I’ve read quite a few articles about the 25th anniversary of The Velvet Rope (VR), but felt a bit underwhelmed. Maybe it’s just me… but I don’t think the 25th anniversary articles touched on the historical context of the album and how it was a truly courageous album to release at that time.
So, I wrote this article to provide a slightly different context than those articles that have critiqued the songs or re-quoted what Janet said during that time.
Instead, this article is about me looking backwards 25 years ago – at what the world was like then – and mixed in with a little bit of some of the knowledge that I have gained since then… or, hopefully, have gained.
By the end of this article, I hope you’ll have a better understanding of why I believe the Velvet Rope is a courageous opus that will be considered an amazing work of art for decades to come.
To put this album into prospective of my life, when it came out, I was 23 and living in an efficiency in Baltimore (because I was attending graduate school at Johns Hopkins University). So, I was a poor grad student when I drove to the closest music store, on October 7, 1997, to purchase Janet’s sixth studio album.
Looking back, I feel that the VR is a continuation of Rhythm Nation (definitely more than the Janet. Album). Rhythm Nation discussed problems and ills such as: homelessness, teenage pregnancy, illiteracy, racism. These are problems that exist in the world around us.
In the VR, Janet did the same thing… but, instead, she chose to discuss the problems that exist within us. Ultimately, because she’s not unique in her problems – there are a lot of us who suffer from self-esteem issues, emotional and domestic violence, and discrimination – she is still discussing problems that exist in the broader world. With the VR, however, she is looking at a specific set of problems… ones that highlight the harm that we are doing to ourselves. So, the VR is an extension of RN in that it tackles world problems, but it focuses on the harm that we do to ourselves and not so much the kinds of harm that we do to other people.
In the VR, we’re not discussing the crappy things that we do to other people. Rather, we’re discussing the crappy things that we do to ourselves.
As I said earlier, I believe that the VR was an extremely courageous work to release. As a matter of fact, if I had to describe this album in one word, it would be… “Courageous”. And the rest of this article will be devoted to explaining the 4 Acts of Courage that are displayed throughout the VR.
1st Act of Courage: “You”
The duet between Michael and Janet Jackson, “Scream”, was released in 1995 just two years prior to the VR. A little bit after scream came out, there was controversy surrounding the song. Allegedly, someone (I don’t remember hearing that it actually came from Janet herself) said that Janet was not happy with the song because she felt her vocals were turned down. So, for the first time ever, we potentially are hearing about issues that Janet is having with a member of her family. And, to make that matter a bit worse, it was with the other famous Jackson… Michael. That rumor comes out, and not too long after, Janet releases The Velvet Rope.
Here are some of the Lyrics from “You”:
“Spent most your life pretending not to be
The one you are but who you choose to see
Learned to survive in your fictitious world
Does what they think of you determine your worth?…
Unleash this scared child that you’ve grown into
You cannot run for you can’t hide from you
Can’t hide from you (That’s right)…
Check in the mirror, my friend
No lies will be told then
Pointin’ the finger again
You can’t blame nobody but you”
This song is courageous because Janet is a smart woman, and I’m guessing that she was aware that these lyrics could be interpreted as her talking negatively about her sibling. Because, again, there is already a rumor that she’s not happy with “Scream”. So, it would be easy to interpret this song as being further evidence that something isn’t right between her and Michael. And, she also had to anticipate that she would get asked, in nearly every interview, if this song was actually about her brother.
This first act of courage is about releasing a song despite it’s potential backlash. She was telling the media and her fans that she would put out any song relevant to her own life regardless of what we (or the media) thought about it.
It’s almost like she was telling us: “Do you think I’m actually not gonna release a song that I know I wrote about myself JUST because you’re gonna think I’m talking about my brother? I’m not going to let that stop me!”
And it didn’t stop her.
Where I’m guessing that, with another artist, there would be pressure to not put a song like that on her album (that could be perceived as dissing the most famous person on the planet), she was courageous and did it anyway.
2nd Act of Courage: No topic is off limits!
The VR is full of difficult topics that really shouldn’t be on a hit album. Janet discusses topics like: a lack of self-love (the title track “Velvet Rope”), depression, and feeling like a fake (“Special”). These are topics that we really don’t like to talk about and, even less, want to hear about in our music.
Those topics are total downers.
But, I can imagine Janet being like, “You know what I want to do? I think I wanna write a bop… about domestic violence”.
Who does that?!
“What About” features lyrics that are difficult to hear and even more difficult to watch:
“What about the times you lied to me?
What about the times you said no one would want me?
What about all the shit you’ve done to me?
What about the times you hit my face?
