In this week’s New Music Report, Rolling Stone Senior Editor Melissa Maerz takes a look at Janet Jackson’s tenth studio album Discipline.
Is it a return to form for Ms. Jackson or another problematic trip down
the rabbit hole? Discipline's mechanized thump flatters producer Rodney Jerkins,
who slams down the high-voltage money shot "Feedback" and the Jam-Lewis
homage "Rollercoaster." The slower, slinkier stuff is left to Ne-Yo,
who's so excited to be working with a real, live Jackson that he even
calls one song "Rock With You." Essential to the album's fantasy world
is its lack of references to the real-life woman behind the mike. (No
one really wants to think that it's Jermaine Dupri she's inviting to
"strum [her] like a guitar," right?) So by the time Janet's murmuring,
"Daddy, I disobeyed you," on the masochistic title track, you can
dismiss any images of the abusive Jackson clan that flit into your
mind. Just lie back and enjoy the sensations as pure aural
autoeroticism.
Janet Jackson has abandoned the plastic R&B of 2006's 20 Y.O.
for a sexier brand of digitized megapop. On her Def Jam debut, the
beats are as crass and processed as Jackson's heavy breathing, so she
sounds more like a sex droid than a blow-up doll, which is way hotter —
for starters, sex droids show more initiative. When Janet brags she's
"heavy like a first-day period" on "Feedback" or sings in a
scrunched-up robot voice that she's "So Much Betta" than your girl, all
the amateur competition should just pack up their Webcams and go home. SOURCE OF THIS STORY