September 13, 2022 • 26 mins
Flashback to my first cassette tape, Janet Jackson’s Control. Go down memory lane with me as I remember being a young fan of Janet Jackson as well as recently watching her perform at Essence Festival.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:40):
Hey, everybody, welcome back to a new episode of Her
with Amina Brown. Thank you so much for those of
you that may just be finding the podcast. So we
did a rerun of a few of our favorite episodes
over the summer while I was traveling and eating all
the peaches and cucumbers, because you know, summer is just
(01:01):
it's just an amazing It's an amazing season for the
fruits and some of the vegetables, but but a lot
of the fruits. So I hope that you all enjoyed
your summertime and had some good and fun times with
some people that you love, and hope you had some
good food too. So during the summer, I had the
opportunity to attend and work at Essence Festival. And if
(01:26):
you're not familiar with Essence Festival, although I know many
of you are, hopefully, but Essence Festival is it's a
massive festival that in a lot of ways centers Black
women because Essence Festival is an offshoot of Essence Magazine,
which is a magazine that's been around for a very
long time that has centered the stories of black women,
(01:47):
and Essence Festival is this outgrowth of that, and Essence
Festival has concerts, It has exercise and wellness and food
and beauty things. It's it's like if a conference and
a concert and a bunch of shopping and some of
(02:10):
your favorite Black celebrities all converge in New Orleans for
almost a week basically. So I had the opportunity to
be a part of us In's festival because I was
invited to host some game show segments on the Beauty
Carnival Stage at Essence. And the Beauty Carnival Stage is
(02:30):
this stage that's in this area where a lot of
beauty brands are there that the people who are attending
us In festival can come and get to know more
about some of the brands that were there. And of
course there are all sorts of vendors selling clothes and
ear rings and um. Then there are other brands that
may not necessarily be beauty related, but maybe health related
(02:53):
or food related that will also be in some of
those areas. So I was here on this stage that
didn't have performances, but obviously had games and game shows
that we're there, as well as interviews and panel discussions
and stuff like this. So I was very excited because
I have wanted to get a chance to perform or
(03:15):
be on stage at Essence Festival for a really long time.
So to get invited was a big deal to me,
and to get a chance to see how it works,
because I have never even just attended Essence Festival. I've
had a couple of times that some girlfriends were going
and they invited me to go, and I couldn't go
for various reasons. And then I was planning on going
(03:36):
with one of my best friends for my forty but
my forty happened to fall in and so that meant
that I could not go to Essence Festival because of
the pandemic whompo. So all that to say, I was
very excited to get a chance to finally just be
(03:57):
there for Essence Festival and to have the opportunity to
work Essence Festival, which I was like, I would love
to just attend Essence, but if I could get booked
for Essence, I would love to be doing one of
two things. I would love to either be performing my
poetry or I would love to be hosting in some capacity.
So to get the chance to host game show segments
(04:19):
on the Beauty Carnival stage was amazing. I'm putting it
out there y'all that I hope in the future I'll
be able to come back to you all and tell
you about the times that I performed poetry there and
got a chance to do even more hosting. I would
love to do that, And just so happened that this
year's Essence Festival, Janet Jackson was headlining the Saturday night concert.
(04:41):
And that's really what this episode is about. This episode
is about Janet Jackson, and Janet Jackson deserves more than
the minutes I may have to give you in this episode.
And if I am saying Janet Jackson's name and you're
not familiar with her music at all, or maybe you're
familiar with her newer music and you're not familiar with
(05:02):
the music from the earlier parts of her career, this
is your encouragement to do a deep dive. Wherever you
like to listen to your music, do a deep dive
into her music, because it will be very well worth it.
So I'm gonna start you from the beginning of my
becoming a fan of Janet Jackson. My first cassette tape.
I'm pretty sure I didn't buy it because I was
six years old. So my first cassette tape, but I
(05:25):
can remember having of my own that I could keep
in my room and then play, and my little whatever
tape player I had access to was Janet Jackson's Control,
which for me always feels like Janet's first album, but
I actually think it was her second album, if I
remember right, Janet Jackson's Control. The cover of Control is perfect.
(05:50):
Those of you that may follow me on social media
know that I sometimes like to see if I can
figure out how to mimic an album cover, and this
album cover for Control is an album that I would
love to figure out how I could mimic, except I
don't know that my hair would really do what Janet's
hair was doing in this cover. And even at six
years old, you know, the eighties was an interesting time
(06:11):
to be a child because I was allowed to listen
to this whole seat, this whole cassette. That's about to
say CD, but this this whole cassette tape. And obviously,
you know there there are some things on this cassette
that I'm sure a six year old is maybe not
ready to hear. You know, there there was some very
you know, sexy songs, at least one sexy song, again,
(06:33):
I can remember at the end of this album that
I'm sure a six year old wasn't ready for, but
I really have vague memories of that. And more of
my memories are of hearing Control and what have you
done for me lately? Um hearing and And this is
an interesting time to think about having been, you know,
(06:54):
listening to this cassette as a six year old, because
this was also at sort of this beginning era of
the music video and we know that Janet Jackson really
just reigned as the queen of a lot of amazing
music videos. And so my memories of this music are
part me listening to it and part me remembering these
videos of Janet just like skipping around with her friends
(07:17):
talking about this boy she likes. You know, That's kind
of how I interpreted this at the time. I just
loved her music. I loved her I loved her smile.
