What Becomes A Legend Most

The youngest Jackson sibling, the biggest star: Janet turns 54 today

Follow the passion that’s within you, living the truth will set you free

I know, I know. Michael had the biggest selling album, sold-out stadiums, and had crowds of fans. No one here is ever going to deny Mike his credits. But I’m here to talk about Janet Damita Jo Jackson.

In Touré’s book, When Doves Cry: How Prince Became An Icon, the author speaks about Prince being a baby boomer. It’s a term one wouldn’t associate with Prince, necessarily. Boomers like Prince, Madonna, and Michael Jackson share magic in that they were born on the far end of the boomer calendar. They were raised in the sixties and seventies in the midwest, all parts of the then-typical boomer background, yet were also rooted in Gen X culture. (Prince is from Minneapolis, Madonna from Bay City, Michigan, and the Jacksons from Gary, Indiana.) Generation X’s parents went back to work, both mother and father. The number of stay-at-home moms dropped during the seventies. The coincidence of divorce rates rising cannot be ignored. That left Gen Xers as the first generation of latch-key kids. We didn’t get to share in the optimism of a post-war America in the fifties or sixties when there was a chicken in every pot. Instead, we saw the nihilism of the eighties. Therefore, we became nihilists. We, and those with us, were set to be ravaged by cocaine and AIDS. There was no real war to rail against (although the Cold War and the U.S. pushing the Russians out of Afghanistan were on our B-list of things to worry about). Our parents fought in wars, not us. Our war became cultural and societal, not global. We weren’t shipping off under the draft (which had since been abolished) to fight foreigners in their own country. Sure, we saw the Iran hostage crisis close out the seventies to a quick end when Ronald Reagan was elected and took office as President of the United States. We continued the fight with and for women’s rights, civil rights, threw in gay rights, and demanded AIDS research money be set aside to save legions upon legions of human beings. Then-President Reagan didn’t even acknowledge the HIV epidemic until well into his second term as one of the most conservative Christian presidents in a generation. Some of us were in junior high when the Space Shuttle Program started. We were about to graduate high school when the shuttle Challenger blew up before or eyes in January 1986. People like Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna — the three biggest stars of the eighties — spoke to Generation X. They balked at the boomer nuclear family dynamic in which they were raised. They brought with them a fierce boomer worth ethic coupled with Generation X’s inherent need to challenge that same establishment. They saw change on the horizon.

Janet Jackson is not a baby boomer, though. She’s a Generation Xer, one of us. She was raised with the same nihilism and partial pessimism that we were yet set a goal to be more. Our generation was almost set up to fail. We picked up mantles other generations hadn’t dared. Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna knocked down walls and paved roads, but Generation X led a new parade of hope and equality with a healthy dose of cynicism and cautious overview. Janet was one of many at the forefront, albeit against her better judgment, at first.

Janet didn’t want to punch her way through the walls of racism per se or champion the rights of the LGBTQ community. She had no damn desire to be an icon in music, movies, and fashion. She had no hopes to maintain a fanbase through some of the darkest moments of her life, a base that sustained itself on every word she spoke or didn’t speak. Janet wanted to be a lawyer. Joe Jackson, her father, had different ideas. At a young age, Janet was shoved in front of cameras and a microphone to sing with her brothers. She’d try her hand at acting throughout most of her young life into her teens until she released Janet Jackson and Dream Street. Granted, they weren’t trendsetting albums. They were chocked full of bubble gum music, written by other people, and void of Janet’s voice as a black woman. It was the same blinded “please love me lest I perish in this hell of solitude” schlock that ever other teenager’s album contained. Then came Control.

This is a story about control. My control. Control of what I say, control of what I do. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do. Cuz it’s all about control. And I’ve got lots of it.

Control came out at just the right time, for me and for Generation X. I graduated high school when Control hit the streets. The deft bass and simplistic hook of “What Have You Done For Me Lately” got in my blood faster than shooting heroin. I was hooked. Janet was making a statement, and we were all desperate to hear it. Generation X needed a leader. We needed someone who wasn’t just as rebellious as us; instead, we needed someone who knew us. Janet was that person who put her foot down and took control of her life. She wrote the book on it. Janet became the person to inspire us, to break us out of our religious grooming, our middle-class conditioning, and our blue-collar upbringing. Control became a meditation on cutting the strings of parental and record company puppeteering. The only strings Janet pulled were her own. She fired her manager-father, found great producers with Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis. Jam and Lewis were friends of Prince and an established production team in their own right, serving as the guidepost for duos like Babyface & L.A. Reid, Cole & Clivillés, The Neptunes, and more. She found her voice.

Like all of us, Janet took her life in stages. When she called out men for being nasty or railed against the ones who no longer took care of her needs, she didn’t like-a-virgin it up with the next guy she met. Janet waited, took her time, and found a purpose. She asked him to wait a while, then later promised that someday is tonight. She formed a rhythm nation that we all gladly joined. The price of admission was honor, love, and knowledge. We were proud to march with her as we tackled the failing education system, embedded white supremacy, and control over one’s body. We fell in love, teased the ones we found worthy of our time, and let them into our innermost sanctuary of pain, fear, depression, and hope.

