Brave Heart: Janet Jackson's Velvet Rope

ACCORDING TO Ralph Ellison in Shadow and Act, no jazz musician struggled harder to escape the role of grinning minstrel than Charlie Parker, with the possible exception of Miles Davis. The customary delight-maker embodied in the smile of Louis Armstrong became an anathema to jazzmen with ambitions toward respectability and the maintenance of dignity. Leave it to hiphop to resurrect an antiquated bebop dilemma for these premillennial times.