I loved those black jeans that she wore in the
Control video. I loved the mic and the headset. I
had very large Janet posters on my wall. I remember
(07:39):
from my seventh birthday, I think my mom had gotten
me a poster, and then I asked for a poster
for my seventh birthday. And I also remember having my
first ever sleepover with my friends from school and there
were probably I don't know, maybe there were like six
or seven of them. Maybe maybe it was ten of us.
(07:59):
I don't remember how many of us there were in all.
I mean, I was an adult. I'm like, wow, shout
out to my mom for doing a sleepover with that
many little children. But I remember they came over and
they got me all sorts of different little Janet Jackson
things that I loved so much because they all knew
how much I love Janet. I'm sure you know some
of them did too, And it just meant a lot
(08:20):
to a little black girl to see Janet Jackson, to
see her hips and her cheekbones, and to see her
dancing and just you know, in a lot of ways
that I don't think I reflected on until I got older,
you know, seeing her really take control of her music
and of her life, and that was a very powerful
(08:42):
image to young me. Okay, So then I went on
to not only be a person that had her magazine
cutouts and posters on my wall back in the day.
Some of you all gonna listen to this and be like,
what back in the day because there was no Twitter,
there was no TikTok, there was no Instagram, no Facebook,
(09:03):
there was no online way that you could talk to
artists that you were fans of. But a lot of
big artists back then had fan clubs, and they had
mailing addresses for their fan clubs. So some some artists
had their stuff organized enough that maybe there were regional
(09:25):
meetings where you could like meet other people. I never
had that experience, but back in the day, when you
would buy someone's cassette or CD, I don't know about
album because I I I only remember having one or
two albums as a child, and then went my whole
adult life and then got into my thirties and started
(09:46):
buying all the albums again, So I don't know how.
I don't know how all of that was actually because
by the time I was old enough to buy my
own music and read the liner notes and all that,
I was really buying cassettes and CDs. But inside the
cassette and the c the the insert that you know,
when you were a big fan of an artist, you know,
you'd open up the whole thing and stare at it.
(10:07):
That's how I learned a lot of the words to
these songs, right, Uh, they would have a little address,
like if you wanted to send fan mail to this artist,
they would have an address. And so Janet's people put
that address in her cassette tape. I know I sent
her at least two letters, school pictures included, so that
(10:31):
I could tell her how school was going, and how
much I loved her music, how much her music meant
to me. Who knows if she ever read any of
them or where they ever went, but it just felt
nice to feel like you could send some sort of
a letter to her. I mean, I I really just
and and just heartwarmed and just touched thinking about my
little eight year old self sending Janet my little school pictures,
(10:53):
my sweater vest, what's my heart? And then I must
have been about maybe I was about nine or ten
by the time I was listening to Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation.
I also had this cassette tape that my mom bought
for me, and this cassette I remember really specifically, because
I remember cassettes were either white or they were kind
(11:17):
of this tope kind of color. And Rhythm Nation the
cassette was black with white writing, and I thought that
was amazing. I thought that was the best thing to
ever happen to me. I thought it was amazing. And
Rhythm Nation I really loved because it was so cool
(11:39):
to me as a kid to hear this artist. I
loved sort of taking on this social commentary of the day.
I I really admired that that she did that in
Rhythm Nation and Quiet as It's kept. There is a
Rhythm Nation VHS. I wish it I still owned mine.
(12:01):
I don't know what I did with mine, but there
was a Rhythm Nation kind of short film, you know.
And it's interesting. I'm a huge Beyonce fan as well.
And when I think about what Beyonce has done with
you know, these ideas of the visual album, right, what
she did with Lemonade, what she did with the visuals
that went with the Beyonce album, as well as what
(12:22):
she did with the Homecoming images and film that went
on to Netflix from the Coachella performance. When you think
about that, you know, I know that Beyonce is also
a huge Janet fan, and these were things that Janet
was doing with her music as well. That Rhythm Nation
actually had a short film that went with it. It
(12:44):
was like twenty or thirty minutes, and I actually rewatched
it the other day. I'm gonna see if we can
find the link. I'm hoping the link is still up
because someone on YouTube, Bless their Hearts, found this and
put it on YouTube because the VHS is out of print,
and I you know, you if you watch it now,
you'll you'll look at it now and realize, like some
(13:06):
of this you can see maybe why Janet and her
team would not want to like put this back on
a DVD, But it will give you a little slice
of time and history to see what Janet was doing
with this music and how she was able to work
with her team to come up with this visual idea.
