Would You Mind

Album: All For You (2001)
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Songfacts®:

  • In this sultry song, Janet Jackson lets her man know he's in for a treat. It's one of her most suggestive songs, and the lyrics ("kiss you, suck you, taste you, ride you...") got the All For You album banned by the government of Singapore. Jackson's previous album, The Velvet Rope, was also banned there.

    In the US, the album didn't earn the explicit lyrics advisory sticker until three months after it was released. The record companies were responsible for stickering the albums, but they tried not to with mainstream albums because Walmart and some other retailers refused to stock them. By the time the album got the sticker, it had already sold millions of copies.
  • Like all of the songs on the album, Jackson wrote "Would You Mind" with the production team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. This song also got a contribution from the rapper Dana Stinson (aka Rockwilder), who also had a hand in writing and producing "You Ain't Right," "Come On Get Up," "Trust a Try" and "Feels So Right."
  • This song was used in the 2001 stoner comedy How High, starring rappers Method Man and Redman. Jackson had teamed up with Method Man a few years earlier for "Message From Penny" from his second solo album, Tical 2000: Judgement Day (1998). Redman name-checked Jackson in a couple of his songs. In "Tonight's Da Night" he wants to "pack 'em in like Janet Jackson," while in "Gilla House Check" he proclaims "I'm the s--t like Janet Jackson undressin'."
  • When Jackson performed this song on her All For You tour, she would bring up a guy from the audience who was then strapped in as she performed some of the acts she sings about in the song.

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