One of the most successful and enduring artist-producer collaborations in pop history.
Control
Janet Jackson
42
By 1986, the 19-year-old baby of the Jackson family juggernaut had released two albums but had yet to become a superstar in her own right. All that changed when she bossed up and fired her own father, Joe Jackson, as her manager and went to Minneapolis to work with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis on what would be her true debut. The pairing of streetwise Prince protégés with sheltered music royalty was an odd coupling that worked, putting a nasty spin on Minneapolis funk that was all Miss Jackson. The result was one of the most successful and enduring artist-producer collaborations in pop history.
There is a militant assault in the fierce funk of “What Have You Done for Me Lately”—but there is also a giddiness to “When I Think of You”, Jackson’s first chart-topper, and a slow-jam sexiness to the album’s finale “Funny How Time Flies (When You’re Having Fun)”. When Jackson commanded “Gimme a beat!” at the beginning of “Nasty”, she was leading a new music movement for Black women’s empowerment.
“We wanted her to have creative input on it so that the record was hers. That was a revelation to her.”
Jimmy Jam
producer