{"id":41661,"date":"2009-08-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-30T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/the-velvet-rope-2\/"},"modified":"2009-08-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-30T00:00:00","slug":"the-velvet-rope-2","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/the-velvet-rope-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Velvet Rope"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou have to learn to water your spiritual garden.\u201d Maybe you should follow your own advice, Janet. So goes the sludgy and downbeat misstep that is The Velvet Rope<\/i>. This R&B entry in Janet Jackson\u2019s catalog is a clear example of an artist adrift, delivering mundane lyrics in a slow-motion, half-asleep style that does little to keep the listener awake throughout the ridiculously long seventy-five minute running time. Janet apes Madonna circa Erotica <\/i>on \u201cYou,\u201d with a monotone spoken delivery that is an obnoxious, failed attempt at going experimental. Then she has the audacity to rip off Joni Mitchell on the heavily sampled \u201cGot Till It\u2019s Gone,\u201d which is a close cousin to the Fugees\u2019 hip-hop remake of \u201cKilling Me Softly.\u201d<\/o:p><\/p>\n

As hard as she tried to earn her R&B stripes, black listeners didn\u2019t even know what to do with this Jackson family member in 1997. It didn\u2019t get to #1 on the R&B chart and only by the skin of its teeth got to #1 on the pop chart. The only real memorable hit singles came in the form of woefully out-of-place cuts, \u201cTogether Again\u201d and \u201cGo Deep,\u201d both of which went to #1 on the club play chart. The gay community appreciated her efforts in dedicating \u201cTogether Again\u201d to all her friends who had died from AIDS, and were the one audience who dug this new aggressively sexual direction Janet seemed to be going in.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The risqu\u00e9 overtones of The Velvet Rope <\/i>certainly set the tone for what would come in the next decade for this woman who was now famous enough to simply be known as Janet. After her brother\u2019s indiscretions and public humiliation, Janet knew that the Jackson name wasn\u2019t necessarily something you could easily promote anymore. What should have been a one-off suddenly became the groove that she felt the most comfortable in, even if it meant alienating her core pop fan base. For their part, Virgin didn\u2019t seem as if they cared what Janet did, allowing her to repeat herself with the same formula for four more unnecessarily X-rated albums that contained few hits. Not even her longtime producers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis felt as though a course correction was in order, even though from a commercial standpoint, it was sorely needed.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

On the plus side, Janet does bust a mean funky move with the anything-goes \u201cFree Xone,\u201d while giving us some more quality ballads like \u201cI Get Lonely.\u201d Many of the tracks do blur together, however, so if she was intending on creating a masterpiece concept album, she falls depressingly short. Hitting us over the head with themes of S&M (\u201cRope Burn\u201d), abuse (\u201cWhat About\u201d), and bisexuality (on the terrible rewrite of the Rod Stewart chestnut \u201cTonight\u2019s The Night\u201d) didn\u2019t exactly endear herself to middle America, who were fully prepared in their response to her \u201caccidental\u201d nipple exposure during her 2004 Super Bowl career-killing halftime show performance. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate if her stage partner-in-crime Justin Timberlake sang \u201cBye Bye Bye.\u201d<\/o:p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":24634,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5814],"rating":[11205],"class_list":["post-41661","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-janet-jackson","rating-rating-d-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41661"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41661"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}