It's hard to find Janet Jackson in the beginning
of Discipline,
or at least a Janet Jackson to use as a measure among all the others. The
album's first song, a slight digital jam called "Feedback," hides her in a mess
of uncertain vocal tones and incongruous lines about guitars. (It's like one of
those Rolling Stone covers with a pop star holding a guitar for no apparent
reason.) "Rollercoaster" flits through another series of simmering beats and
different vocal styles, most of them too generic to identify with a
personality—much less that of the most commanding Jackson.
Then Discipline gets good and stays that
way, more or less, until the end. The change arrives with "Rock With U," the
kind of banging club track that Jackson at her best has come to own: With
bigger beats to counter, she drapes her voice over wide spaces below and lays
it out in all its diaphanous glory. It's a habit she continues and carries out
just as forcibly in ballads, as in "Can't B Good," a majestic song produced by
Ne-Yo, with an ear for those classic Jackson-family quivers and trills. Janet's
quivers in particular have always been the most compelling for the way they
suggest a kind of sensual embrace of conflict and pain, and they come to
dominate Discipline in the end. She also sings about masochistic sex a lot, but
that's just a distraction.