Janelle Monae - The Eclectic Lady

Dreaming of Broadway

Kansas City, December 1, 1985. Janelle is born in the dead of winter, into a family that's anything but well-off: her mother a school janitor battling drug addiction, her father a truck driver. Hers is a difficult childhood. One that keeps her up against the ropes, but never robs her of a future. Little Janelle is tough. She has character to spare. And she proves it right away. From her very first songs in the choir of the Baptist church just steps from home, her artistic streak - well outside the choir's lines - is already unmistakable. Janelle also brings literary gifts to the table, showing off her talent at just twelve years old by writing scripts for local theatre companies. Her other great passions are plants and Stevie Wonder, whom she has always considered an absolute touchstone for her musical education. After graduating from "F L Schlagle High School", she receives a scholarship to further her studies in musical theatre at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York, where, incidentally, she's the only Black woman in her class. A brief and in some ways disastrous experience, which soon after leads her to move to Atlanta, into a boarding house shared with five other women, taking an office job to support herself through her studies and keep alive her dream of writing musicals and maybe one day debuting on Broadway.

These are intense years for the young Janelle, who proves resourceful in everything she does. She tours colleges to promote her first songs, drawing the attention of her peers, who see in her a potential future music star. And it's during one of these "tours" that she meets two young songwriters: Chuck Lightning and Nate Wonder. The connection is instant, and the three found Wondaland Arts Society, an underground-minded label created to support young artists in search of a free home. A home where sounds and visions could be developed without any restraint.

It's the prelude to her first big breakthrough. In 2005, at just 20 years old, Janelle performs Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly With His Song", and as luck would have it, a certain Big Boi happens to be in the audience, left utterly spellbound by her performance. It's the right contact at the right time. The other half of Outkast immediately senses the young singer-songwriter's potential. He's bewitched by her outgoing, brilliant singing voice. After all, Janelle is exuberant and artistically multifaceted. She dances, acts, sings like a seasoned Motown star. She also has a deep passion both for Philip K. Dick's futuristic, apocalyptic visions and for the cinema of Fritz Lang, paid tribute to with the EP Metropolis, Suite I: The Chase in 2007. A visionary, in short. A rare kind of talent, blessed on top of it all with outstanding rhythmic and theatrical flair.

The Kansas City musician's natural inclination to blend the funky exuberance of her friends Outkast with the universal love of queen Aretha would be a defining trademark from her earliest compositions. Proof of this is her 2003 "self-produced" debut with her Wondaland Arts Society: The Audition. A record only partially raw around the edges, containing the seeds of what would soon become the next big thing in American funk.

The opening "Lettin Go!", with its strings pushed to the fore — grandiose just enough to underline her eternal passion for musicals — highlights her leaning toward ballads that sound as though they stepped straight out of Arthur Laurents' "West Side Story", such as "Cindi".

Elsewhere, Janelle chases after Lauryn Hill, in both bonfire mode ("Its Not Fair") and "classic" mode ("Cloud 9"). And she pulls it off well. Things go even better once the dress rehearsals begin for what would, years later, become her signature recipe — above all on "My Favorite Thing", a mix of energetic funk and soul progressions.

The Audition is at times a "slapdash" record. And yet it already displays Janelle's proverbial flair for commanding the stage during live shows and lighting it up with intriguing dance moves reminiscent of 1920s charleston dancers. A kind of dance that would later become one of her strongest assets. Just ask an ecstatic Obama after a performance at the White House that "perfect" barely does justice to. Just to name one instance.

Her encounter with Big Boi in the first half of the 2000s would prove especially formative for Janelle, given her role as vocalist on Outkast's 2006 album "Idlewild". Monáe sings divinely on "Call The Law" and "In Your Dreams", two calling cards that catapulted her straight into the world of music that matters. The EP Metropolis, Suite I: The Chase was indeed met with more or less rapturous applause from much of the critical establishment, earning Monáe a nomination at the 2009 Grammy Awards in the "Best Urban/Alternative Performance" category for the single "Many Moons". It was only the first of eight Grammy nominations she would receive in the years that followed, alongside — for whatever they're "worth" — an MTV Video Music Award, the ASCAP Vanguard Award, the "Rising Star Award" and "Trailblazer of the Year" at the Billboard Women in Music Awards. A string of accolades crowned in 2016 by her appearances in Oscar-winning films such as "Moonlight", for which she would receive a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Satellite Award.

