Hardly anyone believed her. Meanwhile, brother Michael finally took his place in the pop Olympus. Janet Jackson? The-Time guitarist Jesse Johnson was on board on “Dream Street” (1984), but she didn’t want to push the family clan into the water in the form of brother Marlon just yet.
The irony, of course, was that the only way Janet Jackson could truly gain control of her career was to fully confide in someone else. Or as Jimmy Jam later put it: “We required that they put her in our hands.” Hooks, which anticipated and reinforced the 20-year-old leading lady’s declaration of independence. No other record from the Minneapolis duo has defined the eighties as clearly as “Control” – and at the same time pointed beyond it.
With that massive triplet beat that was later ridden to death as “New Jack Swing”. With this mix of industrial aesthetics, R’n’B groove, safe sex manifesto (“Let’s Wait Awhile”). And tracks like the title track, “Nasty” (written after a street harassment outside her hotel during production) and “What Have You Done For Me Lately?” (the swan song to her brief marriage to James DeBarge) bluntly called out, “Me.” whoops!
Papa Joe, who couldn’t prevent his daughter from producing away from LA without a minder, didn’t like the new material at all. The patriarch predicted a flop. It turned out differently: “Control” was the black crossover event in 1986, although not the only one. But compared to Janet Jackson, who was actually the “weaker” singer, a barely older Whitney Houston with “How Will I Know” seemed naïve at best. And the former taboo breaker Patti LaBelle with the Bacharach/Bayer-Sager number one “On My Own” a bit … old-fashioned.
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