(13:26):
And it just made me feel so empowered, you know.
I think that was a part of some really empowered
music for a lot of us who were at that age,
you know, to see her talking about how like I
mean her like screaming, yelling like it's time to give
a damn lest work together. I was like, I'm ready
to work together, girl, we'll be doing then. The other
(13:48):
Janet thing that I remember really being like important to
my development school years was Janet's video for That's the
Way Love Goes. And That's the Way Love Goes is
still one of my favorite songs to this day because
it just has that opening uh guitar doo doo doom. Think,
I mean, like so good. I just I want to
(14:11):
I want to really almost stop the episode and just
be like if we were friends friends. You know, y'all
are my friends, but if we were friends friends, I
(14:33):
would be like, girl, we just have to stop for
a second so we can just play the song real quick.
But to think about just the sound of that song, Oh,
it just sounded so grown and so sexy. It sounded
like Janet was making a musical and a soulful statement
(14:54):
about not only who she is as an artist, but
also who she is as a woman, That she is
a woman who's grown as hale now and she's not
that same like when I was seventeen, I do what
people told me, Like when she gets into this Janet
album Era, which is the album that That's the Way
Love Goes was on, I remember this music video. And
(15:17):
this is also interesting for me when I think about
sort of my like musical experiences growing up, because a
part of them, a part of my music experiences were
about my experience listening to music, you know, by myself,
you know, on my little boon box or listening in
my Walkman at the time, but also a lot of
(15:38):
that was very connected to music videos too, and this
song is no different in that. Like I remember hearing
the song, but I most remember seeing this music video
with a young j Lo, with all of these beautiful
people with crop tops and earth tones. I mean, when
I watched this mus video, as far as I was concerned,
(16:02):
this is what adulthood was gonna be for me. It's
somehow me in this amazing, you know, very well designed
warehouse like apartment loft situation. It's my friends and I
having some sort of uh, you know, grown get together,
and it is somehow intellectual and yet sexy that this
(16:25):
is this is the life I thought was going to
be for me. I was like, surely this is gonna
be my twenties. This this video right here, this is it.
And the other thing that I didn't listen to intently
because I don't remember that I bought this album. I
(16:45):
just remember engaging with this music with the videos, like
the video for If It came out, which was mind blowing,
watching Janet and these dancers like kill it like they
were doing, you know, but I was picking up on
something that even you know, bringing Beyonce and to the conversation,
something that I felt like was really apparent in Beyonce's
(17:07):
Beyonce album, that you're experiencing a woman artist who's also
having a bit of a sexual awakening. And I remember
also picking up on that of the songs I did
listen to on the Janet album. Now, as we will
discuss in other episodes, and as I have previously discussed
(17:28):
with you all in some previous episodes, you know, having
been a person that grew up in church that you know,
it wasn't that sex was being discussed with me as
something that could be good, normal, beautiful. Okay, It was definitely,
especially as a young person, you know, being presented to
me as something you need to be very very afraid of,
(17:50):
you need to be very wary of, you know. So
I was watching Janet go through this, and I was
very intrigued that she seemed to be having in a weakening,
but I was also afraid of it, you know, afraid
of it and afraid to delve anymore, like deeply into that.
So some of her records I really didn't get into
(18:12):
them until many years later that I came back to
sort of listen again to this music. So I kind
of fell off of listening to her albums after she
put out The Velvet Rope, and she put out many
albums after that. And here I am at Essence Festival
in this arena. I think they said there were about
(18:33):
eighty thousand of us in this arena watching Janet Jackson perform,
watching her headline that night, and it was really a
beautiful full circle moment for me. I think, first of all,
it's probably the the largest kind of live concert thing
that I've been to since the pandemic and prior to
(18:56):
the pandemic. You know, I am a person and my
husband and I both you know, just as a couple,
we love to go to live shows. For me, as
a writer as a performer, live music is just so
inspiring to me, especially when it's an artist that you
know and love and you've listened to their music in
(19:17):
and out right, and then you can see the things
that they're doing with their band and DJ and dancers
and whatever kind of setup they have. You know, it's
always a beautiful inspiring experience. You know, it is always
something that has an element of feeling a bit sacred,
you know, for me. And to just sit there and
(19:38):
number one, like hear these hits of hers that I
have loved, and hear her voice like singing that live,
watching her dance with her dancers and kill it, and
watching her do some of the dance routines that were
so familiar that I remember many of us. You know,
(20:00):
this was before there was YouTube or anything. So if
you really wanted to learn one of these dance routines
from Rhythm Nation or from if or Um, from Pleasure Principle,
the one where she was doing the dance routine with
the chair and all that, like, if you really wanted
to learn that stuff, you sometimes had to literally wait
for the video to come off, like over and over.