Janet laid her life on the record for everyone to see. She sang about suffering abuse, battling body images, flirted with sexual fluidity, and pulled back the curtain on her kinks and fetishes. Prince may have made it okay for men to wear heeled boots, but Janet made it alright to get tied up and fucked while wearing them. We fell in love with her because she was the gal pal we all needed and deserved; she didn’t talk down to us, she spoke with us. Janet started a conversation that we’ve kept going for decades. Even in her quiet times, she was listening. She didn’t just hear us, she listened. Her songs became our mantras. We were her, and she was us. We had overbearing fathers. We got lost in a group of siblings or a big family. We ran away from home and did stupid things that hurt us. But we learned from those times. We all grew up together. Janet singing about her self-doubt, depression, and abuse was some of the most personal life experiences she had ever put to tape. It was one of the most profound things we’d ever heard.

What about the times you hit my face?
What about the times you kept on when I said, “No more please”
What about those things?
What about that, what about that?

When we entered our thirties, toward the end of the 1990s, our hearts grew more. We had some life experience under our belt, and we could gain a little bit of perspective on what we were willing to endure and the things which we had no problem letting loose. And at the end of the 1990s, Janet released The Velvet Rope. It was one of the darker times of my life. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn’t know how to process it. I couldn’t. I had so much inside me at the time, I was almost unable to speak my name. I lived in fear and high anxiety every single day. I felt frozen, alone, and invisible. At some point, I found myself sitting on a Greyhound bus, leaving Minneapolis and heading east to save myself. It was a two-day trip that felt like an eternity. I didn’t have much to listen to, but The Velvet Rope (and Prince’s Emancipation) was there. Somehow, it seems that Janet had experienced very dark episodes in her life and was now providing a guide for those of us who may be going through similar things.

I see you staring out the corner of my eye
You seem uneasy want to approach me
Throw me a line
But then something inside you grabs you says, who am I?
I know exactly cause it happens with all the guys

After a breakup and a new life as a single man in 2001, Janet was divorced, single, and looking to date again. I, too, was single, again. As Janet continued to explore her sexuality and her kinks, so did I. (What, TMI? Now?) Brother Michael sang about love and hope, and sometimes touched on racism, but didn’t care to get his hands too dirty (at least not until HIStory). Janet made it acceptable not just to be kinky but elevate her game with friends, family, and career. It wasn’t long after Control that she went from “Michael’s little sister” to Michael being “Janet’s big brother.” Michael’s output was far and few between, but Janet stayed focus on living her best life and letting us in on the process. She walked the walk and encouraged us to do the same. She led generation X into and through adulthood. We found it comforting that we saw ourselves in her songs. Many of us had that “What About” relationship. Some of us were learning to water our spiritual garden. We lost friends to AIDS and held onto hope that we’d be together again.

While Janet set out to be her own artist, she took a queue from Prince, Madonna, and her brother(s) — the baby boomers in her life — and chose to be a proactive cog in the wheel. Even though Generation X were nihilists, we still held onto hope through the direr of situations. Case in point: when Janet was blacklisted by Leslie Moonves, the then-head of CBS, she again pushed through the people (read: white supremacists) who sought to shut her down. She released album after album, made television appearances, booked sold-out tours, and starred in blockbuster films. (Moonves was furious when he found out she had released her first book and he never knew about it; it implied he would have halted its release, and this was 2011, seven years after the Super Bowl.) One doesn’t just become a legend by letting the man — someone like Moonves — get you down. Being a woman of color her whole life, she was already well-rehearsed on dealing with white supremacy in the entertainment industry.

In 1991, she signed the most lucrative record contract in history with Virgin Records worth up to a reported $50,000,000. Her brother, not one to be topped, soon signed an even more lucrative deal with Sony Records. Both deals being inked made headline news. Yet, Michael’s one-upmanship didn’t seem to phase Janet. She saw a bigger picture. Two black artists, who happened to be siblings, were the most powerful and wealthiest signed music acts in the world. (Even Prince’s $100,000,000 contract with Warner Bros. Records would fall apart in the details.) The Jackson siblings continued to sell millions of records. Even after her career was considered almost over and nonexistent, Janet surprised everyone by showing up in 2015 as a new and independent artist and revealed a new album called Unbreakable. The woman who had achieved so much was now wholly independent of a record company. Jaws: dropped. Wigs: snatched. Unbreakable was backed with an extensive tour. Janet even took a break to have a baby (at age 50, thankyouverymuch), get a divorce, and produce a sold-out residency in Las Vegas, before continuing her now-renamed State of the World Tour. None are small feats for any woman.

Because of my gender
I’ve heard no too many times
Because of my race
I’ve heard no too many times
But with every no
I grow in strength
That is why
African-American woman
I stand tall with pride
You want to know what it takes
To rid yourself of me now
There’s nothing you can do
Accept me for who I am now

Black women are often the most underappreciated segment of society. They are the most overworked, underpaid, and least appreciated of anyone in society. They’re the ones who show up first, clean up everyone’s mess, give the most care, get the least attention, leave last, the most underpaid, the most-demanded from, and the most ignored. They’re treated as the lowest on the totem pole. They’re told to be quiet when they should be the first person people go to for advice, an ear, or to get grounded. Janet ain’t here for that, and her work is proof. Janet showed us that, despite any and every damn thing, you can do what you want, and affect positive change.

It’s just another day in the life of a legend…

…when your name is Janet Damita Jo Jackson.

Happy birthday, Janet Jackson. We love you.

Ernest Sewell was born & raised in Oklahoma. After living across the U.S. in places like Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis, he’s settled in upstate New York for the past twenty years. He’s authored and published two books and is working on a smattering of new material, including a new horror novel. He shares his home with a friend, three cats, and his vinyl collection, all of whom have the same level of love from him. When he’s not causing an uproar on Prince forums or social media, he enjoys reads (a lot), trying new recipes, and prank calling people.

“Don’t take yourself too seriously. No one else does.”