Janet Jackson
Damita Jo
(Virgin)
Pop artists often use aliases when they have something controversial to say - witness Eminem's Slim Shady, the mouthpiece for many of his outré early pronouncements. Madonna adopted the persona of actress Dita Parlo for her Erotica album and Sex book. So it's tempting to assume that Damita Jo - the title of Janet Jackson's eighth album - refers to some sex-mad she-Jackson alter ego.
Actually, it's her middle name, which incorporates her father's (Joe) into a country-girl compound. But Jackson has chosen it to signify her inner vamp, a creature somewhere between minx and 'ho'. Confirmation comes in one of the many little poems that litter the album: 'There's another side I don't hide/ But don't show - Damita Jo.'
Damita Jo is awash with come-hithers and some full frontal detail. There's 'Sexhibition', an above-average, up-for-it romp wrought by producer Dallas Austin, just one of a host of newer talents joining the core team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, responsible for most Jackson output since 1986's definitive Control album. 'Just be an animal tonight,' advises 'Like You Don't Love Me', an invitation to Jackson's coitee to behave as though they weren't in love, but just shagging.
Among the better of the frisky tunes, 'Moist' runs with juicy metaphor. The dire 'Warmth', meanwhile, illustrates a roadside fellation. 'Is this all for me?' she coos. 'It tastes so good!' You feel Jackson missed her calling as a mendacious phone-sex operator.
Then there's her infamous 'wardrobe malfunction' at the Super Bowl half-time ceremony. The incident, in which Justin Timberlake helped Jackson to flash a breast, its nipple demurely covered by what Americans call, surely to the hilarity of the Cornish, a pasty, reeks of premeditation.
It coincided with the album's first, so-so, single, 'Just a Little While', being released for US radio play, and fits in with Jackson's almost pathological desperation to be seen as naughty. In keeping with the mammary theme, she's topless on the cover of Damita Jo , but has an arm strategically placed over her bits.
But this sexy stuff has been going on for a few albums now - 1993's Janet saw Jackson swap her militaristic swing for a more conventional female R&B mould. 1997's Velvet Rope had copious amounts of slink, and 2001's All For You was at once a kiss-off to her ex-husband, Rene Elizondo, and an opportunity for him to see how much fun she was having in the sack with other people. It hardly requires an alter ego.
Jackson's priapic pestering does get a bit much on Damita Jo. Yes, you are very sexy, you feel like reassuring Jackson. Now run along. It may be unfair to Janet, but we would prefer not to be reminded that any member of the Jackson clan has a libido, considering the controversy her brother Michael is embroiled in.
For a while, there's some fun to be had before the lights turn low and Jackson starts taking her kit off. The first five songs of Damita Jo barrel past in a flurry of up-tempo party moods and great production. Kanye West is let loose on 'Strawberry Bounce', sampling Jay-Z and inserting a playfulness that continues on 'My Baby', where Jackson does her feather-light sweet coo to pleasing effect. 'My Baby' is a love song about butterflies in Jackson's stomach, rather than anyone in her pants and its innocence is a relief.
The middle of the album is excruciating, however, with Jackson confiding how much she likes to holiday on Anguilla, and copulating at dusk. It's almost saved by 'All Nite [Don't Stop]', a guest production by Swedish pop architects Murlyn whose nervy tune masks some terrible lyrics.
'Of course, I love music, I come from a musical family,' Jackson reveals in one of the many pseudo-confessional asides that make you clench your buttocks, not in physical ardour, but in embarrassment.
Her album pronouncements vary from typically Jacksonian mumbo-jumbo about how all of us are looking for love, to more Prince-like doggerel about how: 'The One is the breath we breathe, the One is love.' Really, for all this talk of love and lubrication, Janet Jackson is rather more in need of a bucket of cold water.
