Janet Jackson gave a nod to one of her iconic album covers during the opening night of her new Las Vegas residency.
As TMZ reports, the singer, who wore a black leather catsuit during the segment, had her breasts "groped" by a male backup dancer, which recalled the sultry cover of her 1993 album, Janet. An expanded edition of the artwork, where Jackson's bare chest was held by her then-husband, René Elizondo Jr., was a Rolling Stone cover that same year.
The dance move also comes 20 years after Jackson's breast was controversially exposed during her 2004 Super Bowl performance, where special guest, Justin Timberlake, ripped off a part of the singer's top. In her 2022 Lifetime docuseries, Jackson claimed that she told Timberlake not to say anything after the wardrobe malfunction. Timberlake would come to apologize in 2021, acknowledging that he "failed" Jackson by not speaking up.
"We talked once and [Justin] said, ‘I don’t know if I should come out and make a statement,'” Jackson said in part three of the docuseries, per The Grio. “And I said, 'Listen, I don’t want any drama for you. They’re aiming all of this at me.' So I said, 'If I were you, I wouldn’t say anything.'"
An FX and Hulu documentary about the incident, titled Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson, was released in November 2021, and included previously unseen footage and interviews with crew members who were involved with the performance.
