First off on the discussion panel is quite possibly my favourite Janet album of all time: The Velvet Rope (which turns 15 in October this year).

Struggling with a long-term case of depression, she developed the record as a concept album, with introspection as its theme. Its title, The Velvet Rope, is an allusion to an individual's need to feel special, as well as a metaphor for emotional boundaries. Lyrically, she offers her audience the opportunity to cross her own velvet rope, exploring her feelings of despondency through the course of the album. Although she introduced sexuality into her music with her 1993 studio album Janet, The Velvet Rope takes the concept a step further, encompassing sadomasochism and same-sex relationships, as well as addressing social issues such as homophobia and domestic violence. Musically, the album is minor example of trip hop, blending hip hop and electronic music, with the artist's conventional use of contemporary R&B and rap. Jackson's compositions were a result of her collaborations with her record producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and her then-husband René Elizondo, Jr.; she authored all lyrics with Elizondo, Jr., and co-wrote all vocal and rhythmic arrangements with Jam and Lewis, receiving additional contributions from several other songwriters. Jackson and Elizondo, Jr. served as executive producers. Other artists who contributed to the project include British violinist Vanessa-Mae, rapper Q-Tip, and Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, who personally gave Jackson permission to sample her 1970 single "Big Yellow Taxi". Referred to as a masterpiece, The Velvet Rope has been the subject of critical acclaim for its lyrical depth, emotional vulnerability, and mature sound. It is listed by Rolling Stone magazine as one of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

This album has changed the way I listen to music. From the smooth neo-soul of Got 'Til It's Gone, to the rock-tinged flavour of What About, it is a roller coaster of emotions and a journey through the human experience. I regard it as the Ying to HIStory's Yang.

To me she's never been the same since. Never that introspective or deep. The music never communicated to me like it used to after The Velvet Rope. She blends genres and topics so eloquently it seems almost as if it's a movie, and we're just sitting back and watching the scenes evolve.

Ladies and gentlemen, The Velvet Rope.

This was always my favorite song off it:

Six singles were released:

Singles

"Got 'til It's Gone" was released as an international single and received radio airplay in the United States, but was not released as a commercial single within the country. The single peaked at number 36 on the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay and at number 3 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay.^[16][17]

"Together Again" peaked at number one of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and at number eight on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks.^[18] The single entered the Hot 100 on December 20, 1997, peaking at number one on January 31, 1998 and topped the chart for two weeks.^[14] "Together Again" spent a record 46 weeks on the Hot 100 singles chart.^[14] On January 9, 1998, "Together Again" received gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America.^[19]

"Go Deep", like "Got 'til It's Gone" was released as an international single but was not commercially available in the United States. The song received radio airplay and peaked at number 28 on the Hot 100 Airplay and number 11 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay.^[20][21]

"I Get Lonely" peaked at number three on the Hot 100 singles chart and at number one on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks.^[18] On June 30, 1998, the single was certified gold by the RIAA.^[22]

"You" was released as the album's fifth single in September 1998. Although the single received a promo release in the United Kingdom, it was ineligible to chart.

The ballad "Every Time" was released as the album's sixth and final single in late 1998. The song was relatively a commercial failure in many countries. It failed to enter the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S.

The sheer beauty of the afro-centric images shown in this video expresses the lyrics of this song 1000 times more than it was originall supposed to convey.

Timmy84 said:

This was always my favorite song off it:

I love that song and how she's slowly building on top of it as it goes on.

smoothcriminal12 said:

Timmy84 said:

This was always my favorite song off it:

I love that song and how she's slowly building on top of it as it goes on.

Yeah that song just takes you on a journey...

Timmy84 said:

smoothcriminal12 said:

I love that song and how she's slowly building on top of it as it goes on.

Yeah that song just takes you on a journey...

Tonight's The Night really got me. When I first heard her say "I love you girl" I was like "what"? And I had to rewind. Then I heard "this is just between me, and you....and you." I was like "damn".

[Edited 6/27/12 18:08pm]

I think What About would have made a great video And it's my favorite song on the album along with the sensual Rope Burn

smoothcriminal12 said:

Timmy84 said:

Yeah that song just takes you on a journey...

Tonight's The Night really got me. When I first heard her say "I love you girl" I was like "what"? And I had to rewind. Then I heard "this is just between me, and you....and you." I was like "damn".

[Edited 6/27/12 18:08pm]

I loved the bisexuality annotations in that song. She said "boy" in the final chorus line. It was like she was making a point. Of course people were thinking she seriously WAS bi (and it's still rumored she is. ). I wonder how Rod Stewart felt about it.

Timmy84 said:

smoothcriminal12 said:

Tonight's The Night really got me. When I first heard her say "I love you girl" I was like "what"? And I had to rewind. Then I heard "this is just between me, and you....and you." I was like "damn".

[Edited 6/27/12 18:08pm]

I loved the bisexuality annotations in that song. She said "boy" in the final chorus line. It was like she was making a point. Of course people were thinking she seriously WAS bi (and it's still rumored she is. ). I wonder how Rod Stewart felt about it.

I thought she was at first, but I realize she was probably just toying with people.

smoothcriminal12 said:

Timmy84 said:

I loved the bisexuality annotations in that song. She said "boy" in the final chorus line. It was like she was making a point. Of course people were thinking she seriously WAS bi (and it's still rumored she is. ). I wonder how Rod Stewart felt about it.

I thought she was at first, but I realize she was probably just toying with people.

That's pretty much what it was. That said, I loved the funk influences in "Free Xone". The fact that she attacked phobia of sexualities in that song made it all the better.

Timmy84 said:

smoothcriminal12 said:

I thought she was at first, but I realize she was probably just toying with people.