(20:21):
You have to like watch with your friends and call
your friends on the phone and tell them okay, okay, okay,
it's on and you watch and learn a things. So
to see her doing some of those dance steps that
just becomes so signature to that music for me was amazing.
I think also just I just honestly y'all had a
really emotional moment of reflection because you know, personally, um,
(20:44):
this hasn't been an easy year. You know, there have
been some some hard things that have gone on this year.
And two, I'm trying to explain this to you all,
like and and those of you that are listening that
maybe going through something really difficult right now, or you
remember a season in your life where you went through
something really difficult, you know how you can you can
(21:05):
go through something that is so difficult and for many
of us, that is so traumatizing that you almost feel
like your life becomes that, you know, like if it
was a loss that you experienced, if it was violence
that you experienced, you know, you just it becomes so
life shattering that you can just feel like, that's now
(21:28):
my life, you know, that's now what I am or
who I am. And there was something about sitting there
and watching Janet Jackson perform and thinking about my little
six year old self who just loved her, just loved her,
you know, and finally after all these years, getting to
see her live and in a way it helped me
(21:50):
to remember even though I am a person that has
experienced some really uh tough things, right, I am not
just a person that has only experienced that. I'm a
person who also has capacity to experience joy and elation
(22:12):
and inspiration, you know, like I am all of that,
and I was reminded of that, you know, moving my
shoulders to Janet doing miss you much at essence, and
and even thinking about aging. I've been thinking a lot
about that, uh, at different points, you know, because now
(22:34):
being in my forties, it's not that being in my
forties is old by any means, but in a way,
it's sort of like, you know, there's a certain there's
a certain point to which you may have imagined your life, right,
And when I was in my twenties, I could sort
of imagine myself at forty, But that's kind of as
(22:55):
far as I stopped. Because if I got into fifties
and sixties and seventies, and I was starting to get
maybe in the age range of you know, my parents,
or in the age range of my grandparents, you know,
and I just really could not imagine my life any
further than that. So in some ways, now actually being
in my forties and realizing, oh, my young self only
(23:15):
could imagine my life to a point, And now I'm
kind of in the part of my life where I
get the opportunity to imagine for myself now, like, what
do I want this decade of my life, for this
next twenty or thirty years or forty years, or however,
what do I want from my life? What do I
want that to look like? And looking at Janet here
(23:39):
in her fifties, like still doing this thing that she loves,
knowing that she too has been through a lot of
hard things and experienced her own elements of loss and
grief and experienced her life not going the way that
maybe she'd hoped or planned, and finding ways to still
do the music, finding ways to still make music and
(24:01):
do what she loved. And me sort of sitting there
now in my forties thinking about what that means in
my own life, you know, trying to really see myself
as a whole person, and getting to see Janet in
this era of her life and just being reminded like,
just because I may get to an era of my
life that I hadn't had a chance yet to imagine
(24:24):
what that life would be, Um, doesn't mean that this
isn't a good time to do that for myself, you know,
to think like, well, I wanted something self couldn't think,
you know, I wonder what I'll want to be doing
when I'm forty eight, and maybe that's okay, you know,
at forty two. Now this is a good time to
ask myself those questions. What I want to be doing
at forty two? You know, what do I hope for
(24:47):
my life to be when I'm in my fifties. How
do I want to build towards that, whether it's you know,
financially or creatively even or in the work that I do.
So lots of inspiration from sitting there and watching Janet
just kill it. I mean, it was amazing. And I
just saw her at US since festival, and truthfully, is
(25:07):
she released the tour dates like right now, I'd probably
still want to buy a ticket because it was that amazing.
So shout out to Janet Jackson, Shout out to our
first cassette tapes, those of us who remember having our
first cassette tapes, and shout out to all of the
music that we love that formed us. And I hope
as you all are listening that you will remember too
(25:29):
that you are a whole person. How you are not
just the things that you've been through. You're not just
the hard stuff that you've survived. Um, you are all
these things, you know, you're a person who can experience
pleasure and enjoy. You're a person whose heart may have
been broken, and all of that can be a part
of you. All of that can be a part of
(25:51):
what you carry with you into the next season of
your life. And maybe this is a good time to
imagine and or reimagine yourself or your next season of life.
Maybe life is not turning out like how you thought
it was, but that doesn't mean that there could not
be good and beautiful life ahead for you. So that's
(26:14):
what I hope for myself, and that's what I hope
for you all too. So and O to Janna Jackson
and to my first cassette tape to the ability to
rewind when we need to. Thanks y'all, See y'all next week.
