ontologicalummah

I never interpreted Curtains as a farewell track more a bedroom jam but I also honestly haven't listened to Discipline all the way through more than once or twice since buying it in 08.

I think I fell in love with her with the Doesn't Really Matter song/video she just gave off this beautiful radiance plus the song was infectious. The All For You era sealed with the highlights being the MTV icon show and seeing her in concert later that year.

I wouldn't say Control is her best album but I think the production and harsh beats that you could arguably say began New Jack Swing/precursor sounded like nothing out in the mainstream. Out of all her albums Control(Rhythm Nation maybe) probably had the biggest impact on music as a whole. Plus that album along with the videos had labels creating Janet clones. I don't think Control's legacy can be discounted and it's success wasn't unexpected it was sort of the "hood album"(Jimmy's words) that blew up into the mainstream. Whether Janet intended it or not Control as an album is a black feminist anthem and people will be quoting lines from Nasty "My first name ain't baby, miss Jackson if ya nasty" for decades to come. Control is referenced pretty often in the contemporary as much as the Velvet Rope and Rhythm Nation are. The attitude and sass she was giving off in songs was a breath of fresh air. And the grammys aren't good with women anyway. I think Janet was the first woman to be nominated for producer of year and she certainly wasn't the first successful female producer. It's sad because people like Taylor Swift win awards like AOTY all the time when those awards were usually for non-mainstream works.

I love how we're pretending Dubai is some conservative place, like it's not a luxury destination that plenty of foreigners/Europeans do business and live. Y'all act like her moving there represents some moral failing. Also Wissam and Janet are rich so the same rules don't even apply to them if we're being honest. A black person is killed every 28 hours by the state in the United States yet it's somehow morally wrong for Janet to be in Dubai/the Middle East? lmao Also she clearly makes frequent trips to Europe and America. If you don't think Muslim Americans have faced hate crimes and attacks from the state(FBI informants of mosques) since 9/11 and that there isn't a hatred of Muslims then you're delusional. There are numerous examples of women in hijab facing attacks because they're visibly Muslim. How does her marriage effect our lives? The Great Forever was literally about y'all speculating on her marriage/religion. Stop turning a beautiful thing into something so ugly. Janet isn't and has never forced her religious beliefs on us. On this tour she's dancing singing songs like "If" while married to Wissam, has gay/trans employees so again don't create the truth you like. If I see any signs of abuse I'll be the first to drag Wissam but not because he's Muslim because anyone who doesn't appreciate Janet is an asshole. On a Janet forum there should be nothing but congratulations for Janet on planning a family not slander of her beliefs and husband. If she and Islam make you so uncomfortable find another fave like the one who practices Kabbalah despite not being Jewish and thinks it's edgy to dance in front of burning crosses with an extreme Jesus complex. *This will be my last post about religion in this thread*

Don't use gay rights to justify your bigotry. Like others have said none of the 3 Abrahamic faiths explicitly endorse homosexuality and if that's really your concern you would be advocating that Janet be an atheist. Janet didn't marry an Imam(Islamic faith leader/preacher) she married a Qatari billionaire educated in the West. The fact that they even dated before marriage and that he was interested in a woman married previously is indicative of the fact that he's not necessarily a strict Muslim. I won't comment on his religiosity since that's between him and Allah(swt) but to pretend that because you're X religion you follow everything to the T and have to hate anyone is a reach. In the West you have trans people beat and killed every day, "re-education" camps that attempt to convert gay people, etc so to insinsuate that "Muslims" or people in the third world/non-West are more bigoted than their Western counterparts is a reach. I guarantee you Wissam over the past decade has been around Janet's LGBTQ friends and I doubt Janet would have remained in a relationship with someone who actively discriminated against that community. And what do you mean by "our" Western values? Not everyone in the West is an Anglo-saxon christian and the values you speak of are hegemonic and are the result of hundreds of years of colonialism and white supremacy. The West is made up of several different ethnicities, cultures, and religions. Janet is very lowkey and besides saying "inshAllah", dressing a bit more modestly, and song lyrics she doesn't make her religion a focal point of her public identity. Even when she was a Christian she didn't preach to people and took a more laid back "spiritual" approach. If you think Islam is a religion of hatred then what's your solution seeing as 1.3 billion people identify as Muslim(including myself). Are you going to avoid us? Deport us? Kill us? Convert us like the Europeans did the Jews during the Inquisition? Yes this is a discussion board but I don't think you're an expert on Islam and I don't think it's fair for you to imply that Janet is being coerced or is somehow going against her values. Until Janet/Wissam go on a homophobic rant please LUFTA

It's really sad how Islamphobic some Janet fans are. People create this cariacture of Wissam as this big scary Muslim man that controls every facet of her life without having any sort of proof and or experience with Islam and or Muslims. Also the way some fans(mostly men) police her body as if she owes it to them to show skin in an ironic way is just as misogynistic as those who force women to cover. Having agency is a two way street and Janet has exercised both extremes in her life and has lived in her authentic truth. We don't know if she's Muslim(I'm inclined to believe so) but she married a Muslim man who she obviously loves so please stop trying to denigrate her husband and his religion by extension because you're unhappy. "Cause I don't see why loving someone or what I do seems so radical to you"

I think it's easier for me to listen to Unbreakable beginning to end a lot more than the Velvet Rope which I only listen to a couple of times a year. I think the Velvet Rope is the better album tho because of the theme tying it together and how innovative it was for a pop artist of her standard to be so introspective and vulnerable. She talks about depression, accepting and loving yourself,self-criticism, normalizing same sex relations Free Xone), black pride(Can't Be Stopped), domestic abuse, etc. The Velvet Rope is a lot heavier album than Unbreakable. I think the two are connected tho and some have said Unbreakable is sort of the light side of TVR after finding that sense of self/purpose and being so far away from the darkness and depression. I think Unbreakable is Janet's most spiritual album and she manages it to do it in a non-preachy way. Black Eagle instantly become one of my faves in her catalog from the way she mentions Palestine(room no 4, "beautiful people who have been ignored") to the mantra I've adopted "you'll never know unless you've been there" Also the TGF is peak passive agressive Janet where she's dragging you but also wishing that you find happiness and the great forever. I think TGF also speaks to the place she's in now "watch what I'm doing, watch where I'm going" some speculate on her religion which is her business but I think she has made some changes for the better. I don't think it's a coincidence that Wissam mentioned the Great Forever on his website in his love note to her. I also like the sounds of both albums. TVR still sounds so fresh and the Unbreakable impresses me with the willingness to explore folk and worldly sounds. I think both albums are what we missed between 04-15 and that's introspection. With Janet, Velvet Rope Janet was able to give us sex but also perspective on her life and also social commentary in the world(New Agenda, Can't Be Stopped, etc) and I think people are connecting to it being less fluff.

The Pleasure Principle- I love the lines "What I thought was happiness were only full-time bliss" "I'm not here to feed your insecurities, I wanted you to love me" and "Where'd you get the idea of material possession" I wonder what inspired Monte Moir to write that song. Come Back to Me- I loved the last minute of this and then the "I don't know what else to say" This Time "Running around with them nasty hoes" I think it could have been another feminist anthem for her if released What About- The way it flips from being a romantic idyllic song to an angry rock song taking on domestic abuse, misogyny, etc is amazing. Definitely deserved single/video treatment You Aint Right/Trust a Try Lessons Learned "I just want my baby back, I don't care I don't want to think back" I feel like it's the antithesis to What About and I love when she sings that part