What about the times you kept on when I said: “No more, please?””
That doesn’t sound like any song that I’d ever want to hear again.
But, somehow, she made it work.
Despite those heart wrenching lyrics, we’re still able to listen to “What About” over and over again.
And, that’s not even the worst topic discussed on the VR!
One of the most depressing topics we can discuss is… death.
Somehow, Janet (with Terry Lewis and Jimmy Jam Harris) managed to write a #1 dance hit that was all about… death!
One of the most interesting parts of the song is what isn’t said but what is implied.
Many people would say that “Together Again” is about the death of our loved ones. However, it is as much about our own deaths as those of our loved ones.
In the song, our loves ones have already passed on. The only way that we will be “together again” is when we die too. So, this song is just as much a tribute to our own mortality as to those who have gone before us.
So, Janet actually has us jumping up and down and dancing to a song… that is ultimately about our own deaths!
Who does that?!
Well, Janet Jackson did and, somehow, Janet Jackson succeeded at it. I remember jumping up and down and singing right along with her, when this song capped her All For You concert in Washington, DC.
She erases some of the fear of death by shrouding it in the hope that we will one day find happiness again with those that have died before us. The song works because she took away some of the fear of death and replaced it with hope… The hope that we will find happiness again even after we have left this world.
So, in the VR, Janet, Terry, and Jimmy figured out a way to talk about extremely difficult topics (death is one of the most difficult) in a way that was comforting and didn’t scare us.
That was and still is unprecedented in the music industry… to talk about extremely difficult topics on an album and managing to do it in a way where we can still be happy and enjoy the music.
But, it’s also an act of courage.
Janet was challenging us that she could talk about difficult topics like abuse and death in a way that will still allow people to enjoy her music.
And, she succeeded!
3rd Act of Courage: Controversy!
There is a thread of homosexuality that is weaved throughout the VR.
The only thing we are absolutely sure about Janet is: 3 husbands & Jermaine Dupree… and they happen to be all men. So, I’m in no way suggesting that she is anything other than heterosexual.
However, she put things on the VR that opens the door to the possibility that there might be more to her sexuality.
Tracks on the VR such as “Free Xone” (speaking against homophobia & discrimination), “Tonight’s The Night” (where she kept the original female pronouns used by the original singer, Rod Stewart), and “Speaker Phone” (well, we’ll talk about that in a moment) are examples where Janet put homosexuality front and center.
But, to understand why this is a courageous act, you have to understand what American society thought about homosexuality when the VR was released in 1997.
And to give you this idea, I will use the example of Ellen DeGeneres and the infamous “Puppy” episode (which aired earlier that year – April 1997)…
Prior to April 97, the public didn’t know (for sure) that Ellen DeGeneres was gay (back in those days, at least outside of the LGBTQIA+ community, there weren’t separate terms used for a homosexual man (gay) or a homosexual woman (lesbian). At that time, whether you were a man or woman, you were simply called “gay”. Times have definitely changed since then!).
Ellen had never publicly admitted that she was a lesbian. A lot of people suspected it, but since she never publicly admitted it, the public as a whole truly didn’t know. At that time, there definitely wasn’t a lot of famous people who openly admitted that they were gay or lesbian (again, thankfully, times have changed).
Well, Ellen decided that she would publicly come out on her show called “Ellen” – which is not the talk show that some of you are more familiar with. Rather, she had an evening sitcom where she was a book store owner.
So, April of 97 (again, the same year as Janet releases the VR), Ellen’s “Puppy” episode airs. On this show, there is a woman who Ellen’s character has fallen in love with. The only problem is that this other woman doesn’t know that Ellen is lesbian. So, at the end of this show, Ellen finally tells the woman “I’m gay!” And Ellen inserts comedy into this moment by having this take place at an airport and, accidentally, over an open microphone. So, at the very end of this episode, she yells “I’m gay!” Everyone in the airport hears her (including her real-life Mom), stops, and stares in shock! After the episode aired, Ellen additionally went on Oprah and did a People Magazine feature also letting the public know that she was a lesbian.
It didn’t take long for the backlash to begin!
People called the TV station, the FCC, and anywhere else they could find to express their anger that Ellen had the audacity to talk about homosexuality. And, as a result, her viewership quickly sunk and the show was cancelled by May of 1998!
So, in 1997 – the same year of VR – Ellen lost her show and her career (stating that she was “at rock bottom and out of money, with no work in sight”) because she had the courage to come out. And, if you look on IMDB, she had only small parts (she was the voice of a dog in Dr. Doolittle and she had brief appearances on a few sitcoms) between 1997 and 2001. In 2001, she got another sitcom called “The Ellen Show” and then she got into America’s good graces again, in 2003, as Dory in “Finding Nemo”.
