I have a theory that some of the best albums of a pop singer’s career often follow an ugly split. Consider Mariah Carey’s club-ready Emancipation of Mimi, Björk’s cinematic magnum opus Vulnicura, and the sleazy electro pulse of Britney Spears’ Blackout (to the astonishment of her producers, Spears started recording “Radar” the day after filing for divorce from Kevin Federline). Pop is best served raw, when the artist becomes a vessel for emotions listeners don’t always have the language for. Also, what better way to heal than to materialize a hit album?
Jackson was also at a critical point in her career. While she was preparing to enter middle age, young divas like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera were beginning to storm the pop charts, and the ever-competitive music industry was awash with whisperings about whether she would remain a household name. With washboard abs, a full head of bohemian tresses, and powerful, dynamic choreography across the music videos for All For You, she shot back as a vision of robust femininity; one that could only be culled through maturity and three decades of hard work.
The Velvet Rope chronicled Jackson’s darkest years through the gentle sway of hip-hop and R&B primed for ’90s living rooms that chimed with wooden bead curtains and thumb drums of mysterious origin. All For You contains several stages of grief, from rage to depression, but ultimately lands on acceptance. And it has an eclectic genre pool—pop-rock, electronica, house—to kickstart all kinds of acting out. You can hear her pain and desire for revenge beneath the mangled, distorted guitar of “You Ain’t Right,” long rumored to be directed at her former choreographer, Tina Landon. She goes camp on “Trust a Try,” snarling to a new lover about his unfair mistrust against a theatrical blitz of synth shrapnels and metal riffs. “Truth” caused a stir in the media for the implications it could have on her ongoing divorce trial, with spiky lyrics like “Listen, I had a career before, now didn’t I?/Sold out around the world before, now didn’t I?” softening into an interpolation of Five Stairsteps’ 1970 anthem “O-o-h Child.” During interviews she blushed discussing heavier romantic songs like “When We Oooo,” hinting that she had someone specific in mind. Now, we can guess that she was singing about Jermaine Dupri, whom she would date from 2002 to 2009.
As if she had just discovered sex jokes for the first time, she flicks the freak switch with heaping sides of ba-dum-tiss. It wouldn’t be a Janet Jackson album without some raunch, but there’s a youthful giddyness to her sexual expression that communicates her renewed openness—on the album, you can imagine her defensive layers sloughing off and revealing her restless inner child. Thanks to Jimmy recording in-studio commentary on DAT in the final week of production, in the intro, we hear an unidentified speaker practicing a routine with Jackson, telling her she just has to get the dance moves “in you.” Jackson chuckles and responds, “I know, right? I wish I had a lot of stuff in me now.” The album tees up a Janet who had already established herself as a sex symbol on Janet and The Velvet Rope, taking that image a step further with baby-making songs taking over a vast swath of the 20 tracks. “Would You Mind”’s stalking, slippery beat, with diamante synths that dribble and plop like the sweat in the small of a back, is a safe space for her to whisper all the naughty acts she wants to engage in with that special someone: “I just wanna kiss you, suck you, taste you, ride you, feel you, make you cum too.” On “All For You,” she knows she’s an intimidating woman to pick up at the club, but she’s tired of doing all the asking. What’s more, she already has her sights set on someone (“Got a nice package alright/Guess I’m gonna have to ride it tonight.”) When asked by Vibe’s Craig Seymour about the lyric, she said, “I’m a size queen, right?”
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