Janet Damita Jo Jackson, born May 16, 1966 in the Jackson family hometown of Gary, Indiana. "My parents taught us that you never give up," she says, and it's been a personal coda since she made her stage debut at seven.
Janet went on to star in the CBS TV sitcom Good Times, and more high-profile television work soon followed in Different Strokes and Fame. There were two teenage albums, a self-titled 1982 set and Dream Street two years later, but it was 1986's Control that signalled a new day in her career. Travelling from her Los Angles home to Minneapolis, she began the association with Jam and Lewis that continues to this day, found herself as a songwriter and reinvented herself as a person.
Control exploded showcasing Janet's supple voice, warm humour and feisty attitude in a series of indelible hit singles and innovative videos shaped by Janet herself. Control was something that Janet extended to her entire life, becoming an astute businesswoman in the process. She makes the final decisions regarding every aspect of her multi-faceted career.
1989 brought the watershed album Rhythm Nation 1814, a record "reflecting real life and my real concerns," as he put it, wrapped up in a high-voltage funk-dance sound. It spent four weeks at No.1 in America and, a few months later, led to the Rhythm Nation World Tour 1990, which became the most successful debut tour in history, watched by over two million fans.
" Rhythm Nation contained my views about what was going on in the world and the problems we have trying to educate kids," she says. "The idea was to give them some hope." Janet remains a passionate spokeswoman on children's, civil and human rights, education and AIDS research. Indeed last year, she received the Commitment To Life Award from the AIDS Project Los Angeles.
In 1991, in her mid twenties, Jackson negotiated a multi-million dollar record deal with Virgin, and soon after rekindling her acting career in 1993 in John Singleton's compelling Poetic Justice, unveiled the spectacular janet, album, which overflowed with contagious grooves such as That's The Way Love Goes (No.1 for an incredible eight weeks in the US), If , Again and the sultry ballad Any Time Any Place , which logged ten weeks atop Billboard's R&B chart. The album became her third in a row to sell more than five million copies in America alone.
In 1995 Janet joined brother Michael for the massive hit single Scream, featuring a stunning glam sci-fi video clip. The following year brought Janet's first retrospective, Janet Jackson 1986-1996 Design Of A Decade. It offered up her 16th gold certified single Runaway and another memorable video, in which she danced her way around the globe. In 1997, The Velvet Rope took her audience closer to Janet than ever before, as she bared her soul on the most intimate record of her career.
