“This is a story about control…” With that bold statement, Janet Jackson broke free from the mold that had been prescribed to her on her first two albums and launched a legendary career that has spanned decades. From the moment she released Control in 1986, the youngest Jackson sibling was intent on telling her own story, and controlling her own destiny.
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Across the eight studio albums that followed, Janet consistently had a hand in writing some of her biggest hits—including 10 No. 1s, including “Black Cat,” “That’s the Way Love Goes,” and “All for You”—often alongside her trusted production duo of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.
By the late 2000s, around the time she was releasing her tenth album, Discipline, the mega-star began allowing artists of the next generation to occasionally sample one of her hits—ranging from up-and-coming rappers to standout K-pop groups.
Below is a deep dive into samples Jackson OK’d, along with a surprising cover of one of her turn-of-the-century hits that rose up the charts in Asia.
1. FIFTY FIFTY—“Barbie Dreams” feat. Kaliii
K-pop girl group FIFTY FIFTY delivered arguably the best contribution to Barbie The Album with “Barbie Dreams,” a fizzy, bubblegum pop anthem that preaches Barbie’s eternal ethos: you can be anything if you follow your dreams!
Written by American rapper Kaliii—who also contributes a guest verse—along with FAANGS, JBACH, Fyre and several others, the song is nothing short of a bright pink sugar rush to the head. But when the freshly debuted foursome behind “Cupid” belt out, When I close my eyes, it’s a fantasy / Perfect plastic life from a magazine / Then when I wake up, it’s reality / I can have it all in my Barbie dreams on the addictive chorus, the melody might sound deliciously familiar to Janet fans. That’s because it’s built on an interpolation of her 1997 chart-topper “Together Again” from The Velvet Rope.
[RELATED: Did You Know? Janet Jackson Passed on This Whitney Houston Hit]
2. Plies—“Bust It Baby Pt. 2” feat. Ne-Yo
The melody of “Come Back to Me,” Jackson’s Rhythm Nation-era single, provides the foundation for “Bust It Baby Pt. 2,” Plies’ 2008 collaboration with Ne-Yo. Over the slow jam’s synth-speckled instrumentation, the MC raps, If I wasn’t married to the streets, it’s be you / Yo’ lips, what make you so cute / Love when you poke yo’ mouth out when you mad, too / Save your number in my phone under ‘Lil Boo’ before tossing the mic to Ne-Yo for the chorus.
To add her official stamp of approval, Janet even jumped on the official remix for the track alongside Plies and Ne-Yo. Though the track appears to have been scrubbed from streaming services along with “Bust It Baby Pt. 1,” a video of Janet’s verse can still be found deep in the annals of Jermaine Dupri’s official YouTube channel billed as a So So Def exclusive.
3. Iyaz—“Solo”
Iyaz may be best remembered for his debut single, “Replay,” which took the Billboard Hot 100 by storm and peaked at No. 2 in the summer of 2009. However, it’s “Solo”—his sophomore outing released the following year—that is of most interest here.
Riding high off the success he’d found with co-writers Jason Derulo and Sean Kingston on “Replay,” the British Virgin Islands native re-teamed with producer J.R. Rotem (who’d sampled “Come Back to Me” for Plies a year earlier) for his second single. The reggae-pop jam the trio cooked up took not only inspiration but a direct interpolation from Jackson’s 1993 single “Again”—the saccharine ballad featured on both her self-titled fifth album, janet., and the soundtrack for the film Poetic Justice. Equally sentimental as he languishes over a sudden breakup, Iyaz borrows the melody from Ms. Jackson’s seventh No. 1 hit to work through his heartbreak.
4. Jibbs—“Go Too Far” featuring Melody Thornton
“Let’s Wait Awhile” was one of Jackson’s earliest hits on the charts. In fact, of the six singles sent to radio off her breakthrough third album, Control, it wound up peaking at No. 2 on the Hot 100, outperforming both “Nasty” and the title track at Nos. 3 and 5 respectively. (Sandwiched between the latter two in the roll-out, “When I Think of You” was Janet’s first single to hit the top of the all-genre chart, though it was coincidentally the only one of Control’s singles not to go No. 1 on what is now the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.)
In between the albums PCD and Doll Domination, Pussycat Dolls member Melody Thornton attempted to strike out on her own by joining forces with Jibbs for the single “Go Too Far.” Oddly, Thornton does her best Jackson impression on the hook, borrowing directly from the lyrics of the 1986 pro-abstinence lullaby as she coos, Let’s wait awhile / Before it’s too late / Let’s wait awhile / Our love will be great / Let’s wait awhile / Before we go too far.
5. Kendrick Lamar—“Poetic Justice” feat. Drake
Not only does Kendrick Lamar’s 2013 single “Poetic Justice” pay tribute to Jackson with a sample, it’s a direct homage to the superstar’s iconic film of the same name—all the way down to the single’s cover art featuring her and the late Tupac Shakur.
On the track, K-Dot and Drake link up to spit bars over a sample of Janet’s Top 2 hit “Any Time, Any Place.” The songstress’ ethereal voice can be heard beneath both rappers’ verses, and she actually went on to sample “Poetic Justice” while performing “Any Time, Any Place” during her 2019 Unbreakable World Tour.
Bonus: Hitomi Shimatani—“Papillon”
Rather than sampling or interpolating one of Jackson’s decades’ worth of hits, Japanese pop star Hitomi Shimatani recorded a Japanese-language cover of the superstar’s Y2K single “Doesn’t Really Matter” for her debut album Papillon. Shimatani’s version served as her studio set’s title track and was released in the summer of 2001, just months after “Doesn’t Really Matter” was included on the track list of Jackson’s iconic studio album All for You.
The song’s threads with Japan don’t stop there, either. The Joseph Kahn-directed video for “Doesn’t Really Matter,” which was originally released as the theme song for Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, placed Janet in a futuristic cityscape inspired by modern-day Tokyo, anime, and other elements of Japanese culture. Showcasing a Sony AIBO artificial intelligence robot and an Acura CL-X Concept Prototype, the project reportedly cost more than $2.5 million at the time and remains one of the most expensive music videos ever made when adjusting for inflation.
Photo by: Christopher Polk/NBC