The closing years of the new millennium's first decade revealed only the opening fireworks of a career as wide-ranging as it is singular. On May 18, 2010, The ArchAndroid came into the world, and it's sparks flying from the first second to the last. Monáe folded into the record the second and third suites of her "Metropolis" project, giving life to an unprecedented concept album in which she deploys her cybernetic alter ego Cindi Mayweather, a figure halfway between Antiope and Cleopatra whose task is to illuminate and save the android-populated world of Metropolis. There's room here for a tight narrative of events that are, in their own way, dystopian. Maria of Metropolis is the figure embodying evil in this story, a dominator of the working class and an inconsolable tyrant, while Cindi represents a kind of female John Connor leading a rebel minority, caught up moreover in an impossible love thwarted by the constraints of a bigoted society. A woman, then, symbolizing a necessary uprising in a 2719 that, deep down, isn't so different from today's world.

Quantifying the eclecticism of The ArchAndroid is no easy task. There are Funkadelic dancing with Erykah Badu. There's Sade sitting at a nightclub table with Marvin Gaye. And a James Brown poster hanging on the wall. There's a fascination with mother Africa that collides, almost magically, with a sci-fi microcosm serving as the backdrop. At 25, Janelle already has a crystal-clear vision. She eyes the summit and reaches it with ease, staging a musical whose acts transcend convention and sail past decades of pop music like a rocket ship.

There isn't a weak link or a filler track on the record. The Chic-style guitar licks ("Dance Or Die" with Saul Williams, or the propulsive "Faster") splash about lightly, flooding everything with joy. They're the quintessence of happiness in musical form. Meanwhile that thing called groove racks up new points in its favor at every turn. Because the former Broadway dreamer knows exactly who to hand the keys to rhythm to. And so Big Boi delivers the knockout blow on "Tightrope" — the album's lead single, nominated at the 2010 Grammy Awards for Best Urban/Alternative Performance — weaving its various phases into a relentless electric rumba.

On tracks like "Sir Greedown", there's a pause to contemplate the universe. While on "Come Alive" a sudden rock frenzy bursts in out of nowhere. There's no letting up on the horizon. Everything soars to dizzying heights, leaping from one magic carpet to the next like the finest Bulgarian trapeze artists. The inexhaustible solo of the erotic ballad "Mushrooms & Roses", this time in the style of Roger Nelson — who would shortly after become Janelle's admirer and mentor, as well as a luxury collaborator on "Givin Em What They Love" from the follow-up The Electric Lady — and the muffled, soul-motion frequencies of "Neon Valley Street": these are "only" some of the most intriguing moments on an album that would almost instantly become a beacon for fellow musicians and peers, such as Solange, and future stars of the electro-r'n'b firmament like Kelela, two years older than Janelle but not releasing her debut album until 2017. Or for underground acts like Abra and fulfilled promises like Kali Uchis.

The ArchAndroid is a total work of art. There's a sample of Michael Jackson's "Rock With You" ("Locked Inside") and the theme from Claude Debussy's "Clair de Lune" ("Say You'll Go"). While on "57821" a Celtic invocation blended with folklore aims once again to shuffle the deck. As does the theatrical, retro-humored symphony of "Babopbyeya". In short, it's the manifesto of a retroactive pop futurism rooted in the most inspired black music. The first great album of a decade that would see the Kansas queen reign supreme. And a positively spectacular world tour, as confirmed by the Berlin stop as well.

In the studio with Prince

Two years later, in 2013, buoyed by the well-deserved praise she'd received from all sides, Janelle came knocking again at doors flung wide open by the excellent The ArchAndroid. Her return brims with fizzy energy and stylistic flourishes, carried out against the same familiar Broadway-style backdrop once again set firmly in the background, underscoring the need to give the whole thing a musical-theater atmosphere — somewhere between glossy nods to Sixties Motown-flavored soul, unexpected electric flights complete with a closing solo, and slightly eighties-leaning romantic ballads. The clear homage to Hendrix's "Electric Ladyland" and the array of illustrious guests hint at what would become the seams of her new sonic cloak. First and foremost there's His Majesty Prince, friend and mentor for the occasion on the thrilling funky twist of "Givin' Em What They Love", on which her own personal modern-day Betty Davis takes flight, warming up both voice and crowd. There's Erykah Badu on the first single, the irreverent "Q.E.E.N.". And there's Miguel on the tear-jerking "Primetime", built-in sample of the generational Pixies anthem "Where Is My Mind" included. Finally there are Solange Knowles, Beyoncé's lesser-known but no less talented sister, dueting on the smooth r'n'b of the title track, and bassist Esperanza Spalding, lending more than just a hand to the jazzy candor of "Dorothy Dandridge Eyes".

