Got 'Til It's Gone

Built around a flipped Joni Mitchell sample that transforms "Big Yellow Taxi" into something smoky and longing, this track operates like a meditation on absence disguised as a dance record. The production, helmed by Q-Tip and Janet's brother Jimmy Jam, layers jazz-inflected piano riffs over a hip-hop-adjacent drum pattern that never quite settles into a predictable rhythm — it breathes and stutters in a way that feels intentional, like grief does. Janet's voice here is low and conversational, stripped of the high-gloss sheen that defined her biggest pop moments, and that rawness makes everything feel more intimate, more honest. There's a wistfulness threading through the whole piece, a sense that something irreplaceable has already slipped away before the song even begins. The horn accents surface and disappear like memories you can't quite hold. Lyrically, the song revolves around the wisdom that only loss teaches — the understanding of value that arrives too late. It belongs firmly in the mid-90s moment when hip-hop and soul were engaged in a rich, generative dialogue, when samples weren't just texture but argument. You reach for this on quiet evenings when nostalgia has a particular sharpness to it, when you're reflective rather than sad, turning over the question of what you should have paid more attention to.