Janet’s settled into a new relationship and, if songs like “After You Fall” and “Broken Hearts Heal”, are any indication, ruminating with love on her brother’s life and death. The warm, acoustic guitar sway of the title track sets the tone: these are giddy, grateful grown-woman songs. It’s her first album since Michael Jackson’s death in 2009, and the dissolution of her relationship with Jermaine Dupri. It came out in June, in time for warm summer nights, but fits in better with the enveloping dark of fall. Cole feature can’t prevent it from being one of the best songs of the year, a conscious curving of the melismatic summertime bombast of chart-toppers like the Weeknd, Jidenna, OMI, and Bieber.

A sweet melody and ribald Isley Brothers sample builds a sultry Quiet Storm groove. “No Sleeep,” the dusky R&B single, is quintessential Jam & Lewis-abetted Janet. “2 B Loved”, with its cavalcade of hoots and hollers, is probably the album’s most “now”-sounding song. Instead, Unbreakable is a synthesis of ideas Jackson’s collected and tested throughout her career.

“The Great Forever” and “Night” are formally ambitious pop songs, but don’t deliver as much personality as 2004’s underrated Damita Jo. Probably the only downside to Janet’s 11th album *Unbreakable-*aside from it running about three tracks too long-is that it doesn’t contain that kind of axis-shifting single. Missy Elliott gives it a try, two-stepping in with a squirmy synthesizer for “BURNITUP!” and the lazy bass and airy vocals of “Dammn Baby” sounds like Tinashe-meets-Teena Marie.

And even though it’s been out in the world for three years, the tour DJ on Jackson’s current tour runs it pre-show. It’s playful and funky and sensual it sounds like something Janet would make for herself. That gauzy vocal loop, floating in on an elastic bassline, nudged along by dense handclaps and pin-sharp hi-hats, deaded the lumbering, surly dominance of brostep in one fell swoop. What Kaytranada did with the remix is what Janet’s long accomplished over her musical career: she won hearts and bridged imaginations on the dance floor. The remix was unique, not just because it lingered on DJ playlists far longer than most major-label hits, but because it created an entry point to then-rising nu-house operatives like Soulection and HW&W via a cross-generational touchpoint like no other: Janet. Montreal producer Kaytranada put out a remix of Janet Jackson’s 1993 single “If” in the fall of 2012, but the edit, which reimagines the misty original as bubbling, whimsical house, became a party staple.

Janet jackson unbreakable tour review