Hopeless wrote:I cannot keep silent anymore. As much as I enjoyed Janet's work up to All for You, she is definitely done musically. She was never critically praised, so the points here saying that are just wrong. Gaga and Rihanna have received more critical praise than Janet. And, Beyoncé clearly is well ahead of her by all measurements. Also, Janet was her most commercially and critically successful album and it's been all downhill from there. People forget that the VR only produced 1 hit and sold less than half of Janet. That is why she was forced to go back to more Pop sounds on All For You, which was a bigger hit globally than the VR.
Ahead where? Maybe in terms of Grammy accolades, Rihanna and Beyoncé are ahead of her, but in terms of putting black artists to the forefront of music especially at a time where rock and pop were dominated by mainstream white artists, Janet did a lot for pop music that Rihanna and Beyoncé can only dare to dream. Her music pushed boundaries, Rihanna and Beyoncé know that she was one of the pioneer artists who pushed for their placement in the pop field. Obviously, the market today has pretty much opened to diversity that is why there are a lot of artists (TLC, Usher, Beyoncé, Chris Brown, Rihanna, etc.) after Michael and Janet that were able to achieve same level or even greater commercial success.
And to give Janet credit, she was much more original and innovative than any other female artist at the peak of her breakthrough, majority of the music Rihanna and Beyoncé released either echoed the genres of older artists (ranging from Michael Jackson, Donna Summer, Bob Marley, Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, Prince, Madonna and Janet) or linked with current hit-making producers that set mainstream chart trends, they never really put something out that was ground-breaking and innovative, so far.