(26:38):
Start with Amina Brown is produced by Matt Owen for
Sober Fee Productions as a part of the Seneca Women
Podcast Network in partnership with I Heart Radio. Thanks for
listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.
Hey, everybody, welcome back to a new episode of Her
with Amina Brown. Thank you so much for those of
you that may just be finding the podcast. So we
did a rerun of a few of our favorite episodes
over the summer while I was traveling and eating all
the peaches and cucumbers, because you know, summer is just
(01:01):
it's just an amazing It's an amazing season for the
fruits and some of the vegetables, but but a lot
of the fruits. So I hope that you all enjoyed
your summertime and had some good and fun times with
some people that you love, and hope you had some
good food too. So during the summer, I had the
opportunity to attend and work at Essence Festival. And if
(01:26):
you're not familiar with Essence Festival, although I know many
of you are, hopefully, but Essence Festival is it's a
massive festival that in a lot of ways centers Black
women because Essence Festival is an offshoot of Essence Magazine,
which is a magazine that's been around for a very
long time that has centered the stories of black women,
(01:47):
and Essence Festival is this outgrowth of that, and Essence
Festival has concerts, It has exercise and wellness and food
and beauty things. It's it's like if a conference and
a concert and a bunch of shopping and some of
(02:10):
your favorite Black celebrities all converge in New Orleans for
almost a week basically. So I had the opportunity to
be a part of us In's festival because I was
invited to host some game show segments on the Beauty
Carnival Stage at Essence. And the Beauty Carnival Stage is
(02:30):
this stage that's in this area where a lot of
beauty brands are there that the people who are attending
us In festival can come and get to know more
about some of the brands that were there. And of
course there are all sorts of vendors selling clothes and
ear rings and um. Then there are other brands that
may not necessarily be beauty related, but maybe health related
(02:53):
or food related that will also be in some of
those areas. So I was here on this stage that
didn't have performances, but obviously had games and game shows
that we're there, as well as interviews and panel discussions
and stuff like this. So I was very excited because
I have wanted to get a chance to perform or
(03:15):
be on stage at Essence Festival for a really long time.
So to get invited was a big deal to me,
and to get a chance to see how it works,
because I have never even just attended Essence Festival. I've
had a couple of times that some girlfriends were going
and they invited me to go, and I couldn't go
for various reasons. And then I was planning on going
(03:36):
with one of my best friends for my forty but
my forty happened to fall in and so that meant
that I could not go to Essence Festival because of
the pandemic whompo. So all that to say, I was
very excited to get a chance to finally just be
(03:57):
there for Essence Festival and to have the opportunity to
work Essence Festival, which I was like, I would love
to just attend Essence, but if I could get booked
for Essence, I would love to be doing one of
two things. I would love to either be performing my
poetry or I would love to be hosting in some capacity.
So to get the chance to host game show segments
(04:19):
on the Beauty Carnival stage was amazing. I'm putting it
out there y'all that I hope in the future I'll
be able to come back to you all and tell
you about the times that I performed poetry there and
got a chance to do even more hosting. I would
love to do that, And just so happened that this
year's Essence Festival, Janet Jackson was headlining the Saturday night concert.
(04:41):
And that's really what this episode is about. This episode
is about Janet Jackson, and Janet Jackson deserves more than
the minutes I may have to give you in this episode.
And if I am saying Janet Jackson's name and you're
not familiar with her music at all, or maybe you're
familiar with her newer music and you're not familiar with
(05:02):
the music from the earlier parts of her career, this
is your encouragement to do a deep dive. Wherever you
like to listen to your music, do a deep dive
into her music, because it will be very well worth it.
So I'm gonna start you from the beginning of my
becoming a fan of Janet Jackson. My first cassette tape.
I'm pretty sure I didn't buy it because I was
six years old. So my first cassette tape, but I
(05:25):
can remember having of my own that I could keep
in my room and then play, and my little whatever
tape player I had access to was Janet Jackson's Control,
which for me always feels like Janet's first album, but
I actually think it was her second album, if I
remember right, Janet Jackson's Control. The cover of Control is perfect.
(05:50):
Those of you that may follow me on social media
know that I sometimes like to see if I can
figure out how to mimic an album cover, and this
album cover for Control is an album that I would
love to figure out how I could mimic, except I
don't know that my hair would really do what Janet's
hair was doing in this cover. And even at six
years old, you know, the eighties was an interesting time
(06:11):
to be a child because I was allowed to listen
to this whole seat, this whole cassette. That's about to
say CD, but this this whole cassette tape. And obviously,
you know there there are some things on this cassette
that I'm sure a six year old is maybe not
ready to hear. You know, there there was some very
you know, sexy songs, at least one sexy song, again,
(06:33):
I can remember at the end of this album that
I'm sure a six year old wasn't ready for, but
I really have vague memories of that. And more of
my memories are of hearing Control and what have you
done for me lately? Um hearing and And this is
an interesting time to think about having been, you know,
(06:54):
listening to this cassette as a six year old, because
this was also at sort of this beginning era of
the music video and we know that Janet Jackson really
just reigned as the queen of a lot of amazing
music videos. And so my memories of this music are
part me listening to it and part me remembering these
videos of Janet just like skipping around with her friends
(07:17):
talking about this boy she likes. You know, That's kind
of how I interpreted this at the time. I just
loved her music. I loved her I loved her smile.