That's pretty much what it was. That said, I loved the funk influences in "Free Xone". The fact that she attacked phobia of sexualities in that song made it all the better.

That song's a jam. She was getting her thang on that track. I want an extended version.

smoothcriminal12 said:

Timmy84 said:

That's pretty much what it was. That said, I loved the funk influences in "Free Xone". The fact that she attacked phobia of sexualities in that song made it all the better.

That song's a jam. She was getting her thang on that track. I want an extended version.

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,289747_2,00.html

There was a time when Janet Jackson turned up her nose at nasty boys, nasty cars, even at nastiness itself. ''I'm not a prude/I just want some respect,'' she sang in the 1986 hit ''Nasty.'' '''Cause privacy is my middle name ... ''

My, how things have changed. These days, Jackson is obsessed with the nasty and doesn't care who knows it. Duck behind The Velvet Rope and you'll find her singing about all sorts of sexual things, from casual encounters and computer liaisons to bondage and bisexuality. She's so single-minded in her pursuit of prurient pleasures that in one of the album's between-song interludes, a girlfriend warns, ''Your coochie gon' swell up and fall apart.''

Coming as it does after the unabashed sensuality of 1993's janet., this crotch-level focus shouldn't come as too great a surprise. But the heavy-breathing innuendo of janet. songs like ''Throb'' and ''The Body That Loves You'' is nothing compared with the spell-it-out frankness of these new songs. It's one thing for ''Throb'' to pant about ''your body/Pressed against my body,'' quite another for Rope's ''Go Deep'' to insist, ''Gotta take him home/When I get him alone/I'll make him scream and moan.''

Still, the listeners most likely to be upset by the album will doubtless worry less about its degree of explicitness than the kind of sex Jackson is exploring. In ''Free Xone,'' for instance, Jackson translates the usual boy-meets-girl scenario as ''Girl meets boy/Girl loses boy/Girl gets cute girl back,'' summing it up with the phrase ''Free to be/Who you really are.'' Then there's her cover of Rod Stewart's loss-of-virginity epic, ''Tonight's the Night'' — never have the lyrics '''Cause I love you girl/Ain't nobody gonna stop us now'' seemed so brazen.

Shocked? Such sentiments may seem provocative on the printed page, but Jackson's pro-sex proselytizing is soothingly seductive when oozing from the speakers. Some of that is because the words are rarely as front and center as the funky, luxuriant rhythm beds built by producers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis. For instance, ''Empty'' may, lyrically, look to be about computer sex; but as it comes through the speakers, it seems to have more to do with the luscious textures Jam & Lewis create by contrasting Jackson's gauzy harmony vocals with a dense swirl of samples and sequenced synth pulses.

Mostly, though, it's Jackson's delivery that keeps the album out of the gutter. Rather than stress the nudge-wink naughtiness of the lyrics, Jackson would rather sing about sex as if it were simply a fact of life. That's not to say she's dispassionate about the subject; her throaty purr on ''Rope Burn'' makes it easy to understand the pull of bondage. But neither is she entirely comfortable playing the role of libertine, making sure it's clear that ''My Need'' — which is otherwise quite explicit about just what Jackson needs — is ultimately more about love than sex.

In fact, it's the emotional component of sex, rather than the act itself, that seems Jackson's real concern. That's one of the reasons it's a mistake to judge this album on the basis of its lyric sheet. However much ''Go Deep'' may read like a hymn to hedonism, what it sounds like is a song of pride in which Jackson and crew celebrate not sex but the confidence that allows them to act sexual when they feel the urge. Likewise, the gently throbbing house beat beneath ''Together Again'' keeps this tribute to a dead friend from sounding as lachrymose as it looks on the page.

Jam & Lewis deserve credit for a lot of that; it's their production that most clearly articulates the emotional core of Jackson's songs. It would be hard to imagine ''What About'' having the same impact without the drama implicit in the way their arrangement moves from the quiet-storm tenderness of the verse (''He kissed me he said/I wanna spend my life with you'') and the industrial-strength fury of the chorus (''What about the times you hit my face ... ''). But the album's most affecting moments tend to be its subtlest, as when the chords in the chorus to ''Every Time'' modulate into melancholy as Jackson observes that ''every time I fall in love/It seems to never last.''

In the end, the most daring thing about The Velvet Rope isn't its sex talk but its honesty. Tempting as it may be to compare the album to similarly sultry stuff like Madonna's Erotica, it's much closer in spirit to the unabashed emotionalism of Joni Mitchell's Blue. That's because the most revealing moments here have to do with loneliness and vulnerability, not sexual preference. Maybe that's why ''Got 'Til It's Gone'' takes so much strength from its sample of Mitchell's ''Big Yellow Taxi,'' and why the self-actualization anthem ''Special'' ends with Jackson describing herself as a ''work in progress.'' Personally, I can't wait to see how she comes out. A

[Edited 6/27/12 18:28pm]

Love this album and its funny because I have been listening to it alot lately... I think at the moment You is my favorite off the album.. it is a killer LIVE... She should have made a real music video for it....

I AM ADDICTED TO THIS SONG AND PERFORMANCE..... ADDICTED

I love You.

Timmy84 said:

smoothcriminal12 said:

I love that song and how she's slowly building on top of it as it goes on.

Yeah that song just takes you on a journey...

And what a journey it is! Jam & Lewis did a masterful job with the track. They were either on the cutting edge or slightly ahead of the game with this one. Even the concept of emailing or online dating wasn't quite as prevelant as it is today. The Drum & Bass elements of this song took something that was underground and brought it to the Pop mainstream. Although it wasn't a single, it was one of my favorites.

Speaking of the other joints, I always loved how they used a little of "Tighten Up" from Archie Bell and the Drells in "Free Xone". Funky

The backup singer/dancer on the left is killing it throughout the video btw.