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Billboard’s Greatest Pop Star of 1993: Janet Jackson
Janet Jackson is Billboard's Greatest Pop Star of 1993 for how the she evolved and matured her sound and image to fit with the new decade.
She announced her 1993 return that spring, with a sultry, James Brown-sampling jewel called “That’s the Way Love Goes.” Janet had to face the daunting task of living up to the blockbuster success of Rhythm Nation 1814, an album that maintained a chart presence for the better part of three years and navigating the shifting musical landscape in R&B circa 1993. Janet Jackson’s sound would move away from the industrial new jack swing of Nation to something earthier, acknowledging mainstream R&B’s shift into both Toni Braxton-led smooth urban contemporary and Mary J. Blige-esque hip-hop soul. She’d embraced a “round-the-way-girl” aesthetic that suddenly presented her as the superstar-next-door, lounging with her friends and dancers in the omnipresent music videos for “That’s the Way Love Goes” and 1994s “You Want This,” confidently rocking her braids (adopted for Poetic Justice, the John Singleton-directed romantic drama she starred in that July) and other hairstyles that were more evocative of the neighborhood than the glam styles she’d sported in the 1980s and early 1990s.
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