Janet Jackson's latest album claims that she's (musically? spiritually? mentally?) 20-years-old, but the funny thing is that she doesn't sound a day over 10. Janet has apparently decided that her pop tenure has bought her the right to a prepubescent sense of frivolity. Like every Janet album since 1989's Rhythm Nation 1814, 20 Y.O. starts with scene-setting babbling: "There's something to be said for not saying anything...I've talked about a lot of things, what do I talk about this time? I've covered a lot in my 20 years. And I've uncovered a lot in my 20 years [zing!]. But I want to keep it light, I don't want to be serious. I want to have fun."
The fun rolls out in a three-song suite that, since we're being juvenile, reminds me of a scolding my literary hero Ramona was once given by her father (via her grandmother): "First time is funny. Second time is silly. Third time's a spanking." (Except proud-bottom Janet might like the latter too much.) The point is the fun of "So Excited," "Show Me" and "Get It Out Me" comes at a cost – there are dollar signs behind Janet's smile. Fun doubles as a bid for relevance in today's R&B because it's propelled Jermaine Dupri's trusty 808 drum machine. There's a static dynamic in the increasingly dire trio -- monochromatic melodies are shrouded by metallic beats. It's hard to pay attention to little else than tsking snares, sub-bass that lets out a doofy "Duh" and clapping that might as well be from the hands of Janet's legion of unquestioning fans, what with the low-end thrust forward the way it is. It's sort of like when an amazing ass is in your face and for a while, it's the only body part that exists. This is R. Crumb & B.
It's not that you can really blame Janet for getting behind the 808 – the brutally simplistic time-keeping click-pound has taken over as the sound of now, in what can only be a response to the spacey and unreliable skitters of and inspired by Timbaland that ruled before. And it's not even that "So Excited," "Show Me," and "Get It Out Me" are unpleasant, per se – they're just more business savvy than musical (Dupri usually shows more of a mastery of blending the two into pop), and nothing ages you like desperation. Of the three, "Get It Out Me" verges on crude – it's yet another retread of Afrika Bambaaata and the Soul Sonic Force's "Looking for the Perfect Beat." Could someone please buy Dupri an Egyptian Lover album so that he'd have a new electro source to gank? (That said, "Get It Out Me" could spawn a wonderful video – picture it: Janet dances from doctor to doctor in search of the one who can remove this horribly stubborn splinter lodged in her ass.)
That three-song stretch isn't the last you hear of the 808 – it also cracks through "Call On Me," which in the context of the album, reveals its brazen mediocrity that I never wanted to admit was there. But it's that same drum machine, under the sole control of Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis and Janet, that makes "Daybreak" as delightful as it is. Without it, "Daybreak" would be unbearably treacly, what with its sneaking-out theme ("I'm like a lil kid," says Janet in the no-shit statement of the album) and series of "Escapade" chimes that bleed into each other like a cavalcade of ice-cream trucks going around Janet's head as she's nestled in bed (is there anyone else in pop music who'd think to work the melody of "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" into a track, much less, get away with it?). Even better is "With U," a ballad in which the 808 finally does exactly what it's supposed to and merely puts Janet on an even playing field with her competition. In another time, the beats would be quieter (mimicking finger-snapping like in "Let's Wait Awhile," for example), but it doesn't matter because what comes through are indelible melody, Janet's trademark multi-ply vocal layers and, most importantly, her sweetness ("Baby it's forever and I really mean to / Make you feel as special as I see you, baby"). This summer, when the only track we'd heard from 20 Y.O. was "Call On Me," I'd hoped that Janet could come back with something along the lines of the "'We Belong Together' of dance tracks." That she didn't doesn't matter – this is the "We Belong Together" of now.
If "With U" and "Call On Me" were swapped on the track list, the last half of 20 Y.O. would comprise the most consistent 5-song stretch that Janet's ever committed to record. "With U," "Daybreak," the steppy "Enjoy" (her most disco moment since "Together Again" or maybe even "Young Love," which was released back when she was, y'know, -4), "Take Care" and "Love 2 Love" are assured enough to make you forget that Janet's working off the biggest slump of her musical career. These songs simply glow. "Take Care" is as structurally brilliant as anything she's done – it's a baby-making track a la "Funny How Time Flies"/"Lonely"/"Anytime, Anyplace"/"Anything"/"Would You Mind"/"Warmth" but without the stuffy, sometimes dull rigidity of those songs. "Take Care" dozes in and out of choruses and verses so that it's hard to tell what's what, and most spectacularly, hits a bridge at only the 1:30 point. It's like it's too good not to climax early. "Love 2 Love," meanwhile, is the most forward-thinking torch song to grace R&B since Aaliyah's "I Care 4 U," with its Homogenic beats, breathlessly shifting synths and that bizarre, single bar in the second verse that breaks into live drumming. Both of these tracks are focused on sex, but neither are over-the-top. I don't mind Janet being as smutty as she wants to be, but you know, after you've simulated (?) singing with a cock in your mouth, where else is there to go?
These tracks wisely and consciously scale back and thus, are in conversation with what came before them in Janet's career. This kind of dialog with the past was the aim for the entire album, but as a response to Janet's previous work, it falls short (a few interludes that sample Janet's catalog aren't enough to achieve this end during the album's inferior first half). But if it doesn't quite enrich what we know of the past, what mean to today's R&B? Not very much, either, really – Janet's always had a way of recognizing trends (as Tim Finney sharply pointed out recently on ILM, "it's rarely acknowledged that The Velvet Rope featured perhaps the first non-Timbaland tracks to start jocking the late 90s R&B sound in a major way"), while fostering a brand that's all her own. She's been making the same album (at least in structure) since janet., and so, if you like her, the Janetism (giggle, giggle!)-filled 20 Y.O. comes off as a variation on a theme. If you don't, it's repetition of the most indulgent sort (repetition as self-celebration as a lack of ideas). Is she getting older or better? Split in half as it is, the only answer that makes sense is: a little bit from column A and a little bit from column B.
[This review was inspired in part by a conversation with Bill, who knows more about Janet than I ever will. Also, here is where I found the lovely and subtle Crumb shot.]