In short, Janelle leaves absolutely nothing out, in the earnest hope of repeating her earlier triumphs. Her vocal performance is flawless, miles above average. The same goes for the funky phrasing and Latin rhythms. There's also room for a new "Tightrope" ("Dance Apocalyptic"), or for grandiose strings in the vein of Candi Staton ("Look Into My Eyes"). Nor are there any shortage of brazen bows to the masters of the past who have indelibly branded her with their influence, as happens on the Stevie Wonder-indebted "Ghetto Woman". Meanwhile, the album's tail end feels far calmer and more subdued. Soft, soulful harmonies take over instead, namely on "Our Favourite Fugitive", "Victory" and "Sally Ride". Before the curtain finally falls on the romantic "What An Experience", driven by a rubbery keyboard line front and center.

With Electric Lady, Janelle reinterprets old-school American r'n'b in her own way. A record that's only occasionally overly grandiose, and a sparkling release, followed once again by an intense world tour — though nothing hinted at the five-year hiatus that would follow, one carved out to make room for her never-dormant acting ambitions.

Five years, then. For Janelle's fans, and not only them, half a decade away from the recording studio is an eternity. Especially when you're the most talented diva in black music and you keep popping up everywhere — whether as a front-and-center actress in Hollywood films, see Theodore Melfi's acclaimed 2016 film "Hidden Figures" or the aforementioned "Moonlight" — or as a composer of scores for prestigious Netflix series such as "The Get Down". All without forgetting her close bond with the dearly missed Prince. Monáe remains, in fact, the last musician to have collaborated intensively with the Minneapolis sprite before his passing.

The third outing, Dirty Computer, thus arrives burdened with an immense weight of expectation. But the queen from Kansas once again gets it right, calling in few guests, but all of them excellent, and focusing her attention on a production that is, as ever, meticulous and flawless in every single arrangement, propelled this time around by an approach less inclined toward the orchestral, musical-theatre atmospheres of her two previous albums. The overall production, by contrast, is over the top. The price tag is eye-wateringly high, and plenty of contortions will be needed to recoup the costs.

Ambition and philanthropy

Monáe therefore doesn't give up on the concept, the work born out of a clearly defined philosophy. On Dirty Computer, a title that already says a great deal about the intentions behind it, the metaphor is compelling, thematically rooted in the present day. Janelle envisions the human being as a kind of Personal Computer, complete with bugs, viruses and all the flaws typical of machines, ultimately reducing those imperfections to mere opportunities. In doing so, she broadens her message in every direction, embracing queer people, minorities, poor women and more besides. Social unease is openly exorcised through a barrage of statements dropped between verses. The very brief opening track, featuring the master Brian Wilson, lays the groundwork for the moods that will run through most of the record. A lunar atmosphere, complete with a choral backdrop, and lyrics inspired by the aforementioned allegory, introduce the following "Crazy, Classic, Life". This track, in particular, was inspired by the words of the celebrated writer Mary Beard in her book "Women & Power"; specifically, her reflection on true freedom and women's right to make mistakes, at least occasionally, since they aren't always forgiven the way men are. The rhythm, with its looped kicks firmly in a "trap" vein, and a touch of triumphalism, precede a soft, sticky refrain.

A straightforwardness and serenity that come through best in several tracks, while the usual funky fizz provides a sparkling charge, lower in voltage but still packing explosive basslines worthy of Thundercat ("Take A Byte"), or to be even more precise, worthy of Prince, given that so many of the ideas stem directly from her artistic embrace with Nelson, as Janelle herself has stated in several interviews.

The flirtatious little guitars of "Screwed", featuring Lenny Kravitz's daughter, Zoë, make for an energetic, glossy pop opener in their own right. A very different mood characterizes the following "Dirty Jane", the album's second single; a pained song, driven by a righteous indignation at the condition many Black women still find themselves in today, placed at the core of an essentially rap track, stitched together here and there with strings and powerful beats. The other female guest spot, with Grimes, is on the other hand the weakest moment, with a verse melody that too closely recalls the evergreen worldwide hit "Girls Just Want To Have Fun", written by Robert Hazard in 1979 and reworked into its most famous version by Cyndi Lauper.

Less intense than other tracks here is also the first single "Make Me Feel", a likeable little pop bomb that's nonetheless far too Prince-indebted (there we go again!). Decidedly better is the exotically flavoured collaboration with the ever-reliable Pharrell Williams, a small adrenaline rush that recalls certain jagged rhythms of M.I.A.. The ultra-smooth ballad "I Like That" shines in quite a different light, fitted out with r'n'b that's liquid and fresh enough to burrow into your head and never let go.