I loved those black jeans that she wore in the
Control video. I loved the mic and the headset. I
had very large Janet posters on my wall. I remember
(07:39):
from my seventh birthday, I think my mom had gotten
me a poster, and then I asked for a poster
for my seventh birthday. And I also remember having my
first ever sleepover with my friends from school and there
were probably I don't know, maybe there were like six
or seven of them. Maybe maybe it was ten of us.
(07:59):
I don't remember how many of us there were in all.
I mean, I was an adult. I'm like, wow, shout
out to my mom for doing a sleepover with that
many little children. But I remember they came over and
they got me all sorts of different little Janet Jackson
things that I loved so much because they all knew
how much I love Janet. I'm sure you know some
of them did too, And it just meant a lot
(08:20):
to a little black girl to see Janet Jackson, to
see her hips and her cheekbones, and to see her
dancing and just you know, in a lot of ways
that I don't think I reflected on until I got older,
you know, seeing her really take control of her music
and of her life, and that was a very powerful
(08:42):
image to young me. Okay, So then I went on
to not only be a person that had her magazine
cutouts and posters on my wall back in the day.
Some of you all gonna listen to this and be like,
what back in the day because there was no Twitter,
there was no TikTok, there was no Instagram, no Facebook,
(09:03):
there was no online way that you could talk to
artists that you were fans of. But a lot of
big artists back then had fan clubs, and they had
mailing addresses for their fan clubs. So some some artists
had their stuff organized enough that maybe there were regional
(09:25):
meetings where you could like meet other people. I never
had that experience, but back in the day, when you
would buy someone's cassette or CD, I don't know about
album because I I I only remember having one or
two albums as a child, and then went my whole
adult life and then got into my thirties and started
(09:46):
buying all the albums again, So I don't know how.
I don't know how all of that was actually because
by the time I was old enough to buy my
own music and read the liner notes and all that,
I was really buying cassettes and CDs. But inside the
cassette and the c the the insert that you know,
when you were a big fan of an artist, you know,
you'd open up the whole thing and stare at it.
(10:07):
That's how I learned a lot of the words to
these songs, right, Uh, they would have a little address,
like if you wanted to send fan mail to this artist,
they would have an address. And so Janet's people put
that address in her cassette tape. I know I sent
her at least two letters, school pictures included, so that
(10:31):
I could tell her how school was going, and how
much I loved her music, how much her music meant
to me. Who knows if she ever read any of
them or where they ever went, but it just felt
nice to feel like you could send some sort of
a letter to her. I mean, I I really just
and and just heartwarmed and just touched thinking about my
little eight year old self sending Janet my little school pictures,
(10:53):
my sweater vest, what's my heart? And then I must
have been about maybe I was about nine or ten
by the time I was listening to Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation.
I also had this cassette tape that my mom bought
for me, and this cassette I remember really specifically, because
I remember cassettes were either white or they were kind
(11:17):
of this tope kind of color. And Rhythm Nation the
cassette was black with white writing, and I thought that
was amazing. I thought that was the best thing to
ever happen to me. I thought it was amazing. And
Rhythm Nation I really loved because it was so cool
(11:39):
to me as a kid to hear this artist. I
loved sort of taking on this social commentary of the day.
I I really admired that that she did that in
Rhythm Nation and Quiet as It's kept. There is a
Rhythm Nation VHS. I wish it I still owned mine.
(12:01):
I don't know what I did with mine, but there
was a Rhythm Nation kind of short film, you know.
And it's interesting. I'm a huge Beyonce fan as well.
And when I think about what Beyonce has done with
you know, these ideas of the visual album, right, what
she did with Lemonade, what she did with the visuals
that went with the Beyonce album, as well as what
(12:22):
she did with the Homecoming images and film that went
on to Netflix from the Coachella performance. When you think
about that, you know, I know that Beyonce is also
a huge Janet fan, and these were things that Janet
was doing with her music as well. That Rhythm Nation
actually had a short film that went with it. It
(12:44):
was like twenty or thirty minutes, and I actually rewatched
it the other day. I'm gonna see if we can
find the link. I'm hoping the link is still up
because someone on YouTube, Bless their Hearts, found this and
put it on YouTube because the VHS is out of print,
and I you know, you if you watch it now,
you'll you'll look at it now and realize, like some
(13:06):
of this you can see maybe why Janet and her
team would not want to like put this back on
a DVD, But it will give you a little slice
of time and history to see what Janet was doing
with this music and how she was able to work
with her team to come up with this visual idea.
