Janet Jackson was born as Janet Damita Jackson in Gary, Indiana on 16 May, 1966. At the age of seven, along with her brothers she made her performing debut in Las Vegas. She joined them on a television special at the age of nine. Like other Jackson siblings, her life started early. Among all-singing, all-dancing nine member family, she is the youngest and has emerged as extraordinarily well adjusted with the haughty father and the ever so slightly bizarre older sibling Mike.

To mark a beginning to her career, from 1977-79, she appeared in the US television programmes Good Times and from 1981-82 in Different Strokes. Janet signed to A&M records in 1982 where she recorded her self-titled debut album followed by Dream Street in 1984. Characterized by ordinary R&B, it led to a moderate sale of both the albums.

Meanwhile she also occupied a place in the TV series Fame and also got married to a soul singer James DeBarge. Their marriage lasted hardly a year.

What exactly encouraged her need to shape her life is the underperformance of her albums and failure of her marriage. Then she took the decision to get break free of her familial constraints and clasping up with burgeoning production duo Jam & Lewis for her 1986 career-defining album, Control.

 
Producing the hit singles like What Have You Done For Me Lately, Nasty, When I Think Of You and Let's Wait Awhile, the album was a daring declaration of her intention emphasizing Janet's new self-determining woman posture. The additional videos with their extremely stylized dance moves highlight Janet's new tough, straightforward image. The album was qualified quadruple platinum and around 4m copies were sold in the US alone.
Independence gave a line of attack to social sense of right and wrong for the follow up album, 1989's Rhythm Nation with tracks such as State Of The World and The Knowledge dealing with racial discrimination, disparity and imminent ecological disaster. She dug eight Billboard awards later that year because of this album.

Radically, Janet's star had risen and she became as successful as older brother Michael, without the assistant debatable 'sleepovers'. With Virgin Records, she emerged as a

newfound superstar as it shelled out £30m for a two album deal in 1991. The 1993's Janet was a notion album merged with numerous spoken interludes and scraps intended to present the vocalist in a more sexually adult mould.

Michael disapproved of this ‘controversial’ album cover as it featured a pair of male hands clutching Janet's breasts. Janet returned in 1997, after another successful world tour with a new afro centric image and one of her funkiest singles to date, Got Til It's Gone, which attributed a sample of Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi. Janet's frankest and most sexually open recording to date is 1997’s Velvet Rope. In this album, Janet has given vent to her emotional crash and exposed her sexual fantasies.