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Mr. Wonder

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She does. She's just very passive aggressive with it. I see it, because it takes one to know one. -_-

 

well this has got to be some kinda disappointment for her and her fans:

According to the rock hall institution, “factors such as an artist’s musical influence on other artists, length and depth of career and the body of work, innovation and superiority in style and technique are taken into consideration.”

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well this has got to be some kinda disappointment for her and her fans:

According to the rock hall institution, “factors such as an artist’s musical influence on other artists, length and depth of career and the body of work, innovation and superiority in style and technique are taken into consideration.”

Perhaps if her fans actually made a video that highlighted this without jabs at other artists then perhaps the hall would take their efforts more seriously. 

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I'm convinced there are members in the hall that are some kinda hold out on Janet Jackson, and when I say hold out I mean some folks that are saying "over my dead body" and that is why we are where we are. I think what may happen is years from now, when the oldie muthafuckas die then we can see some justice...but them old White dudes that are into bands and shit aint trying to hear it :filenails:

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It’s kinda weird that you make up your own “reasoning”, admit that you made it up, and then get mad about it. :lol: 

that's not made up that's an actual account of what occurred during a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame voting process.

https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2015/04/17/a-look-at-the-cryptic-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-voting-process

In addition to the select group of about 40 people that serve on the nominating committee, several outside committees devoted to different genres (hip-hop, early rock pioneers, progressive rock, etc.) submit the names of acts to be considered for nomination. The only criteria: The artist must have put out its first release at least 25 years ago. In the end, the 15 acts with the most votes make it onto the ballot and then the top vote getters on the ballot that's voted upon by a much larger pool of people — about 600 – finally get the honor of officially being named inductees. Seems simple enough. But when you start asking questions, you realize that the process isn't as transparent as it might appear.

"I'll talk to you [about the process], but I'm uncomfortable about it because it's supposed to be confidential," says one nominating committee member who wished to remain anonymous. "It's a physical meeting. Not everyone on the committee is at the meeting, but the bulk of them are. Folks are asked to suggest three names of artists who should be considered to be on the ballot and make whatever remarks they want to make about the merits of the folks they're suggesting, and it goes around the table. There are also committees that meet earlier and come up with suggestions of different nominees, but it's not a given that they'll get on the ballot."

Edited by Bailey.
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TVR anniversary articles are popping up. And as to not clutter the Janet side, I'll just post them in here.

The Velvet Rope: how Janet Jackson inspired a whole generation

Twenty years on, this richly experimental and deeply personal album is still the template for pop rebels

 
 
Janet Jackson at the launch party for The Velvet Rope in 1997
 ‘The songs are monuments to self-discovery’ ... Jackson at the album launch party in 1997. Photograph: Matt Baron/BEI/Rex/Shutterstock
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Michael Cragg

Friday 6 October 2017 08.00 EDT

Turning 20 this week, The Velvet Rope’s influence still reverberates across the pop and R&B landscapes. Janet Jackson’s sixth album is there in the frank sexual expression and raw honesty of Rihanna’s Anti, or the spacious navel-gazing of so-called alt-R&B acts such as Kelela and Blood Orange. Tellingly, it has also become a point of reference whenever a maturing pop star – from Beyoncé to Christina Aguilera – unleashes a darker, more confessional coming-of-age album, usually accompanied by some self-consciously minimal artwork (The Velvet Rope’s cover was in stark contrast to 1993’s breast-cupping Janet).

Richly experimental and deeply personal, it was a bold commercial move, released just as Jackson cemented her status as the biggest music star on the planet by signing a record-breaking $80m deal with Virgin. So why has it endured? First and foremost, the musical scope, assisted by regular producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, is vast and evergreen. Lead single Got ’Til It’s Gone, which samples Joni Mitchell, references J Dilla and the then-nascent neo-soul genre that now fuels the likes of SZA; US No 1 Together Again (about friends lost to Aids) is Spotify-ready feather-light dance-pop; the future-soul of Empty – which predicts the loneliness of dating apps – offers distorted trip-hop; while What About encases lyrics about domestic violence in waves of crunching guitars.

There are also the various shades and moods that go with a 22-track album, showcasing what lifelong fan How to Dress Well, AKA Tom Krell, refers to as the album’s “recklessness with genre conventions and restrictions”. For pop star MNEK it covers “the full human condition. The whole thing bares a sadness but still a joy.” Not many albums utilise a Tubular Bells sample next to a solo from violinist-turned-Olympic skier Vanessa Mae.

At its core, too, is the enduring relevancy of its subject matter. Written following a severe bout of depression – “I’ve been burying pain my whole life,” she told Ebony at the time – the songs are therapy-esque monuments to self-discovery (very 2017), bookended by sensual self-exploration (Rope Burn) and, on the cover of Rod Stewart’s Tonight’s the Night, the suggestion of bisexuality. The jazz-tinged Free Xone, meanwhile, tackles homophobia. “It felt incredibly personal, like I was diving into someone’s creative process,” says lo-fi pop practitioner Shura of the first time she heard the album. “I love the idea that a fearless record like The Velvet Rope has inspired artists and albums that are so vastly different.”