Dirty Computer alternates passages of pure pop candour with others that suddenly turn more serious toward the end, like the soul magnetism that lifts the seductive ballad "Stevie's Dream". A small gem that paves the way for the triumphant "Americans", produced by Nate "Rocket" Wonder with a good dose of simplicity, not unlike a Moroder cut loose in the middle of the 1980s.

Setting aside a few vaguely saccharine moments, Dirty Computer is a successful album, far removed from the grandiloquence of its predecessors, yet varied, lively and pop to just the right degree. A standalone work, and also a genuine cinematic project, set in an unspecified future in which everyone is a computer, with Monáe taking on the role of protagonist Janelle 57821. An all-encompassing undertaking, through which the American musician proves herself to be, in every sense, the reigning queen of today's black music. In the company of, for different reasons, Solange and FKA Twigs, both distant from her and equally defined by a sometimes more "experimental" approach, localized in its own way, in sharp contrast with Monáe's greater pop-funk plurality. Monáe, as if that weren't enough, also (re)confirms herself as a phenomenon of singular scale in her live shows.

In the meantime, Janelle has also established herself as a political activist always ready to take a stand on important battles, as a pansexual advocate for the LGBT community and for the rights of the African American community. Her activism is indeed marked by meetings with younger people aimed at underlining the importance of voting. This dynamism is counterbalanced by her usual omnipresence in American showbiz, as shown once again by her explosive performance at the 2020 Oscars ceremony. There's also her penchant for philanthropy, which, through the Wondaland Arts Society foundation, has led her to launch eccentric initiatives such as the "Ten Droid Commandments", through which Janelle aims to carry listeners of the music produced by her community into a kind of "parallel" universe in which to set aside "expectations about art, race, gender, culture and gravity". What else?

Fully five years pass before Janelle sets foot in a recording studio again. The Age of Pleasure marks a return that follows the Missouri soul singer-songwriter's commitments as an actress in films by Kasi Lemmons, Julie Taymor and Rian Johnson, her philanthropic calling toward a wide range of social issues, and some thunderous Hollywood performances. Five years that were intense, to say the least, for Janelle, who essentially locked up the recording studio to try her hand at entirely different pursuits. An album that therefore arrives with its own considerable weight of expectation. And it could hardly be otherwise, given the guests involved, including, among others, Grace Jones, called in though only very briefly for the interlude "Oooh La La", and Seun Kuti, who appears on two tracks instead. And it's the latter, with his Egypt 80, who accompanies Monáe on horns in the first single: "Float". It's a fittingly buoyant song, with the Nigerian band brightening things up without overdoing it. Janelle glorifies her golden age, between Tiffany epiphanies and energies worth protecting. She feels light as a feather and embraces the myth of Muhammad Ali. "Champagne Shit" carries on in the same vein, ironically celebrating a state of mind that's all self-satisfaction and total confidence in her own abilities, given the remarkable milestones achieved. Janelle thus dons the jester's robes for her new multicolour musical. But it isn't all confetti and streamers.

The Age of Pleasure serves up, first and foremost, the pleasure of the flesh. It's a pansexual eroticism that surfaces in daring tracks like "Phenomenal", with Californian rapper Doechii going all out, or in the more predictable "Lipstick Lover", whose gospel aura is typical of Janelle's music. The production, courtesy of her trusted Nate 'Rocket' Wonder, once again aspires to Broadway-style grandeur, albeit transplanted to some ocean atoll, amid reggae percussion, electric textures, gypsy guitars, synth flashes and hushed basslines. "The Age of Pleasure" pulses under low lights in its most successful moments, like "The Rush", which showcases "backing singers" Nia Long and Amaarae in a thoroughly entrancing Latin dance. Also worth citing as an example is the Balearic "Water Slide", which seems to have emerged straight out of the pool Janelle dove into for the cover shot, letting herself be captured beaming between the legs of her companions.

The songs on The Age of Pleasure are small moments of joy, with the exception of the darker "Know Better", which nonetheless leaves no real mark as it passes, amid the usual arsenal of horns and sultry little steps. There's certainly plenty of reggae steeped in soul on this new Monáe record, which closes with a drop of melancholy fit for a moonlit night by the sea ("A Dry Red"). An album that is, on the whole, less gripping than her others, conceived for a private party to let loose at, but without setting off any fireworks. And in the end, that's just fine too.

23/09/2023

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