Janet Jackson Once Had 'Control' of the Charts. We Don't Give Her Enough Credit

'In 1986, Janet Jackson released an album that changed the course of her career, and of pop music. Control took over radio, reinvented the playbook for Black artists crossing over into pop and ushered in a whole new sound for R&B. For more than a decade after, Jackson released hit after hit and No. 1 album after No. 1 album, alongside her production and writing partners Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Jackson's influence is still evident throughout pop music: the way stars choreograph their videos, their vocal intonations, their visual presentation, the very ways in which they navigate celebrity. But today, she's rarely considered at the level of her musical peers from the '80s and '90s, such as Prince, Madonna and her brother Michael. And the moral uproar that followed her performance at the Super Bowl in 2004 showed all the ways popular culture can erase Black women and their accomplishments. Now, as society reconsiders the ways it has treated celebrities like Britney Spears, It's Been a Minute with Sam Sanders reconsiders Janet Jackson and her body of work — with help from Jam and Lewis themselves, as well as music journalist Danyel Smith.'