Janet Jackson: 'I've Been Cheated on a Lot'

Feb. 26th, 2008, 10:14 AM EST
By Dotson Rader, of the PARADE Magazine

Pop star opens up about her love life, her career and dealing with her dad's infidelities.

"I was always reaching out for love," Janet Jackson says. "I kept searching for it, seeking it. Infatuation, lust — that stuff only lasts so long. You can get that from anybody. But true love is supposed to be forever."

Jackson, 41, tells me this as we sit cozily on a couch in New York, where she owns an elegant, art-filled apartment overlooking Manhattan's Central Park. She has spent most of today at a midtown recording studio doing final touch-ups on "Discipline," her new album.

"I love my music and my work," she confides in her breathy, bedroom voice, "but my friends will tell you that the one thing I've always wanted more than anything else is real love." She smiles and pets one of her three fat bulldogs, Rocky, who lies drooling on her lap.

Janet, petite and pretty, is wearing a sweater over several shirts, a scarf, loose track pants and a large, wool newsboy cap. Although we are sitting in an overheated room, she is so afraid of catching cold that she is bundled up like a schoolgirl about to walk through deep snow. She looks nothing like one of America's richest women, a gifted entertainer who has sold more than 100 million records. She also has acted on TV ("Good Times," "Fame") and in movies. Currently, she is the most successful member of the famous Jackson family, her career now eclipsing her brother Michael's fading star.

Her outsized success, she says, is due to her family's work ethic.

"I was introduced to discipline at a young age," she explains. "My parents were very strict, especially my father." Joseph Jackson, 78, a former steelworker and sometime guitarist, was a harsh, controlling parent who whipped the musical talents of his nine obedient children into a family fortune. He put Janet, the youngest, to work at age 7 in the family's Las Vegas stage act.

"I really wanted to be a jockey," she says. "I loved being on top of this huge, powerful animal. I thought I could see the edge of the universe. But when I was 9, my father said, 'You should sing.' I told him I didn't want to. He said, 'You're going to sing.' So that's what I did."

Around the same time, Joseph had an out-of-wedlock child with a fan of the Jackson 5. Five years later, he had another affair with an employee of his sons' record label, Motown. His infidelities nearly ended his marriage and deeply affected Janet.

"Besides my mother's beauty and her smarts, what I always wanted was her strength," says Janet, who is very close to her mother, Katherine, 77, a devout Jehovah's Witness. "It's a very cold world, and to have gone through what she has had to experience, from having polio as a child to those things with my brother Michael, and then for my father to have had another child!" Janet pauses, angry. "I've been cheated on a lot," she goes on, heatedly. "I know what that feels like and how that hurts the heart. But, I mean, to give us a half-sister. I can't even fathom what that's like for Mother. For her to stay with my father all these years and never abandon her kids, that's true love."

Joseph's behavior never excited the media storm that his children's did. The child-molestation charges against Michael brought endless attention. Janet received similar scrutiny after her 2004 Super Bowl moment with a defective bustier. Even after a lifetime of celebrity, she still claims bafflement at the level of hostility against her family.

"I've never been able to figure it out," she says. "There's so much more ammunition against so many other people, yet they're not touched. It's like they're in a glass case."

Janet's personal life has been less public but equally rocky. "Twice I thought I'd found the person who truly loved me," she says. "Both times I got it wrong."

When she was 13, she met James DeBarge, a young singer who was a friend of her brothers. Six years later, their friendship developed into a romance. In 1984, two years after the debut of her first album, "Janet Jackson," they wed. "I was 18," she says, "and James is a very sweet, goodhearted person."

Janet's father strongly opposed their union. She moved out of her parents' house.

"I married James for all the wrong reasons," she admits. "Maybe there was some rebellion against my father in there. James had a substance-abuse problem. When he was under the influence, there was this transformation, and I'd think, 'Who is this man in front of me?' But I knew his true heart. I felt I could help him. I was just a kid. I didn't know anything about being an enabler. It was painful."

The marriage was annulled after less than a year, and Janet moved back into her parents' house.

"James has totally cleaned up his life," she adds. "He's really doing well for himself."

At 20, Janet left home for good and recorded "Control," her third album. "I was on my own," she says. "I was happy." Soon she was also rich and world-famous. "Control" sold 10 million copies and produced five top singles. It made her a pop star. By 1987, she had fired her father as manager. Two years later, Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation 1814" debuted at No. 1, with seven top singles, followed by one of the most successful music tours ever.

The video for "Rhythm Nation" was produced by her lover, Rene Elizondo. They wed in 1991, separated in 1999 and divorced in 2003 after bitterly contentious legal proceedings in which Rene sought $25 million from Janet. Details of the final settlement were not disclosed.

"Here I was, married twice, and I'd never dated in my life!" She laughs. "Someone said to me, 'Well, Janet, if you never dated, how did you get married?' Because Rene was a friend I'd known before. So was James. And the next thing you know, you're caught up in this thing.

"You're always going to have peaks and valleys in a marriage," she continues. "When you get down to it, your husband is the person you've chosen to grow old with. If there is really love there, you will go through it all together, hell or high water."

Janet kept both of her marriages a secret until they ended. I ask why. "I wanted to keep something for myself and not have it be public," she replies. "I think that's why we lasted as long as we did.

"But after two divorces," she says, "I thought I was jinxed. Maybe marriage isn't for me? Maybe it's my fault it never works. I was always faithful. I always tried to give of myself. I was very loyal. But maybe I'm the problem. I'm to blame."

She pauses, then quietly goes on. "It was awful, and I was so tired of being hurt. When it was over, I put shields up to protect myself from being hurt again. I didn't want to go there anymore."

But go there she did when she found Jermaine Dupri, 35, a record producer and hip-hop artist. They have known each other for six years now and may already be married, although that is a question Janet will not address beyond admitting that they are a couple and she is crazy about him. Finally, she says, she has found the real thing.

"This time, I wasn't going to be the first to reach out," she says. "It was Jermaine who touched me first. Love came to me. He's such a wonderful, sweet, very loving guy that I said to myself, 'I'm not going to fall head over heels for this person.'" She laughs at her good fortune. "Oh, I love him more than anything. If I lost everything I have except Jermaine, I know I could still be happy. He has the same thoughts and feelings as I have." Janet smiles. "I'm the happiest I have ever been in my life," she tells me. "Because, more than anything, what I always really wanted was love."

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

This article is courtesy of http://music.msn.com/

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