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Album: 20 Y.O.

20 Y.O. is the ninth studio album by American recording artist Janet Jackson, released by Virgin Records America on September 20, 2006 in Japan, September 22 internationally, and September 26 in Canada and the United States. The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 with 297,000 copies sold in its first week, making it Jackson's eighth consecutive top three debut and second consecutive number two album debut. It is also Jackson's eighth consecutive platinum album. On December 7, 2006 the album earned Jackson a Grammy Award nomination for Best Contemporary R&B Album. The reception was better than Damita Jo but was still lukewarm. Jackson launched a contest, the "Design Me" cover contest, giving fans an opportunity to create the artwork for the album by downloading images of her and creating proposed covers for the album. Jackson hand-picked dozens of images to be used in the contest. She selected her top four favorites, which were used for the standard edition's cover on U.S. pressings of 20 Y.O. The album's first single, "Call on Me", was released to U.S. radio on June 19, 2006. The song peaked at number 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and at number one on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart in mid-September, following the limited release of a commercial single. The second single, "So Excited"—which contains samples from Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" and features rapper Khia—, premiered on So So Def Radio on Atlanta radio station V-103 on August 19, and was made available via MySpace on August 21. The song peaked at number 90 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 34 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. It was most successful on Billboard's Hot Dance Club Play chart, on which it became Jackson's 17th number-one and 30th top ten single. The third single in North America was "With U", which was released to radio on December 11–12, 2006, peaking at number 65 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. It was released as a 12-inch vinyl single in the U.S. only. The third single, which was scheduled to be released in non-U.S. markets, was "Enjoy"; it was released only as a promotional single in Japan and received no commercial release. After Damita Jo reached number two, breaking a string of five consecutive number-one studio albums for Jackson, there was speculation about the chances of 20 Y.O. to reach the top spot in the U.S. The other big release of September 26 (the day 20 Y.O. was released), 2006 was Ludacris' album Release Therapy. However, first estimations gave 20 Y.O. green light for reaching number one, although it was known that both albums were head to head in the competition for that week. Finally, Release Therapy won the top spot, selling about 309,800 copies in its debut week. Meanwhile, 20 Y.O. was knocked off the top spot, reaching number two with 300,793 copies sold. With a difference of 12,800 copies, it was one of the slimmest differences between a number-one and number-two album in the history of the Billboard 200. Even so, 20 Y.O. became Jackson's eighth consecutive top three debut and second consecutive number-two album debut. In the Japan the album debuted at the number 12 with 20,380 copies, but peaked at the number 7, when Janet was able to promote the album in the country. On November 13, 2006, the album was certified platinum by the RIAA for shipments to U.S. retailers of more than one million copies and the album has sold 679,000 in the US to date. It is Jackson's eighth consecutive platinum album. In March 2007, Virgin's parent company EMI reported that the album had sold 1.2 million copies worldwide. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.