*Artist Spotlight* --> Janelle Monae

"I feel like Harriet Tubman, except I am trying to free people through underground music, to free themselves creatively and inspirationally.” -Janelle Monae

Hey y'all!

After listening to some of my favorite Janelle Monae songs on Pandora Radio, I decided that I wanted to do this edition of Artist Spotlight on the brilliant songstress. Enjoy lovelies!

Janelle Monae Robinson was born on Decemeber 1, 1985 (she is currently 24 years old), in Kansas City, Kansas. She studied theatre at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York. Later on, she moved to Atlanta, GA. where she met up with Big Boi from the group OutKast and founded the Wondaland Arts Society with other young artists.

In the year 2007, Monae released first solo album (which is part of a concept album of four parts or suites) entitled Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase), which was later renamed Metropolis: The Chase Suite (Special Edition), following her collaboration with P. Diddy. The album was well-received and led to a Grammy nomination for her single Many Moons as well as opportunities to open for bands.

Her newest album, entitled The ArchAndroid was recently released on May 18th of this year. Both the 2nd and 3rd suites of the Metropolis concept are combined into this full-length release album (which is SUPER AWESOME, btw!). Here is the main concept for the Metropolis series (from Wikipedia.com):

Monáe's alter-ego, Cindi Mayweather—also the protagonist of Metropolis: The Chase Suite— becomes a messiah-esque figure to the android community of Metropolis. Monáe noted that she plans to shoot a video for each song on The ArchAndroid and create a movie, as well as create a graphic novel for it.

The Metropolis concept series draws inspiration from a wide range of musical, cinematic and other sources, ranging from Alfred Hitchcock to Debussy to Philip K. Dick. However, the series puts Fritz Lang's 1927 silent film Metropolis, which Monáe referred to as "the godfather of science-fiction movies," in special regard. Aside from sharing a name, they also share visual styles (the cover for The ArchAndroid is inspired by the iconic poster for Metropolis), conceptual themes and political goals, using expressionistic future scenarios to examine and explode contemporary ideas of prejudice and class.

Monae does not associate with just one genre of music. Here is what she thinks about the categorization of her music:

"It's the things that you don't do that makes you who you are.”, “Don't put a label on your art, let others decide what they think it is, and while they are deciding or trying to figure out what to call your art and name it, you just continue to do more art.” -Andy Warhol. This quote got to me because as an Artist, people always want to categorize you and say oh, you are in this category, but there is nothing that I limit myself to doing. Categorizing myself will only limit my growth."

To get an idea of her musical style, she is a mix of pretty much afro-punk, funk, dance-punk, Indiie pop, pop, soul and much, much more! Below is a video of my favorite song from her first album Many Moons:

Check her out y'all!

Stay blessed,

nNb Y