But, her career tanked for a while… all because she came out as a lesbian.
In 1997 America, there were generally two prevailing mindsets, about homosexuality: One segment of the country just straight believed you were going to hell, if you were gay. But, another sizable portion of the country felt that people had the right to do want they wanted in their bedroom but “I don’t wanna hear about and I definitely want to see it!”
And it is in this environment that Janet releases the VR where she specifically points out homophobia.
In addition, she goes a step further by allowing the listener to question her own sexuality.
She includes Tonight’s The Night and Speaker Phone which both very deliberately encourage the listener to think about her sexuality.
Speaker Phone would’ve have been completely different if she had Rene (or any other man) on the phone with her. The interlude would have also been completely different if Lisa Marie Presley (who I believe is who’s on the other line) had called Janet.
But that’s not what happened…
In the interlude, you hear the phone dialing and then Lisa Marie picks up and says “Hello”. So, it is Janet’s character that specifically calls another woman and begins to “self-gratify” (keeping it clean) while on the phone with another woman.
This is one of the most courageous points in the album because Janet is basically challenging the listener and asking why it would matter if she were attracted to other women.
Even though it’s never said explicitly, she dares the listener to do something about her potential sexuality. Will the listener not buy her albums? Will the listener stop listening to her music? Are people going to try and her career like they did Ellen’s?
She dared us to respond negatively, and for the most part, she won.
Nothing major happened after the release of the VR. Supposedly (although I don’t remember there being any and can’t find any actual sources citing it), there was backlash from some religious groups (as suggested here and here) but Janet never received the level of backlash that Ellen did… at least not at that point in time.
So, we’ve covered “You”, “What About”, “Together Again”, “Free Xone”, “Tonight’s The Night”, and “Speaker Phone”.
Next, we’ll discuss her final act of courage… the hidden track on the VR.
4th and Final Act of Courage: Black Pride… again!
If you thought “New Agenda” (from the Janet. album) was the last time you’d hear Janet singing about her Blackness, think again, because here’s Part 2: “Can’t Be Stopped”!
Not many Black, mainstream artists sing about black pride (it’s happened more in the R&B and rap community with artists like James Brown, Public Enemy, and KRS-1). But it’s rarer for a successful mainstream artist to remind everyone that she’s a Black woman and to sing about the Black experience.
But Janet exhibited courage by doing that, not just once, but twice!
I don’t think many people recognize the genius of “Can’t Be Stopped”. At least, it’s not something that I remember reading about. I’m not necessarily talking about the lyrics. Rather, I’m talking about the very unique way that Terry, Jimmy, and Janet used sampling.
To help demonstrate the uniqueness of “Can’t Be Stopped”, let’s have a brief conversation about sampling…
Sampling 101:
Normally, when a song is sampled, the sample has no relationship, lyrically, to the song that is doing the sampling.
However, there is an exception to this… when the lyrics are sampled in addition to the music.
Ok, let me give you an example of a lyric sample…
I’m going back, cause I’m older… LOL! Hopefully, many of you are familiar with Rob Base & DJ Easy Rock. They had a song, “It Takes Two”, which samples both the music and lyrics from a song by Lynn Collins called “Think”. In this song, Ms Collin’s sings: “It take 2 to make a thing go right. It takes 2 to make it out of sight”.
So, what Rob Base & DJ Easy Rock did was take these lyrics and create a song around those lyrics.
The premise of the song is how Rob Base & his DJ are a duo and the two of them together make “a thing go right”.
Sampling another song’s lyrics doesn’t happen nearly as much as a song that samples only the music (I’m guessing it’s more expensive if you sample someone else’s voice and words).
Most of the time, a sample contains only the music without any of the lyrics. However, when this is done, the sampled song tends to have no relationship to the lyrics of the song that is doing the sampling.
Here’s an example of this from Janet herself…
Both of Janet’s songs, “That’s The Way Love Goes” and “Luv Me, Luv Me” with Shaggy, sound a LOT alike in the beginning. That’s because the drum beat, in both songs, sample the same song… “Impeach the President” by the Honey Drippers (I’m still amazed that Terry and Jimmy could use the same drum beat in 2 different songs while having them still sound completely different).
“Impeach the President” is about exactly what it sounds like: wanting to impeach a President… in this case, Richard Nixon. However, and this is the point I’m trying to get at, there is no lyrical connection between “Impeach the President” and either of Janet’s songs.
Neither “Luv Me, Luv Me” nor “That’s The Way Love Goes” has anything to do with impeaching any President whatsoever.
