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With Janet Jackson's (woefully belated) acceptance into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it's well past time for a broader reckoning with her place in popular culture, and especially the way she's challenged narratives in pop music. The pop music tradition, especially the global superstar tier of pop music where Janet resides, has had a fairly consistent narrative for a few decades now. By the end of the 80s, Janet was pushing forward the boundaries of pop music with Rhythm Nation 1814, with many of its songs explicitly articulating a vision of color-blindness. We are like-minded individuals Sharing a common vision Pushing toward a world rid of color lines Within two years after the release of Rhythm Nation, Michael Jackson would release his single "Black or White", whose chorus repeatedly insists that it doesn't matter if you're black or white.

Frustratingly, though most of Prince's videos, including some of his very best, remained obscure, getting almost no airplay back when there were music video channels, or being distributed through one-off VHS video collections, CD-ROMs or uneven and short-lived video streams on Prince's websites. In the first video for his third album, Prince debuts a new look, an expanded band — including the first video appearance of Revolution stalwart Lisa Coleman on keys — and the stage set he'd use in that year's Dirty Mind tour. In lieu of the proper video, here's a brief video about Prince's legendary 2007 Super Bowl halftime performance, where Prince commanded the heavens to unleash a genuine Purple Rain, and pulled off the most dominating victory of any Super Bowl ever. Prince had first fought to not put out any video for the song, then tried to have it only be an animated video (the animation did end up being featured prominently in the clip), and finally eventually consented to appearing in the video.

But it's far more likely, given that the rate of climate change is accelerating, that we’ll see such disruption again within a few years. Now imagine the rest of us, knowing there was going to be another 9/11 every few years, pretending that it wasn't going to be us who gets targeted next. The undermining of the United States' political credibility in the world, and the weakening of its cultural domination over the world, will also yield some benefits in mitigating climate disruption as fewer cultures seek American-style consumption as part of their lifestyles. It's possible that things become so unpredictable and contentious due to climate change that we never find a new political or cultural stability during his lifetime.

Suddenly, even the most powerful people in society are forced to be fluent in the concerns of those with little power, if they want to hold on to the cultural relevance that thrust them into power in the first place. Being a comedian means having to say things that an audience finds funny; if an audience doesn't find old, hackneyed, abusive jokes funny anymore, then that comedian has to do more work. Now, these powerful folks don't want to be held accountable for disrespecting people with different identities, and the powerful certainly don't want to be mocked for their illiteracy in contemporary culture, but they damn sure want to make certain that you know they're not interested in indulging modern norms for showing respect to others. If someone wants to maintain power in culture, all that's required is a sincere and honest engagement with those who are granting that power through their attention and support.