Being a performer was in Janet Jackson’s DNA. By the time she debuted as a solo artist in 1982, the world had already fallen in love with the man who defied gravity, moonwalking across stages and into our hearts with ease. But when your brother is Michael Jackson, you learn a thing or two about how to command the stage. “I’ve studied the best...Michael Jackson, who was just down the hall,” she said in a 1990 interview with Los Angeles Times . Janet, like Michael, used her performances to provide an experience. If you wanted to see someone sit on a stool with a mic, you were probably at the wrong show.

In the early 80s, Janet released two albums— Janet Jackson and Dream Street—which did little to distinguish her from her family name or her squeaky clean roles on Good Times and Diff’rent Strokes. But a few years later, she teamed up with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis for her follow-up album, Control, which allowed her to assert herself as an artist who wasn’t under Joe Jackson’s rule or lost in Michael’s shadow. Control was urgent, and at barely 20 years old, it was where Janet finally found her groove. The album was led by an edgy sound with undertones of funk curated by Jam and Lewis, who’d worked with Prince and Morris Day prior to joining Janet’s team. Control borrowed the synths of the 80s pop, but she made it street. “This is a story about control. My control. Control of what I say. Control of what I do,” she says on the album’s opener. “And this time, I’m going to do it my way.” Without Control, there’d be no Ctrl. Janet showed black women that there wasn’t anything wrong with demanding the right to tell your story.

“I’m feeling kind of lonely up here. I think I want some company,” she says slowly, scanning the crowd. She straps a fan onto a velvet stretcher and does as the lyrics suggest. “And I’m gonna kiss you, suck you, taste you, ride you,” she sings, as she simulates each of the moves. One fan even says, “I’ve waited for this for so long.” This was Janet’s sweet spot. She was fulfilling fantasies. Every move is Janet’s call and the men are simply props, an exercise of the authority she established almost two decades before.

There’s one routine that fully encapsulates Janet’s essence. On 2001’s All for You tour, she’s dressed as a dominatrix, dripping in a full latex bodysuit. She was sensuality in its full range: aggressive, yet gentle, forward, yet coy. She sings “Would You Mind,” an instructional song detailing all of her sexual preferences so explicitly it got All for You banned in Singapore . “Baby, would you mind touching me / Ever so slowly / You’re making me quiver,” she sings.

Over the course of her 30-year career, she’s been a reminder that feminism in pop music needn’t just look like Madonna. But like Madonna, Jackson has had to deal with her share of controversy. Though Madonna is revered for pushing at social norms, Jackson’s accidental faux pas left her condemned . Draw from that comparison whatever conclusions you must. After the 2004 Super Bowl performance with Justin Timberlake left her nipple exposed for 9/16 of a second, Janet’s career was never fully restored. That year, she was uninvited to the Grammys, the same night Timberlake would win two awards . Clear Channel Communications pulled her catalog from their programming, which made Damita Jo, the album immediately following the scandal, her lowest-selling record since Rhythm Nation. After 14 years, the stain is finally starting to lift. This year, she received Billboard’s Icon Award and headlined Essence Fest and Panorama with another performance lined up for Global Citizen’s Festival. Here’s how to get into the dynamic work she’s made over the course of her career, the sort of stuff that half of a second could never erase.

Janet would continue to do it her way, with each album unraveling another dimension of the multifaceted artist she grew into. She was a chameleon in her approach, dressing up pop songs with hip-hop’s provocative ear. During Janet’s ascent, the space for black women in pop was finite with only Whitney Houston occupying the other lane. Where Whitney used her voice with potency, Janet did the opposite. She filled the spaces of each song in a whisper as if to tickle the track. It was light enough for sultry ballads and dynamic enough for high-energy dance songs.

The video stripped Janet from the Sesame Street_-like video sets she’d used for _Control. Her brigade dressed in all black, performed intricate choreography, executing moves that at that time only the King of Pop could do. It was a vital moment in realizing that in order to be the best, she’d have to go after the best—even if that meant sibling rivalry. “She felt guilty in admitting she did feel competitive,” said A&M executive John McClain in a 1987 interview with Spin . “She was scared that she’d try and fail.”

Control was the album that affirmed her independence and she used that autonomy to figure out her place in the world on Rhythm Nation 1814. In 1989, she released her fourth album, and conceptually it was the most cohesive album she’d released. All seven singles were Top 10 hits, beating Michael’s record. Rhythm Nation was militant and Janet was the Commander-in-Chief. Its title track set the tone of what Janet was trying to say, “Things are getting worse / We have to make it better / It’s time to give a damn.”

Before Kendrick was protesting police brutality and the American carceral state on the Grammy stage or Beyonce served us an ode to black womanhood in the form of Lemonade, there was Janet Jackson. She was using her platform to address the ills of society long before “woke” was overused by your liberal co-worker. Janet understood the importance of using her career to promote more than her talent, and she drew from the greats before her to get her message across. “I re-listened to those artists who moved me when I was younger...Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Marvin Gaye,” she said in a 1990 interview with Essence . “These were people who woke me up to the responsibility of music. They were beautiful singers and writers who felt for others. They understood suffering.”

Rhythm Nation may have been her most conscious album, but her activism didn’t stop there. She borrows Public Enemy’s Chuck D for janet.'s “New Agenda,” a year after the Rodney King riots . Janet’s activism was reacting to current events as they happened, and this was long before Twitter was an option. Relying on New Jack Swing horns, and with Chuck D as her first collaboration with a rap artist, Janet proved she was able to not only be malleable, but able to use a popular sound to pass along her message. She was addressing issues of intersectionality without contorting the message. “Because of my gender / I’ve heard no too many times / Because of my race / I’ve heard no too many times.” She sings.

On “Living in a World,” she reminds us bigotry is learned behavior. “They are born with spirits so innocent / ‘Til we teach them how to hate,” she sings. The song ends with the audio of a news anchor detailing the school shooting at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, CA, which feels like an eerie warning on the reckless nature of the nation’s gun laws.

So you want to get into: Miss Jackson If You’re Nasty, Janet?

In 1986, Janet gave us “Nasty,” but it would only scratch the surface of just how nasty she would get. “No, my first name ain’t baby. It’s Janet. Miss Jackson if you’re nasty,” she says on the Control single. It was a line that caused you to double take, but any suggestive thoughts were pacified by her ballad “Let’s Wait Awhile.” Sex, per that staid number, wasn’t on the table for her. It wouldn’t be until 1993 on janet. where Jackson would explore just how nasty she could get. Sure, Janet is downright nasty in her verbiage on some of these tracks, her voice is the real aphrodisiac. She uses her voice as an instrument, saturating the song with soft whispers, making sure every bit of the track is covered.

On janet. we were introduced to a mature iteration of the singer. The 27-year-old singer was stepping into her status as a sex symbol. Unlike other artists, Janet’s sexuality isn’t just one note. There’s “Throb,” the house song, on which she begs, “DJ make me wet.” There’s “The Body That Loves You,” the boss nova-inspired bop that is more sensual than it is nasty. Of course, there’s “Any Time, Any Place,” which was a demand for spontaneous sex with a video that doubled as a campaign for safe sex. And still, this wasn’t the most risque Janet would get.