That disconnect tends to be true of songs that only sample music… but not lyrics.
If a song samples lyrics, then the sample and the song doing the sampling tend to be very much related (as it was in “It Takes Two”). However, if a song only samples music, the sample and the song doing the sampling are rarely related in any way.
Well, Janet, Terry, & Jimmy bucked that trend with “Can’t Be Stopped”!
This song samples the music (not lyrics) of Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues – Make Me Wanna Holler” which discusses how difficult it is to be Black in America.
Some of the lyrics from “Inner City Blues” are:
“Crime is increasing.
Trigger happy policing.
Panic is spreading.
God knows where we’re heading.
Makes me wanna holler, the way they do my life.
This ain’t living!”
That is the music that’s playing in the background of “Can’t Be Stopped”.
But, in the foreground, you have Janet singing the lyrics:
“I know that it’s not been easy tryin’ to make it in this crazy world.
The people ’round you try to stop you –
Stomp you, sayin’ that you don’t belong.
You must remember that you were born with blood of kings and queens
And can’t be stopped.
Stay strong my brother,
you can’t be stopped.”
“Can’t Be Stopped” is really a response to Marvin Gaye’s frustration with the toughness and hardship of being Black in America.
It’s as if Janet was saying “I know it’s hard for us, but be we’ll be Ok because we can’t be stopped. We can’t be held down.”
And that is very powerful and a very deliberate contrast!
The contrast between Marvin Gaye focusing on the difficulties of being Black and Janet, instead, focusing on the positive (Black resilience) is a direct contrast between the unspoken lyrics of “Inner City Blues” and the spoken lyrics sung by Janet. In a way, Janet is responding to Marvin letting him know that, although it’s bad, we (Black people) are going to be alright.
That is genius-level music writing, because you’re rarely – if ever – going to find that very deliberate choosing of a sample where the lyrics of the song doing the sampling is a direct response to the unspoken words of the song being sampled.
Janet didn’t stop there with her expression of Black pride. In “Can’t Be Stopped”, she expressed this pride musically, but she also went a step further and also expressed it visually in the “Got Til It’s Gone” video.
A while back (sorry, I couldn’t find the reference), Janet’s choreographer at the time, Tina Landon, talked about loving this song and asking what they were going to do for the video. Janet explained that Tina wouldn’t be in the video because it would only feature Black people.
Where Janet had always used a multi-gender & multi-cultural cast in her videos, now, Janet chose to showcase an all-Black video cast.
And, she didn’t choose to just use the stereotypical version of Black beauty promoted by the media. Rather, she chose to use all of the different and splendid hues, shapes, and sizes that Black people recognize as “beautiful” but the rest of the world hasn’t caught up with yet.
It’s as if Janet was saying that we (as in Black people) are “enough”. She didn’t need to have the presence of other races for this to be considered a “great” video. It can be great and just feature Black people.
And that is, also, an act of courage!
Conclusion
Twenty-five years later, looking back at the album and what society was like at that time, this album is extremely courageous in the sense that Janet wasn’t afraid to discuss extremely difficult topics and did so in such a way that we are still able to enjoy and dance to the music.
Janet wasn’t afraid to sing about both her own inner demons but also the demons that continue plague society (discrimination, homophobia, domestic violence, racism).
The Velvet Rope was, in a sense, a giant middle finger to the social norms of that time but was done in a way that you could still enjoy the music which is nothing short of a brilliant feat and a rare accomplishment.
It took a huge amount of courage to give us the Velvet Rope and to allow us to get to know her at a deeper level than we (fans) ever thought we would.
Janet’s willingness to discuss taboo topics will ensure that this album will remain historically relevant… even 50 years later… not to mention 25.
Also, her courage to talk about her inner struggles and depression has helped modern-day artists and athletes find the strength (and willingness to help others) to openly talk about their own struggles.
Most artists are just too afraid to put their principles (or what they believe is right) before their career. But Janet did that with the Velvet Rope, proving that she’s not afraid to be courageous and defiant. She’s not afraid to challenge authority and do what’s right… potentially at the risk of her own success.
So, thank you, Terry and Jimmy for helping Janet to find a way to talk about extremely difficult topics while still allowing us to enjoy the music. Also, congratulations on the much deserved and way-too-late induction into the Hall of Fame!
Finally, THANK YOU Janet! for having the courage and love… not only for yourself but also your fans… to release the Velvet Rope 25 years ago! It is still a very timely and emotional album that will always be recognized for its courage and authenticity!
If you haven’t, yet, purchased or listened to the 25th anniversary release of The Velvet Rope (which includes plenty of remixes), you can do so here: Velvet Rope 25th Anniversary Edition
