All for You (Virgin) is the first Janet Jackson album to carry a parental-warning sticker. It’s still a Janet Jackson album, however — if you’re not listening closely, you might miss a line like " He’s got a nice package alright/Guess I’m gonna hafta ride it tonight " and hear only that velvety honey-and-sunshine coo, the bluebird of happiness at the end of the rainbow. There was a time in Jackson’s career when she felt it necessary to declare that she’d stepped out from the shadow of her parents, who had already engineered the career of the century’s biggest pop star, as well as the careers of several of its smallest, at great emotional cost to all involved. We’ve gotten used to the Janet who is in complete control, and perhaps that’s why she had to make All for You, an album grown-up enough to accede to the joys of giving into temptation, control be damned.

On " Come On, Get Up, " the number with which she opened her FleetCenter concert last Saturday (she’d appeared suddenly, alone, after a blinding flash of light, on a solitary silver pedestal), she begged her man to ravish her, and quickly, as if at any second she might come to her senses and ruin everything. " Damn baby, now what I wanna see, " she sang with a smile at once sly and guileless, " is you shake that ass for me. "

Joined by a pan-ethnic eight-member dance troupe, Jackson put on a clinic in how to dazzle a pop audience. I was immediately reminded of how much Britney and ’N Sync have borrowed from her, both in choreography and in phrasing, in those dislocating shoulder dips and gorilla-arm swings, limbs hung at rakish angles and invisible notes snatched out of mid air. But to see Janet perform is to see the master demonstrate for her pupils: she prowls the front of the stage like a lioness, bamboo streaks through hair pulled back tight from her scalp, hips swiveling independently of the rest of her, skin glistening under a lather of sweat. The songs from All for You took center stage, with the title track deployed early, the guitar-crunching minuet-of-death " Just a Try " bringing on Nosferatu-masked dancers made jerky like the figurines in a Brothers Quay short, and the ebullient current single, " Someone To Call My Lover, " saved for dessert. Her catalogue flashed by in generous medleys staged in a variety of settings: up close and personal for " Come Back to Me, " " Let’s Wait Awhile, " and " Again " ; a Fruit of the Loom commercial on the set of Toy Story for " Miss You Much, " " When I Think of You, " and " Escapade " ; structured dance dramas for " What Have You Done for Me Lately, " " Control, " and a " Nasty Girls " accented with Ludacris’s " Southern Hospitality. "

Still, the moment they’ll be talking about ’round the table at Thanksgiving was " Would You Mind, " an aquamarine orgasm set to music for which the cat-suited star pulled a young man out of the audience, strapped him to a gurney, and smothered him in an unbelievably intimate lap dance. The pleasure principle — to name a rare hit that didn’t make the set — reigned supreme.