Grown-up Janet Jackson talks about racism, sensuality and the Jackson family - Cover Story

Ebony, Sept, 1993 by Lynn Norment

JANET Jackson, in ripped jeans, T-shirt and white socks, breezes down the stairs of her Malibu Beach home despite a leg muscle injury she suffered in dance rehearsals a few days earlier. She is warm and gracious as she responds to curiosity about the wall-to-ceiling, framed shark fossil that guards the foyer. When a museum couldn't come up with the purchase price, she explains, the archaeologists agreed to let her buy the 65 million-year-old wonder.

The unique artifact is just one of the surprises that surface during a visit to Jackson's home tastefully accented with sea shells, cacti and African art--along an expensive stretch of Pacific Coast Highway. During a revealing interview on her balcony overlooking the ocean, the pop star talks about her disgust with racism, the need for racial pride and her "responsibility" to give back to the Black community. She also talks about her brother Michael's skin discoloration, sister LaToya's estrangement from the family, and her own painful experiences. This frank talk--coupled with her sexy new image and gritty debut movie role--introduces a new attitude, a new day and a new woman.

Though she is modest about her accomplishments--with a $40 million Virgin Records contract, she is the highest-paid female in pop music--Jackson, now 27, exudes the confidence that comes with maturity, experience, fame and success.

"I don't believe in luck," she says, shaking her head decisively when asked to explain the source of her success. "It's persistence, hard work, and not forgetting your dream--and going after it. It's about still having hunger in your heart."

Hunger? What could Janet Jackson possibly hunger for?

She laughs. "There are a couple of things actually. I just want to break my brother's records. But he's so far beyond . . . geesh! I always try to give a 150 percent to everything I do.

"I'm very competitive; that's how we were raised, really," she says nonchalantly. "It comes from my father as well as my mother. She's very competitive. She loves Scrabble, and she seldom loses. I play every once in a while, but when I do play, I play to win. . . . At the same time, you can't lose sight of loving what you do, and enjoying it. Even though it is hard work, I enjoy it."

References to family are sprinkled throughout Jackson's conversation. "What makes me happy is being with my family, all of us together. We always have a lot of fun," she says, adding that she has more than 20 nieces and nephews. Because of their busy lives and careers, they do not all get together as much as they would like, but they are supportive of each other. "Family is No. 1, and we know that," she says.

Jackson says that she grew up in a loving home and that her parents, Joseph and Katherine Jackson, were strict disciplinarians. But she denies that they were abusive, as was alleged by sister LaToya Jackson in her book. "That's just a bunch of crap," Janet says of LaToya's charges that their father sexually and physically abused her. "Yes, our parents were strict, they did whip us. But my parents never mentally or sexually abused us."

Janet emphasizes that she and all of her brothers and sisters have reached out to LaToya, that her mother even flew to New York to see LaToya after the family heard about her problems, but LaToya refused to see Mrs. Jackson and ignored Janet's attempts to contact her.

And then, says Janet, LaToya suddenly showed up and created a scene at the Minneapolis recording studio where Janet was working on her new hit album, Janet., with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. "It was one big, huge mess," recalls Janet, emphasizing that her sister had ignored her calls for four years prior to that. "I felt it was like she wanted something more to write about and thrive upon. So that was the reason she came to Minneapolis and caused this big commotion, hoping that something would happen. And it just s happens that two weeks later she was on [The] Howard Stem [Show] talking about how we saw each other in Minneapolis, yet she said I was the one yelling and raving and cursing and screaming, and it was just totally the opposite.

"It's all an attention thing, and I think this guy who is with her [husband Jack Gordon] has brainwashed her and made her like this," says Jackson. "He keeps her away from the family, and now he's brainwashed her so much she keeps herself away from us.

"But more than any other crap that she's said about me, and all the lies and stuff, what really hurts me is what she has done to my mother. After what happened in Minneapolis I remember calling home and I was crying," she recalls. "I said, |Mother, please, don't ever try to reach LaToya again. Let her come to you. Because I don't ever want you to go through what I went through.' And I just couldn't stop crying on the phone. Yes, she's my sister, but I didn't give birth to her. My mother's been hurt enough."

Janet says she was a tomboy growing up and enjoyed a closer relationship with her brothers than with LaToya, who is 10 years older. "LaToya was always trying to persuade mother to get me in charm school because I was such a tomboy," she recalls, laughing. And, says Janet, LaToya was so "prissy" as a youngster that she felt uncomfortable for her siblings to even see her in pajamas. "That's why it really shocked us when she did the Playboy thing, for her to show her body the way she did. That's what really shocked us.