 

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/oct/06/velvet-rope-how-janet-jackson-inspired-whole-generation

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Janet Jackson's The Velvet Rope: A Queer Masterpiece Turns 20

the velvet rope

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of a seminal pop opus.

 
FRI, 2017-10-06 15:00
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When it comes to my favorite Janet Jackson album, I’m always torn between Rhythm Nation and The Velvet Rope. I consider them both forward-thinking pop-R&B masterpieces that never get their fair share of critical reappraisal in the form of either media thinkpieces or academic literature—but the latter tends to win out, probably because of the deeply personal connection I have to it.

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See, Rhythm Nation came out when I was not-quite-yet four and not even living in America, in September 1989. I arrived in the U.S. from Guyana the following January, settling down in Poughkeepsie, New York as the album comfortably settled into its three-year domination of radio and music television, so that my first memories of America and of becoming a sentient human being are tied to “Escapade,” “Alright,” and “Love Will Never Do (Without You).” But I couldn’t fully appreciate what those songs and videos meant, I just knew that they were fun and bright and colorful and I loved the pretty lady singing and dancing to them.

Related | I Think, Therefore Icon: Janet Jackson

The Velvet Rope, however, came out a month before my 12th birthday, on October 7, 1997, when I was more fully aware of who I was and who I was becoming: kids had already been calling me a faggot for several years and I had begun to think that maybe they were onto something. I anticipated each new song and video, internalizing their lyrics and choreography—because I got lonely, too, dammit. Especially in middle school, where I felt rudderless and desperate for friends. High school proved better, but a few months into my freshman year, my mother got sick and passed with surprising celerity. She was buried on November 5, 1999—which just so happened to be my 14th birthday. No one remembered. I didn’t care that much...I mean, there were other things happening.

After the funeral, I sequestered myself in my aunt’s bedroom as my mother’s wake went on around and without me. However, my “cousins”—they weren’t really my cousins, but I grew up with them in Poughkeepsie’s small-but-closely-knit Guyanese community where older women and men were always “aunts” and “uncles”—intervened. I don’t know if I told them or someone else did, but they learned it was my birthday. Knowing myself, now and then, I probably told them because I didn’t feel there was enough attention being paid to the real story.

I was excited about my 14th birthday. I can see self-absorbed 13-year-old me telling my mother, who in retrospect seems ailing and frail, how excited I was to finally be a real teenager, since for whatever reason I thought 13 somehow didn’t count. And here was my 14th birthday and I felt more isolated than I had been in middle school, searching the cafeteria for a place to sit with a fear that dwarfed my body.

The feeling was the same, though. I felt invisible. But my cousins did one of the little things that people do from time to time that make all the difference in the world to you, that lets you know that someone sees you. They left my aunt’s house, went to the nearby Poughkeepsie Galleria Mall, and bought me three CDs (of my own choosing) as a birthday present: The Velvet RopeThe Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and TLC’s FanMail (what can I say, I’ve always had great taste). For a while, these were the only CDs I owned, and I listened to them endlessly.

But The Velvet Rope spoke to me in more profound ways, articulating ideas I couldn’t, or was hesitant to, articulate myself: my loneliness and depression (“I Get Lonely” and “Empty”), my mourning (“Together Again” and and “Got ‘til It’s Gone”), and, vitally, my immense faggotry (“Free Xone” and “Tonight’s the Night”).

Queer references abound on The Velvet Rope: an interlude peppered with Bette Davis quotes from All About Eve (“Fasten your seatbelts!”) and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (“But ya are, Blanche! Ya are!”); the sample of the Diana Ross disco anthem “Love Hangover” that serves as the foundation for “My Need”; a cover of Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night,” that, with pronouns unchanged, paints Janet as sapphic seductress; and, most overtly, the trippy, anti-homophobia “Free Xone” (“Boy meets boy, boy loses boy, boy gets cute boy back”). Years later I would learn that Janet had written “Together Again” for a friend she lost to AIDS, which makes its boundless ebullience resonate that much stronger and feel that much more important.

Now, I could go on and on about this album’s influence on the pop and R&B of today—you can draw a direct line from The Velvet Rope to Solange’s A Seat at the Table, down to the number of intricately interlaced interludes—but, to me, its significance is not so clearly appraised. Twenty years ago it became a part of me, and it would go on to define and crystallize a moment in my life when everything changed.

And, much like me, it has aged beautifully and should be enshrined as a landmark achievement. 

https://www.out.com/music/2017/10/06/janet-jacksons-velvet-rope-queer-masterpiece-turns-20 

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Janet Jackson's The Velvet Rope: Ranking the songs

 

ControlRhythm Nation, and janet. may have been bigger albums with more hits, but The Velvet Rope represents Janet Jackson at her creative peak. Released 20 years ago on Oct. 7, 1997, the LP — yet another successful collaboration with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis — remains her most personal and powerful work. As Miss Jackson continues her recent return with her State of the World Tour, EW ranks all 16 songs on The Velvet Rope — minus the interludes — in honor of its anniversary.

