Janet Jackson’s big revival
Almost a year after the birth of her first child and months after her marriage fell apart Janet Jackson is back with a bang
AS SHE struts across the stage, her red-brown tresses tied into a high ponytail of textured waves, she seductively coos, “Call me Janet, Ms Jackson if you’re nasty.” The crowd roars as they lap up her every word. After another costume change a svelte Janet Jackson (51), clad in skin-tight black leather, performs a provocative chair dance on a male back-up dancer.
One thing is clear: Janet as we know and love her is back.
Just a few months ago she was barely recognisable and any one of her millions of fans might have unknowingly passed her on the street.
She appeared to have given up her sex-symbol status entirely, swopping her figure-hugging numbers for baggy black ensembles and going virtually make-up free.
Janet had just split from her husband, Qatari businessman Wissam Al Mana, and had piled on the kilos (YOU, 27 April). Her only public appearances were when she popped out with her baby son, Eissa (now 10 months).
“Yes, I separated from my husband. We’re in court now and the rest is in God’s hands,” she said in a clip posted on Twitter in May.
But she added she’d be resuming her State of the World tour – which she’d postponed due to her pregnancy – and her followers dared to hope the singer would be back to her vivacious best. And they had good reason to. Since the announcement she’s shed the baby weight and has been belting out her impressive catalogue of hits at soldout shows, displaying her newly gym- honed body every night since the tour kicked off early last month.
Yet, despite her best efforts, cracks in her glossy façade began to show as she strutted her stuff on stage in Fresno, California, on 24 September.
As she began her slow-burn track What About, off her 1997 album The Velvet Rope, her backup dancers re-enacted scenes of abusive relationships.
“It was poetic and wonderfully sensitive, but what made it even more triggering was that Jackson began to cry towards the end of the number. It was almost hard to catch, as she sniffled with a faint stream of tears running from her eyes,” recalls a journalist who was at the show.
“This right here,” Janet said softly, “this is me.” The crowd roared their support.
“It could’ve just been the overwhelming aspect of life on tour but it seemed pretty personal,” the journalist said.
PRETTY personal is exactly what it is. Just days before, her brother Randy Jackson (55) went public claiming that his sister’s estranged husband had verbally and emotionally abused her during their nearly five-year marriage.
“Enough is enough,” the former Jackson 5 star told America’s People magazine.
“I told her, ‘You’ve got to move in with me or I’m going to go over there and there’s going to be hell’. She was really pissed off. I told her, ‘I don’t care anymore. I’m tired of it. It’s too much.’”
“It was quite an abusive situation,” Randy alleges. “It came on later in the relationship, verbal abuse and being made to feel like a prisoner in her own home. No pregnant woman needs to go through being called a bitch every day. There were things like that. That’s what she went through.”
Randy, the second-youngest Jackson sibling, had always been close to Janet and lives in London – a stone’s throw from the home she once shared with Wissam.
Randy adds that at first he shielded their mom, Katherine (87), and father, Joe (89), from what he knew.
“My parents are up there in age so I wanted to protect them as much as possible, but now they know. Everybody in the family knows.”
Despite earlier reports that the couple’s split had to do with differing religious beliefs, Randy insists that wasn’t the problem, adding that his sister hasn’t converted to Islam.
“It’s a personal issue he needs help with and I’m going to pray for him, too. But I’m not going to allow her to live in that abusive situation. She’s my baby sister.”
But Wissam, who’s CEO of the familyowned conglomerate Al Mana Group, hit back in a statement released by his attorneys.
“Mr Al Mana isn’t going to dignify these particular and deeply hurtful allegations with a response. The breakdown of his marriage to Janet Jackson is a cause of great sadness to Mr Al Mana and it’s the wellbeing and privacy of their son, Eissa, that remains his sole focus.”
This did nothing to stop Randy, who insists Wissam still hasn’t stopped his abusive ways and that things between the former couple are anything but amicable. Things are tough for his sister, he says, and she’s been “breaking down in tears on stage night after night”.
“The abuse is still going on,” the record label owner continues. “She has custody of Eissa and Wissam allowed her to bring the baby on tour, but there’s constant harassment. This tour almost didn’t happen, but by the grace of God we’re here.”
He insists that although his baby sister desperately “wants Eissa to have a mother and a father”, the couple’s issues have caused too wide a rift for there to be a semblance of family togetherness.
“It’s not about anger or vengeance,” Randy says in response to a question about why he decided to speak out now.
“We don’t like to put our business out there but sometimes transparency helps. The devil thrives in darkness. I’m just here supporting her through this time.”
DESPITE the obvious emotional strain of the split Janet does seem to be enjoying her newfound freedom and is even said to be rekindling her romance with music producer Jermaine Dupri, from whom she split a year before marrying Wissam.
“Jermaine and Janet have remained friends through all these years and never lost touch. They had a period when they didn’t talk for a bit but [they] found friendship again,” an insider told E! News.
“Jermaine has a crazy love for Janet and they’ve been speaking more since the breakup. They trust each other.”
Janet is also enjoying some nights out with her tour entourage now that she’s out from under the controlling thumb of her soon-to-be ex-husband.
Following a performance in Texas last month, the star and her crew were spotted at a local watering hole – an activity that was a rarity for the five-time Grammy winner during her marriage when she “felt hidden from family and friends”.
While the group danced and snacked on butter-free truffle popcorn, a relaxed Janet “sipped red wine and knitted a sweater”, an onlooker reported.
A few nights later Janet was back on stage – this time in Arizona – closing the performance with a rendition of her 2015 track, Well Travelled. The song pays tribute to the road she’s travelled since releasing her debut album 35 years ago.
“I’ve come a long way, got a long way to go,” Janet sang. And once again the crowd went wild.
SOURCES: AZCENTRAL.COM, BET.COM, DAILYMAIL.COM, EONLINE. COM, PEOPLE.COM, USMAGAZINE.COM