Janet Jackson

Judging Janet's tenth album by its cover, Discipline looks like Control redux, featuring Janet the S/M-lite sex kitten. But what we get is more Janet, she of the breathy vocals and sunny, road-trip-with-my-man beats brand of sex kittenry, with a post-millennium spin. "Roller Coaster" is like a futuristic "If," while "Luv" goes the minimalist, robot-voiced route (the Rihanna-ization of RnB works for Janet's small purr). Janet knows these grooves like the back of those hands from Rolling Stone, so it's nice when she works some sass back in, as on "The 1."

Janet Jackson has abandoned the plastic R&B of 2006's 20 Y.O. for a sexier brand of digitized
megapop. On her Def Jam debut, the beats are as crass and processed as Jackson's heavy
breathing, so she sounds more like a sex droid than a blow-up doll, which is way hotter —
for starters, sex droids show more initiative. When Janet brags she's "heavy like a first-day
period" on "Feedback" or sings in a scrunched-up robot voice that she's "So Muc... More >