Janelle Monae

Atlanta-based soul singer Janelle Monae debuted with the concept EP Metropolis Suite I (Bad Boy, 2007) whose lyrics described a dystopian futuristic society and whose music mimicked the James Bond film soundtracks.

The second and third parts of a suite inspired by the classic German film Metropolis (1927) showed up on The ArchAndroid (Bad Boy, 2010), a concept album that marked a quantum leap forward in musical ambition. Painstakingly organized and arranged, it displayed an even more eclectic musical intelligence, the natural heir to Lauryn Hill's project. To prove her point, Moane opens the album with the ominous symphonic music of Suite II Overture, only to follow it with the Brazilian and African overtones of Dance Or Die a frenzied rap that battles a celestial melody sung by a female choir while horns, strings, syncopated beats and digital sound effects sculpt a friendly, earthly soundscape. This segues seamlessly into the devilish guitar-driven dance of Faster whose thumping rhythm harks back to the age of jump blues and charleston. Locked Inside lowers the speed for a breezy melody taken straight out of easy-listening pop of the 1960s and a rhythm that owes something to Michael Jackson's Rock With You. Past the naive tip-toed ballad Sir Greendown that belongs to the age of the early teenage idols, and the temporary impersonation of a disco diva of the 1970s in Cold War, she travels to the age of James Brown for Tightrope, featuring Outkast's Bad Boi, en engrossing affair for funky guitar, choir and orchestra. The amount of musical history that she can cover within the space of a few songs is both entertaining and intimidating. Minutes later she's back to the early 1960s for Oh Maker in her best imitation of Dusty Springfield and Sandie Shaw. Next she's competing with the visceral rhythm'n'blues shouters of the 1950s in the frenzied Come Alive, except that tiny details such as vocal effects and chiming bells lend the song a disturbing psychological power. The sensual distorted melody and the rhythmic crescendo of Mushrooms & Roses sounds like a tribute to Purple Rain-era Prince. Suite 3, a shorter six-song cycle, opens with another symphonic overture that segues into the languid Neon Valley Street (possibly the album's only misstep). The post-disco burner Make The Bus, a creation of Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes that exudes a bit of Pet Shop Boys-ian grandeur, is paired with the exotic ballet Wondaland, sung in a shrill voice, that harks back to Kate Bush and to synth-pop of the 1980s. Just when she seems to have exhausted all existing as well as non-existing genres, she intones the medieval-tinged hymn of 57821, one of the most poignant moments in the recording history of her generation. After a less successful tribute to Stevie Wonder's brainy soul music (Say You'll Go), she ends the album with the eight-minute BabopbyeYa in the manner of a late-night torch singer except that she's backed by a blaring symphony orchestra and that the music rapidly decays into a Brazilian samba, loose cacophony, a spoken-word recitation against a solemn female choir, and jazzy chamber music. The album is a breathless, dizzy run through the annals of pop, rock and soul (credit also producers Charles "Chuck Lightning" Joseph II and Nathaniel "Nate 'Rocket' Wonder'" Irvin III). That it remains cohesive despite all the jumps back and forth in time is a miracle. It feels like a stylistic tsunami, but one that builds instead of devastating.

Electric Lady (Bad Boy, 2013), largely produced by Deep Cotton (Atlanta's duo of Chuck Lightning and Nate "Rocket" Wonder), continued the saga of the renegade android (fourth and fifth suites). Like on the previous album, Monae's music is really a team effort that includes guitarist Kellindo Parker, Wondaland's producer Roman "GianArthur" Irvin, and the songwriting duo of Nate Wonder and Chuck Lightning (disguised under the monikers Nathaniel Irvin III and Charles Joseph II). The album has is a lot less creative than the previous one, but still boasts numbers worthy of Monae's best: the hiccupping funk Q.U.E.E.N. (a catchy, if dejavu, duet with Erykah Badu, but sung in the style of Lauryn Hill); the hymn-like Sally Ride (that quotes Wilson Pickett's Mustang Sally); the tribal rant and choral prayer Hell You Talmbout, and the feverish Givin Em What They Love (a duet with Prince). Monae seems more attracted to nostalgia this time around, and not only because she quotes the soul giants of the 1960s and 1970s (Ghetto Woman could be a Stevie Wonder melody) but also because two of the best concoctions are elegant reinterpretations of the past: Dance Apocalyptic harks back to the 1960s of calypso, ska, bubblegum pop and Phil Spector's girl-groups; and Look into my Eyes sounds like a Broadway mezzosoprano crooning an orchestral exotica ballad of the 1950s.

For a few years Monae didn't release any music but she was certainly around. She sang on the Internet's Ego Death (2015), The Social Experiment's Surf (2015) and Claire Boucher's Art Angels (2015). She was featured in films such as Barry Jenkins' Moonlight (2016) and Theodore Melfi's Hidden Figures (2016).

Dirty Computer (Atlantic, 2018), yet another concept album (about a police state that criminalizes homosexuals and blacks), was even accompanied by a 46-minute film (similar to what Prince did for Purple Rain). The star-studded album (Brian Wilson, Stevie Wonder, Pharrell Williams, Zoe Kravitz, Grimes, and even a posthumous Prince) was certainly a major effort to establish her commercially. The result, as is often the case for major production, is terrible. The concept is lost in the parade of inferior songs that simply aim for airplay. There is a catchy Crazy Classic Life (which ideally complements Prince's Let's Go Crazy) and she unleashes her hedonistic philosophy in Screwed that could have been on Prince's 1999; and the mildly aggressive I Got the Juice (a duet with Pharrell Williams) bridges Afro-pop and hip-hop. But Take a Byte winks at dance-pop of the Tears For Fears and Culture Club era; and the childish Pynk (a collaboration with Grimes) sounds like a Taylor Swift ditty. And then it gets even worse: Django Jane is rather lame hip-hop; Don't Judge Me is a sleep-inducing ballad; I Like That is just a trite combination of fasionable beats and crooning with a cute vocal effect; So Afraid is a comic attempt at turning her into a shouter amid symphonic grandeur. Even the Prince-inspired funky and electronic Make Me Feel doesn't coalesce, although it was composed by Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter (who in 2015 had composed Justin Bieber's hit Sorry and Selena Gomez's hit Good for You) and was produced by Sweden's Mattman & Robin (aka Mattias Larsson and Robin Fredriksson, who had just produced Taylor Swift's 1989). As a four-song EP it would have been passable.

Janelle Monae debuted as a writer with the story collection “The Memory Librarian", which turned Dirty Computer into a number of short stories.

It is hard to recognize Janelle Monae in the bland music of the 14-song 32-minute The Age of Pleasure (2023). The singles Float, propelled by trap and dub and Lipstick Lover, a sensual reggae-soul shuffle (both produced by Nate "Rocket" Wonder), are lighthearted party music for the crowds that never listened to her previous albums.