(13:26):
And it just made me feel so empowered, you know.
I think that was a part of some really empowered
music for a lot of us who were at that age,
you know, to see her talking about how like I
mean her like screaming, yelling like it's time to give
a damn lest work together. I was like, I'm ready
to work together, girl, we'll be doing then. The other
(13:48):
Janet thing that I remember really being like important to
my development school years was Janet's video for That's the
Way Love Goes. And That's the Way Love Goes is
still one of my favorite songs to this day because
it just has that opening uh guitar doo doo doom. Think,
I mean, like so good. I just I want to
(14:11):
I want to really almost stop the episode and just
be like if we were friends friends. You know, y'all
are my friends, but if we were friends friends, I
(14:33):
would be like, girl, we just have to stop for
a second so we can just play the song real quick.
But to think about just the sound of that song, Oh,
it just sounded so grown and so sexy. It sounded
like Janet was making a musical and a soulful statement
(14:54):
about not only who she is as an artist, but
also who she is as a woman, That she is
a woman who's grown as hale now and she's not
that same like when I was seventeen, I do what
people told me, Like when she gets into this Janet
album Era, which is the album that That's the Way
Love Goes was on, I remember this music video. And
(15:17):
this is also interesting for me when I think about
sort of my like musical experiences growing up, because a
part of them, a part of my music experiences were
about my experience listening to music, you know, by myself,
you know, on my little boon box or listening in
my Walkman at the time, but also a lot of
(15:38):
that was very connected to music videos too, and this
song is no different in that. Like I remember hearing
the song, but I most remember seeing this music video
with a young j Lo, with all of these beautiful
people with crop tops and earth tones. I mean, when
I watched this mus video, as far as I was concerned,
(16:02):
this is what adulthood was gonna be for me. It's
somehow me in this amazing, you know, very well designed
warehouse like apartment loft situation. It's my friends and I
having some sort of uh, you know, grown get together,
and it is somehow intellectual and yet sexy that this
(16:25):
is this is the life I thought was going to
be for me. I was like, surely this is gonna
be my twenties. This this video right here, this is it.
And the other thing that I didn't listen to intently
because I don't remember that I bought this album. I
(16:45):
just remember engaging with this music with the videos, like
the video for If It came out, which was mind blowing,
watching Janet and these dancers like kill it like they
were doing, you know, but I was picking up on
something that even you know, bringing Beyonce and to the conversation,
something that I felt like was really apparent in Beyonce's
(17:07):
Beyonce album, that you're experiencing a woman artist who's also
having a bit of a sexual awakening. And I remember
also picking up on that of the songs I did
listen to on the Janet album. Now, as we will
discuss in other episodes, and as I have previously discussed
(17:28):
with you all in some previous episodes, you know, having
been a person that grew up in church that you know,
it wasn't that sex was being discussed with me as
something that could be good, normal, beautiful. Okay, It was definitely,
especially as a young person, you know, being presented to
me as something you need to be very very afraid of,
(17:50):
you need to be very wary of, you know. So
I was watching Janet go through this, and I was
very intrigued that she seemed to be having in a weakening,
but I was also afraid of it, you know, afraid
of it and afraid to delve anymore, like deeply into that.
So some of her records I really didn't get into
(18:12):
them until many years later that I came back to
sort of listen again to this music. So I kind
of fell off of listening to her albums after she
put out The Velvet Rope, and she put out many
albums after that. And here I am at Essence Festival
in this arena. I think they said there were about
(18:33):
eighty thousand of us in this arena watching Janet Jackson perform,
watching her headline that night, and it was really a
beautiful full circle moment for me. I think, first of all,
it's probably the the largest kind of live concert thing
that I've been to since the pandemic and prior to
(18:56):
the pandemic. You know, I am a person and my
husband and I both you know, just as a couple,
we love to go to live shows. For me, as
a writer as a performer, live music is just so
inspiring to me, especially when it's an artist that you
know and love and you've listened to their music in
(19:17):
and out right, and then you can see the things
that they're doing with their band and DJ and dancers
and whatever kind of setup they have. You know, it's
always a beautiful inspiring experience. You know, it is always
something that has an element of feeling a bit sacred,
you know, for me. And to just sit there and
(19:38):
number one, like hear these hits of hers that I
have loved, and hear her voice like singing that live,
watching her dance with her dancers and kill it, and
watching her do some of the dance routines that were
so familiar that I remember many of us. You know,
(20:00):
this was before there was YouTube or anything. So if
you really wanted to learn one of these dance routines
from Rhythm Nation or from if or Um, from Pleasure Principle,
the one where she was doing the dance routine with
the chair and all that, like, if you really wanted
to learn that stuff, you sometimes had to literally wait
for the video to come off, like over and over.