16. “Tonight’s the Night”
While other Velvet Rope tracks borrow elements from ’70s classics, this is the only full-blown cover. It’s creamy sweetness, but the most interesting thing about this remake of Rod Stewart’s 1976 hit is that Jackson doesn’t change the object of her affection from female to male in the lyrics — until a gender flip toward the end.

15. “Anything”
By The Velvet Rope, Jackson had mastered the art of the sexy slow jam — from Control’s “Funny How Time Flies (When You’re Having Fun)” to Rhythm Nation’s “Someday Is Tonight” to janet.’s “Any Time, Any Place.” Although “Anything” isn’t in the same league as those tunes, it keeps the pleasure purring.

14. “Every Time”
Playing like a sequel to “Again,” this piano ballad can’t match that janet. hit. Still, its fragile beauty reveals Jackson at her most vulnerable on an album that shows she can be both tough and tender.

13. “My Need”
Mixing in bits from Diana Ross’ “Love Hangover” and Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s “You’re All I Need to Get By,” this lush and lusty track serves as a fitting homage to the Motown family that included Jackson’s brothers.

12. “Can’t Be Stopped”
This hidden track harks back to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. While its social consciousness feels more Rhythm Nation than Velvet Rope, this pre-Black Lives Matter protest song ends the album with a take-a-knee defiance.

11. “Empty”
Well before Tinder, Bumble, and OKCupid came along, Jackson explored the challenges of looking for love in cyberspace. Amidst a skittering trip-hop beatscape, she finds that the whole process can just intensity the loneliness. Even if the technology has been upgraded, the same sentiment still applies 20 years later.

10. “Free Xone”
Long a supporter of the LGBTQ community, Jackson takes a stand against homophobia on this funky flight. One of the most complex tracks on the album, shifting moods and rhythms, it finds Janet employing a spoken-word delivery to give the message of the lyric maximum impact.

9. “Special”
Although it is followed by the hidden track “Can’t Be Stopped,” “Special” provides the true denouement of The Velvet Rope. Set to a piano-led lilt, it alludes to some pain in Jackson’s past while concluding that “we’re all born with specialness inside of us” — even if you don’t come from pop royalty.

8. “Go Deep”
Bringing some levity to the heavier themes of the album, “Go Deep” is the only real party song on The Velvet Rope. Packing a bass thump, it also captures the fun spirit of camaraderie Jackson has always shared with her dancers, affectionately known as “The Kids.”

7. “Rope Burn”
Taking the sensuality of janet. to a kinkier place, “Rope Burn” finds Jackson getting all tied up in naughty knots. Riding a bump-and-grind groove, it shows just how much Michael’s little sister had learned from Erotica-era Madonna.

6. “You”
“Unleash this scared that you’ve grown into/You can not run for you can’t hide from you,” Jackson intones on this searing takedown of self-hate, which seemed as if it might have been directed at her brother Michael. Sampling from War’s “The Cisco Kid,” it makes you take a hard look in the mirror.

5. “Velvet Rope”
On the probing title track, Jackson examines our “special need to feel that we belong.” With Vanessa-Mae on violin, it’s an orchestral funk workout — one of Jam and Lewis’ most ambitious productions here — that means to free your mind as well as your body.

4. “I Get Lonely”
As big of a pop artist as she had become, Jackson stayed true to her R&B heart on this hit, which kept her soul cred in good stead on The Velvet Rope. Taking its cues from ’90s R&B groups like Jodeci and Blackstreet, this ballad ups the ante from Rhythm Nation’s “Lonely,” making you feel just how much she wants “no one but you.”

3. “What About”
Just as her brother Michael rocked out on “Beat It,” “Dirty Diana” and “Black or White,” Janet got heads banging with “Black Cat,” “If” and this Velvet Rope track. One of the boldest things she’s ever done, the song tackles domestic abuse with an intensity that goes from quiet to kick-ass.

2. “Got ’Til It’s Gone”
Of all the savvy samples on The Velvet Rope, the most valuable one is the vocal hook from Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” that provides the chorus of “Got ’Til It’s Gone.” It’s so essential to the song that Mitchell practically deserves a feature credit. Instead, that goes to guest rapper Q-Tip, whose inimitably cool flow helps to make this chill-out groove one of the dopest tracks of Jackson’s career.

1. “Together Again”
The album’s biggest hit, which became Jackson’s eighth No. 1 single, is an unforgettable remembrance of those lost to AIDS. Instead of getting all weepy, she turns this into an uplifting celebration that, pumping to a disco-house beat, dreams of a next-life reunion dancing in moonlight with no more pain and no more worries. Amen.

http://ew.com/music/2017/10/07/janet-jackson-velvet-rope-ranking/

 

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