hope to feel that sensual overload again. And maybe I will. But I don't, at least I'll have a whole lot of memories. Out.