Jennifer Lopez has a huge amount of respect for her pioneering pop diva inspiration Janet Jackson and a source exclusively tells In Touch J. Lo has been turning to her for comfort and advice as she continues to reinvent herself in the wake of her divorce from Ben Affleck. 

The source makes a point of stating the relationship between the “Let’s Get Loud” singer, 55, and the iconic “Together Again” songstress, 58, “is not a new friendship.” In fact, J. Lo was a backup dancer for Janet in the early 1990s and appeared in the music video for “That’s the Way Love Goes” before making moves to kick start her own solo career. “They’ve been pals and occasional collaborators for more than thirty years,” the insider adds, “but especially over the last five years, where Jennifer has been so active in movies, in streaming and even in her attempts to re-launch her music career, she’s had a guardian angel in the form of Janet cheering her on and even providing some valuable support at key moments.”

One important example of their friendship and support for one another throughout the years was, “when Janet allowed for her classic song ‘Control’ to be used in raunchy stripper scenes for Jennifer’s hit movie Hustlers,” the insider notes. “That alone was a huge deal for Jennifer, because Janet almost never releases her music for that kind of purpose and Jennifer will never forget the kindness of that gesture.” 

“She auditioned to be one of the dancers for the Janet project,” the Poetic Justice star said in 2001 of working with J. Lo. “She was a very good dancer and was hired for the job.” When Jen ultimately decided to quit the project and try her hand at an acting career, Janet wasn’t upset in the least and lent her support to Jen’s burgeoning career. “We were supposed to go on tour and she said that she wanted to pursue an acting career … I said, ‘OK,’ and wished her well and hoped that she would have great success, because that’s not an easy thing to do, but you have to make those moves in your life, especially when you feel it.”

Since winning the “All for You” singer’s respect and setting off to build quite the filmography and discography for herself, J. Lo and Janet grew closer as they recognized how they battled the same industry forces throughout their careers and dealt with similar trials and tribulations in their own social lives, including J. Lo’s heartbreaking divorce from Ben, 52, in the summer of 2024, which mirrored the media circus around Janet’s contentious split from Qatari billionaire Wissam Al Mana.

“The bigger bond between Jennifer and Janet is that, over the last twenty years, they’ve both been through a lot of the same stuff — the ups and downs of the music business, people underestimating them at every turn, and of course the wild turns in their personal lives where they both have gone through high-profile divorces,” the source says. 

“Janet can look at Jennifer and see what she’s managed to accomplish and be totally proud. This friendship means the world to both of them!”