Janet Jackson: Discipline

It's hard to find Janet Jackson in the beginning

of Discipline,

or at least a Janet Jackson to use as a measure among all the others. The

album's first song, a slight digital jam called "Feedback," hides her in a mess

of uncertain vocal tones and incongruous lines about guitars. (It's like one of

those Rolling Stone covers with a pop star holding a guitar for no apparent

reason.) "Rollercoaster" flits through another series of simmering beats and

different vocal styles, most of them too generic to identify with a

personality—much less that of the most commanding Jackson.

Then Discipline gets good and stays that

way, more or less, until the end. The change arrives with "Rock With U," the

kind of banging club track that Jackson at her best has come to own: With

bigger beats to counter, she drapes her voice over wide spaces below and lays

it out in all its diaphanous glory. It's a habit she continues and carries out

just as forcibly in ballads, as in "Can't B Good," a majestic song produced by

Ne-Yo, with an ear for those classic Jackson-family quivers and trills. Janet's

quivers in particular have always been the most compelling for the way they

suggest a kind of sensual embrace of conflict and pain, and they come to

dominate Discipline in the end. She also sings about masochistic sex a lot, but

that's just a distraction.