Adji Ngathe kebe
“I don’t step, I don’t walk, I don’t dance, I just float,” is the hook of the first song on Janelle Monae’s latest album Age of Pleasure. As it were, Ms. Monae floats to every cadence and beat of this song. Sonically it is pleasurable. Ms. Monae is smooth with it. Float is different from all her other album openers. It’s less fantastical and theatrical. It’s personal and it’s a reflection of her evolving musical taste as well. In comparison to “Suit IV: Electric Overture,” which sounded like a music score from Disney’s Fantasia – she’s singing and rapping. Ms. Monae is very much a composer. Her style of producing music has matured over the albums. The way she raps in float reminds me of her verses in “Electric Lady.” She’s matured in her artistry and Age of Pleasure is a testament to that. It is a natural progression of her artistry.
She’s matured in her artistry and Age of Pleasure is a testament to that. It is a natural progression of her artistry.
Age of Pleasure seems like an attention grab to those not paying attention. However, if you’ve been familiar with Ms. Monae work’s – it’s a natural progression to her artistry. In both Metropolis and The ArchAndroid, Janelle Monae was playing a character. She was Cindi Mayweather for the world. An arch-android who “fell in love with a human and was being disassembled for that.” The music was heavily influenced by her musical theater background. She’s a composer and she created a sonic technological haven where Cindi Mayweather reined supreme. Cindi Mayweather’s appearance was heavily influenced by Ms. Monae’s parents and their working-class background. She was raised in a working-class community in Kansas City, Kansas. Singing in church and developing her gifts.
As her audience we’ve been given a glimpse of Janelle Monae’s background and influences. Up until Dirty Computer, we’ve never had to deal with the full complexity of Ms. Monae’s interiority, such as her sexuality. In Dirty Computer, there’s a glitch in the system. A disruption. Cindi Mayweather is falling to the background and as an audience we are introduced to Django Jane—a dirty computer forced to deal with their very own “wrongness.” Dirty Computer is a stripping of social conditions. No doubt a confrontation between her religious upbringing. It is a celebration of queerness and otherness. It’s also an awakening of sexuality and pleasure. It questions the “wrongness” of pleasure as many of us have been taught.
In the musical film Dirty Computer: Emotion Picture, Ms. Monae is showing skin! She’s wearing more revealing clothes and dancing in more sexually suggestive ways. She’s exploring her sexuality and what’s pleasurable. She’s unlearning much of the conditioning around sexuality and pleasure. It also seems to be as if she’s constructing her sexual expression through the lens of her archandroid self. A part of her will always feel like the “other.” An alien, raging machine, who does not belong. An alchemy, which knows no gender. Last year Janelle Monae revealed she is nonbinary and goes by the pronouns She/They. After this news, I revisisted Dirty Computer. It made more sense to me as a complete body of work about her journey and understanding of her sexual and liberated self. In Age of Pleasure, she has arrived.
Up until “Dirty Computer,” we’ve never had to deal with the full complexity of Ms. Monae’s interiority, such as her sexuality
Now, Age of Pleasure has not been without its critics. Especially Janelle Monae herself. On June 30, 2023, Janelle Monae performed at the Essence Festival. During her performance of “Yoga,” she pulled up her knitted bikini top and flashed the audience with a nipple pasty covered areola. Apparently, Instagram was in a tizzy and of course The ShadeRoom had a field day. India Arie had posted about the performance. She seemed to be disappointed in Ms. Monae’s performance. Others chimed in to scream, cry, and throw up about Black women needing to “cover” themselves. They were upset about Megan Thee Stallion’s performance at the same festival as well. Spellbound by curiosity and fanfare, I had to watch this “scandalous” performance. Perhaps, I’ve become desensitized, but the moment in question was underwhelming. The girlies do more than this on a night out dancing. I was bored by all the outrage.
Getty Images for ESSENCE
Janelle Monae has been growing in understanding of herself as a person and an artist. This is evident in her body of work. There was nothing about her performance at the Essence Festival that was scandalous or devious in any way. We love to hypersexualize Black women and reduce them to body counts, until we decide to love our bodies. When we take ownership of our bodies, sexuality, and agency it upsets those who see us as nothing more than property. We are expected to exist as property which can be extracted from at any given time. We are supposed to do everything and be everything for everyone, but God forbid we see ourselves as fully complex human beings. Therein lies the real scandal. What’s interesting is how many have taken Ms. Monae’s growth, progression, and the expression of that freed self, personally.
It’s not about “you.” We are consumers of her art. We are the audience, but she did not make Age of Pleasure specifically for us. It’s another iteration and expression of her artistic abilities and self. There are those who are offended by her performance. Who felt she needed to “cover herself up,” and “show herself some self-respect.” However, they are only upset, Janelle Monae is free in a way they desire to be. She’s not pandering and she’s not gimmicky. She’s very talented and a master of her craft. Her latest album, is a very grown piece of art. A beautiful evolution of her artistic talents and abilities. She’s woven her journey to her freed self and sexual self-expression in every song on the album. Effectively she tells us “She’s not the same.” That she in fact has changed. We struggle to see Black women as fully complex human beings, so we can’t accept different variations of the same person. We are all expected to behave a certain way and Ms. Monae is not interested in either.
On September 26, 2023, I saw Janelle Monae in concert. I was highly impressed. The mic was on! I knew she was great singer, but she sounded unbelievable live. It demonstrated a commitment to artistry and excellence. I love excellence! I was disappointed she did not perform, “Rush” – my favorite song on the album. However, I loved all the songs she sang. So much thought went into the order of the songs and the performance. She sang a lot of songs from her new album, but we also got some throwbacks, like “Q.U.E.E.N.” and “Electric Lady.” During the concert, Janelle Monae called people on stage to dance with her and her team of dancers. It was such a fun and lively performance. I was up and dancing the entire time. I didn’t want it to end. We were all screaming and begging for an encore. We wanted more after the encore. Could not get enough. I’m happy I got to experience her live. She spoke about how she always dreamed of playing Radio City Hall. It was motivating to see all her hard work materialized. I left the concert a STAN. She was right of course. We do need to get off her areola.
