Janet Jackson: Free At Last
EVEN BY CALIFORNIA’S PEERLESS STANDARD, the day is exquisite: sunny, impossibly clear, surprisingly warm for late November. Janet Jackson sits on a bench in a narrow park overlooking the ocean and the beach in Pacific Palisades, on the edge of Los Angeles. She’s out of the quasi-military regalia that constitutes what by now might be thought of as the Janet Jackson uniform and looking almost preppy in bluejeans, white sneakers with black stripes, a white Raiders cap, a ski sweater and a shirt with pictures of cartoon characters on it. Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker peer over the collar of the sweater. Her large silver earrings, with African designs, catch the glint of the sun as she speaks.
Pedestrians stroll by, joggers jog, the occasional person or couple saunters along the shore. The appearance of a dog within fifty yards in any direction triggers heart-rending paroxysms of longing in Puffy, the charmingly good-natured – and evidently quite lonely – mixed-breed bitch Jackson brought along to the interview. Fondness for pets is, of course, a Jackson family trait, and Janet had phoned my hotel that morning to ask if it would be all right if one of her dogs came along with her. Puffy serves almost as a kind of security blanket, a benign companion that, by requiring Jackson’s care and attention, provides reassurance as she takes another step alone the road of independence.
Puffy’s function today is to help Jackson contend with her reluctance to deal with the press. She has not done any major interviews since her 1986 album Control – with its quintuple-platinum sales and string of hit singles – established her, at the age of twenty, as one of the most popular recording artists in the world. A preliminary meeting in Paris on the set of the video shoot for “Come Back to Me,” a luxurious ballad from Jackson’s latest album, Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814, had taken place a month earlier at Jackson’s request.
Like virtually everyone else in the public eye, Jackson doesn’t feel she’s been treated particularly well by the press, and she’s sensitive about the media’s portrayal of her brother Michael, to whom she is still extremely close. Also, after working so hard to break away from her family and build an independent identity, Janet isn’t especially inclined to enter situations over which she doesn’t have ultimate control. When she was first approached about doing this story, she requested the right to approve it before it was published – a request that was denied. Finally, you don’t grow up in the preeminent entertainment family in America without learning that maintaining an air of mystery about yourself is an acutely effective marketing technique.
In Paris, apart from some casual chatter on the set and the following day at lunch, Jackson was not interested in doing an interview. In fact, at the point of her departure for the airport, she still had not formally consented to do the story at all. Then I saw her and her boyfriend, Rene Elizondo, in the hotel lobby as they were leaving. Rene handed me a Rhythm Nation cap and a silver 1814 pin. Janet smiled and offered her hand. “I’ll see you in California at the end of the month,” she said.
While Control was Jackson’s personal statement that she had become her own woman, Rhythm Nation – with its reflections on racism, education, crime, homelessness and drugs – expresses Jackson’s effort to look beyond herself to the social world around her. “I wanted to make the album because there was an audience that wasn’t being reached, who really aren’t paying attention to what’s going on in the rest of the world,” she says. “I felt that I could reach that audience through the type of music that I do. I’m not the first person to do this – I know that. I know that I won’t be the last.
“I feel that most socially conscious artists – like Tracy Chapman, U2 – I love their music, but I feel their audience is already socially conscious. It’s like college kids, that whole thing. I feel that I could reach a different audience, let them know what’s going on and that you have to be a little bit wiser than you are and watch yourself.”
The audience Jackson is talking about is young blacks – a group that, despite her extraordinary crossover appeal (Rhythm Nation has already sold nearly 3 million copies and continues going strong), still constitutes the core of her following. Part of the reason she has been able to hold that audience is the irresistible groove supplied to her music by her coproducers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who, after Jackson’s first two indifferent albums, propelled her to stardom with Control. The duo returned to produce Rhythm Nation.
According to Jam, he and Lewis had very specific ideas for the type of record they wanted to make when they began working with Jackson on Control. “We wanted to do an album that would be in every black home in America,” Jam says. “We were going for the black album of all time. Gritty, raw.
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