It’s hard to believe, but on October 7th, Janet Jackson’s seminal sixth studio album, The Velvet Rope, turned old enough to be kicked off Damita Jo’s health insurance plan.

After releasing three blockbuster albums in Control, Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814, and janet., the pop star had negotiated her contract with Virgin for $80 million, the largest recording contract in history, at the time.

Shortly before this, she took a bit of a victory lap in 1995 with her first greatest hits collection, Design of a Decade, which featured new singles like the hit single “Runaway” and “Twenty Foreplay,” to me one of the best songs in her exhaustive catalog.

Despite Janet entering this new era at her commercial peak, she experienced an emotional breakdown that ultimately shaped the sound and themes of the album.

As she explains in “Sad,” an interlude near the end of The Velvet Rope, “There’s nothing more depressing than having everything and still feeling sad.”

Whereas Janet’s previous offerings were concept albums that offered larger commentary on sexuality, independence, and race, The Velvet Rope was more about introspection.

“I’ve been burying pain my whole life,” she explained to Ebony then.

Separately, in an interview with the Washington Post, Janet said her most personal and revealing album "had to do with me looking at myself and knowing who I am and what I really want, being happy with myself . . . learning to like myself."

Janet acknowledged that she understood why some might doubt a celebrity with her stature confessing to low self-esteem and question whether she genuinely carried private sorrow in the face of such public success.

However, “What people don't understand," she noted, “is that most of the time that's what drives us, really, this low self-esteem, these feelings of inadequacy as a child. That's what makes you push so hard to be successful, to prove something to yourself. I never felt I was good at what I did.”

This sentiment carried much of the lyrics on the album as it chronicled depression, loneliness, and the need to feel special. It also explored sexuality by tackling masturbation, BDSM, and bisexuality while discussing homophobia and domestic violence.

The album was no less ambitious in terms of tone or sound, but ultimately, Janet used this album to share her pain with listeners and, in doing so, leave space for us to reflect on the pain we carry within ourselves.

For many of us, pop culture is an access point to people and ideas we might otherwise be excluded from.

In the same way, I once wrote about how Janet Jackson helped inform me about sexuality with the release of janet., The Velvet Rope gave me the language I didn’t have to describe the sadness I felt inside.

It follows the tradition of other albums like Mary J. Blige’s My Life or Marvin Gaye’s Here My Dear in that respect. Still, Janet is singular in speaking of her problems while advocating so directly and forcefully on behalf of the victims of abuse and prejudice.

Still, no matter how remarkable a creative achievement the album was, it was covered widely for being a relative disappointment.

The first single, the Joni Mitchell-sampling “Got ‘Til It’s Gone” featuring Q-Tip, was shunned by pop radio.

In an interview with The Boombox in 2017, longtime collaborator Jimmy Jam said, “I don’t think it [bothered her]; she was really happy with the album and what we made, and we knew that we were pushing the envelope. We knew for her, she thinks of herself as an R&B artist first.”

Indeed, Janet told the Post about questions over its performance, "Of course I want it to be successful, but I needed to do this album for myself, for people to know what was going on with me."

In hindsight, the mainstream media’s lack of appreciation for what Janet was offering in The Velvet Rope is not unlike their piss poor handling of the controversy that would follow years after her performance at the Super Bowl Halftime Show in 2004.

Nevertheless, The Velvet Rope has inspired many of the contemporary artists we hear today, from SZA to Rihanna to Kelela and Tinashe, who not only can push the boundaries of R&B and pop thanks to the forward-leaning music Janet has made but also the space to have frank sexual expression with less pushback.

From now until the end of time, whenever “I Get Lonely” is playing, masses of people will break out into song and choreography in unison.

It is a standard bearer album that was both ahead of its time and perfect for when it was released.

It is also an album that, some 26 years later, in the wave of rising depression, growing misogyny, and continued rampant homophobia and transphobia, a refuge from the world's evils.

That is best captured in The Velvet Rope’s biggest hit, “Together Again,” a dance record dedicated in memory of friends Janet lost to AIDS.

So many decades later, the message is that even in times of great sadness amid feelings of loss and self-doubt, there is still joy to be found.