(20:21):
You have to like watch with your friends and call
your friends on the phone and tell them okay, okay, okay,
it's on and you watch and learn a things. So
to see her doing some of those dance steps that
just becomes so signature to that music for me was amazing.
I think also just I just honestly y'all had a
really emotional moment of reflection because you know, personally, um,
(20:44):
this hasn't been an easy year. You know, there have
been some some hard things that have gone on this year.
And two, I'm trying to explain this to you all,
like and and those of you that are listening that
maybe going through something really difficult right now, or you
remember a season in your life where you went through
something really difficult, you know how you can you can
(21:05):
go through something that is so difficult and for many
of us, that is so traumatizing that you almost feel
like your life becomes that, you know, like if it
was a loss that you experienced, if it was violence
that you experienced, you know, you just it becomes so
life shattering that you can just feel like, that's now
(21:28):
my life, you know, that's now what I am or
who I am. And there was something about sitting there
and watching Janet Jackson perform and thinking about my little
six year old self who just loved her, just loved her,
you know, and finally after all these years, getting to
see her live and in a way it helped me
(21:50):
to remember even though I am a person that has
experienced some really uh tough things, right, I am not
just a person that has only experienced that. I'm a
person who also has capacity to experience joy and elation
(22:12):
and inspiration, you know, like I am all of that,
and I was reminded of that, you know, moving my
shoulders to Janet doing miss you much at essence, and
and even thinking about aging. I've been thinking a lot
about that, uh, at different points, you know, because now
(22:34):
being in my forties, it's not that being in my
forties is old by any means, but in a way,
it's sort of like, you know, there's a certain there's
a certain point to which you may have imagined your life, right,
And when I was in my twenties, I could sort
of imagine myself at forty, But that's kind of as
(22:55):
far as I stopped. Because if I got into fifties
and sixties and seventies, and I was starting to get
maybe in the age range of you know, my parents,
or in the age range of my grandparents, you know,
and I just really could not imagine my life any
further than that. So in some ways, now actually being
in my forties and realizing, oh, my young self only
(23:15):
could imagine my life to a point, And now I'm
kind of in the part of my life where I
get the opportunity to imagine for myself now, like, what
do I want this decade of my life, for this
next twenty or thirty years or forty years, or however,
what do I want from my life? What do I
want that to look like? And looking at Janet here
(23:39):
in her fifties, like still doing this thing that she loves,
knowing that she too has been through a lot of
hard things and experienced her own elements of loss and
grief and experienced her life not going the way that
maybe she'd hoped or planned, and finding ways to still
do the music, finding ways to still make music and
(24:01):
do what she loved. And me sort of sitting there
now in my forties thinking about what that means in
my own life, you know, trying to really see myself
as a whole person, and getting to see Janet in
this era of her life and just being reminded like,
just because I may get to an era of my
life that I hadn't had a chance yet to imagine
(24:24):
what that life would be, Um, doesn't mean that this
isn't a good time to do that for myself, you know,
to think like, well, I wanted something self couldn't think,
you know, I wonder what I'll want to be doing
when I'm forty eight, and maybe that's okay, you know,
at forty two. Now this is a good time to
ask myself those questions. What I want to be doing
at forty two? You know, what do I hope for
(24:47):
my life to be when I'm in my fifties. How
do I want to build towards that, whether it's you know,
financially or creatively even or in the work that I do.
So lots of inspiration from sitting there and watching Janet
just kill it. I mean, it was amazing. And I
just saw her at US since festival, and truthfully, is
(25:07):
she released the tour dates like right now, I'd probably
still want to buy a ticket because it was that amazing.
So shout out to Janet Jackson, Shout out to our
first cassette tapes, those of us who remember having our
first cassette tapes, and shout out to all of the
music that we love that formed us. And I hope
as you all are listening that you will remember too
(25:29):
that you are a whole person. How you are not
just the things that you've been through. You're not just
the hard stuff that you've survived. Um, you are all
these things, you know, you're a person who can experience
pleasure and enjoy. You're a person whose heart may have
been broken, and all of that can be a part
of you. All of that can be a part of
(25:51):
what you carry with you into the next season of
your life. And maybe this is a good time to
imagine and or reimagine yourself or your next season of life.
Maybe life is not turning out like how you thought
it was, but that doesn't mean that there could not
be good and beautiful life ahead for you. So that's
(26:14):
what I hope for myself, and that's what I hope
for you all too. So and O to Janna Jackson
and to my first cassette tape to the ability to
rewind when we need to. Thanks y'all, See y'all next week.
(26:38):
Start with Amina Brown is produced by Matt Owen for
Sober Fee Productions as a part of the Seneca Women
Podcast Network in partnership with I Heart Radio. Thanks for
listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.
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