The Velvet Rope

[ANVEEROY 61,241]

A beautiful article about 'The Velvet Rope' an outstanding album of Janet Jackson. Have a read! 

The album concerned as it was with civil justice as it intersects with, for example, the lives of LGBT people and other marginalized groups, resonates still — from the trans military ban to crises around universal health care that will hit women, ethnic minorities, and people living in poverty the hardest. That these messages are wrapped up in catchy pop tracks, tucked between breathy moans and playfully explicit lyrics (sample from “Interlude – Speaker Phone”: “Your coochie gon’ swell up and fall apart”) is irrelevant. In showcasing vulnerability, The Velvet Rope has legs that stretch all the way from 1997 to 2017 — and probably beyond. What she was singing about hasn’t gone away, and in fact, in many cases, it has only been calcified into hardline stances, and then ratified into policy. It was a political album then, and it still is now.

Long before the world looked and felt as overtly dangerous as it does today, Janet Jackson never shied away from political opinion.

The lack of apology for the way Janet Jackson has chosen to live her life — up to and including her marriages, first-time motherhood at 50, and divorce(s) — and her choice to journey inwards before looking out make The Velvet Rope sound as raw as the circumstances that birthed it. In interviews around the time of the album’s release, Jackson had spoken about the body dysmorphia that plagued her younger years, leading to eating disorders and depression. This was vulnerability she was willing to expose in the form of her art. Rope was a delivery mechanism that was accepted and understood not as a lecture, but as a valuable insight — the softest of revolutions, but one nonetheless.

Think of it as as sort of like Beyoncé’s Lemonade before Lemonade: the personal story of one black woman, extrapolated and taking on new cultural and political significance in the process. On TVR’s final, hidden track, “Can’t Be Stopped,” Jackson sings to a weary audience of black people, “The pressure seems to, to defeat you / Beat you, whenever you can't go on,” which feels like a forebear to Solange’s “Borderline (An Ode to Self Care)” from 2016’s A Seat at the Table. On “Interlude – Sad,” Jackson talks of watering a “spiritual garden” (“There's nothing more depressing than having everything and feeling sad”). There is something to be said for being in the vanguard of such a movement, and Jackson occupies that space, while leaving room for herself and her art to still evolve. Without her — and arguably without The Velvet Rope — there might have been no room for Lemonade. It’s worth noting, and celebrating.

More @ https://www.buzzfeed.com/bimadewunmi/how-janet-jackson-made-room-for-politics-in-pop-music?utm_term=.iwDKYZzvm#.cgK13L56v

[FGGrayson 9,670]

TVR and AFY are my fave albums of her    so sad The Superbowl and Justin killed her career, shes underrated af

[Thomas P 18,479]

This is my favourite album by Janet and one of my favourite albums of all time! It’s the kind of honesty that artists don’t share anymore. It’s such a beautiful piece of art! 

[LuvitLevit 639]

This is literally the album that helped me come out as a gay (specifically a gay black) man.  It helped me understand that depression did not discriminate either.  Her hidden track 'Special' is still one of my favorite songs of all time.  I also love the fact that she and out fave have good things to say about each other ❤

[JanStan 574]

I saw this queen in Las Vegas last night!!!! It was amazing. Not only has she released an insane catalogue including the masterpiece that is Velvet Rope but no one to this day can hold a candle to her choreography imo. Love love love Miss Jackson. Legend!!!