“I don’t write my music just for myself,” Janelle Monáe says in Glamour‘s latest edition of “You Sang My Song.” “I write it for other folks, you know? In hopes that everybody can walk in their truth and embrace the things that make them unique. What feels so humbling is when those who support my music take the song and they sing it and they take the time and care and they put love into it. And that means the world to me. There are so many amazing singers and songwriters out there, but for you to connect with this music in that way means the world to me. I don’t take it for granted.”
This quote sums up basically every reaction Monáe had to the fan covers of her music that we played for her a few weeks ago. Not only was she blown away by the talent of the fans; she was incredibly honored and grateful they took the time to infuse themselves into her music.
The fan covers varied too, from acoustic renditions of “I Like That” to more electronic interpretations of “Pynk.” Monáe respected the individuality of every performance, though, and even found some inspiration for her own work. “You are inspiring me,” she said to the woman who covered “I Like That.” “I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, I need to go and I need to rehearse my acoustic version of [the song].”
Monáe’s impact on music is just one of the reasons she’s a Glamour Woman of the Year for 2018. Her influence on culture is absolutely seismic. “I’ve always taken issue with people trying to place an image on what a young girl could be,” she told Glamour in our December issue. “Early on I told my parents that I was going to decide that for myself.”
Watch Monáe’s full “You Sang My Song” segment, above.
In 2018 it feels like the world is at last prepared for Janelle Monáe. Ten years ago her EP, Metropolis: The Chase Suite, arrived as if from another continent, even planet. The layered, literary R&B album referenced classic space operas like Star Trek and the works of David Bowie and Prince. It seemed to foretell a world where black girls could imagine themselves without limits. I first heard about Monáe around then, from a much cooler coworker. I remember listening to “Many Moons,” the single that merited her first Grammy nomination, as my colleague and I traded visions of black self-determination.
It was 2008, before the social media heyday, when mass portraits of black identities were still controlled by a narrow-minded media complex. But Monáe kept working her own grooves anyway. Next came The Arch-Android in 2010, which broke the Billboard top 20 with tracks so infectious even Michelle Obama put them on her workout playlist.
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It didn’t occur to me then to wonder where in the world Monáe had come from. But as I reached out to interview her this fall, it all of a sudden seemed essential to know. Every superhero has an origin story.
This is hers: Monáe, 33, was born in Kansas City, Kansas, the product of a black working-class neighborhood called Quindaro. The area was a settlement for Native Americans and, during the Civil War, a haven for abolitionists and black people who escaped enslavement. Her grandmother still owns the house Monáe played in as a child. When she visits, the stories she was raised on flood back to her. Her grandparents, Monáe tells me, passed down the tales from their ancestors about watching slaves escape during Bleeding Kansas, a series of violent clashes in the lead-up to the Civil War. “You can still see some of the ruins there,” she says. “Just knowing that I come from a place where people were trying to be free and fighting for their survival, it makes me feel like I have a lot of people to make proud. I don’t want their work and their blood and their sweat and their tears and their sacrifices to go in vain.”
It’s because of her parents (mother, a janitor; stepfather, a post office worker) that Monáe started to wear a black-and-white tux to public appearances, she says. The outfit was her uniform, an homage to the uniforms that blue-collar workers have worn for decades.
“I’ve always taken issue with people trying to place an image on what a young girl could be,” says Monáe. “I was going to decide that for myself.”
When Monáe released Dirty Computer in April 2018, she seemed to want to break out of even her self-imposed strictures. Her latest work is a new beginning, showing us the fullest vision of Monáe to date. She describes the single “Pynk” as “a brash celebration of creation, self-love, sexuality, and pussy power.” And in its music video Monáe flaunts pubic hair and showcases a parade of voluminous pants shaped like vaginas. “I knew that I wanted to embrace all of me,” she says. “The good, the bad, the complicated, the humble, the cocky, the many dimensions of who I was.” In December, audiences will see her in Welcome to Marwen, her first feature role since Hidden Figures in 2016. The movie is as distinctive as its leads—a combination live-action and animated film about an artist named Mark Hogancamp (Steve Carrell) who tries to recover from a brutal attack by creating a miniature World War II town. Monáe stars as his physical therapist and friend. In other words, the healer.
“I’ve always taken issue with people trying to place an image on what a young girl could be. Early on I told my parents that I was going to decide that for myself.”
Monáe was raised in the Baptist church, a place that both fostered her love of music and emphasized, in her view, that she was different from some of her fellow worshippers. “I grew up with 12 aunts that I was very close to and that loved and cared about me,” she remembers. But with their affection came a host of opinions that they didn’t hesitate to make known. “They would say, ‘Oh, no skirts above the knees,’ or, ‘You can’t wear pants,’” Monae recalls. “I would…come in and just want to express myself. You had to deal with the looks and the community saying, ‘When you come in here, you need to look this way.’ I’ve always taken issue with people trying to place an image on what a young girl could be. Early on I told my parents that I was going to decide that for myself.”
The church may have sometimes stifled her, but it was also where Monáe learned the power of activism. She went door-to-door to feed the poor. She walked around the most dangerous parts of her neighborhood, “praying with people that people [would] put down their guns.” It felt good, she says, like, “This is what I’m supposed to be doing.” Monáe has carried that commitment to activism into adulthood. She has been an outspoken and frequent supporter of the Women’s March. At the 2018 Grammys she gave one of the most powerful speeches about Time’s Up; it was an extension of her own work with Fem the Future, which she launched in 2016 to empower female music executives, filmmakers, and sound engineers. The organization is her response to her own frustrations about opportunities for women in the business. That zeal for justice will continue to permeate her artistic work; her videos in particular create worlds of both oppression and rebellion. These fictional worlds, she says, “allow us to see where we could be headed. If we don’t right our wrongs, this could be our future.”
At this moment, even as the country seems bitterly polarized, she’s focused on a path forward. “We are going to have to figure out how to protect each other better than we have been,” she says. “We have to prioritize that, do a better job of looking after each other. I think we get an F in that. We’re going to have to stop getting lost in our own individualism because we are a [community]. We literally rely on each other to survive.”
“We are going to have to figure out how to protect each other better than we have been,” Monáe says. “We have to do a better job of looking after each other.”
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And how do we do that? For Monáe—an exceptional talent but one hell-bent on collective deliverance—the best chance we have at freedom comes to us as it did to her as a child: through stories. “Having real vulnerable moments allows us to see each other in each other,” she says. “Once we can reach a level of empathy, maybe we can like each other more. Maybe we can love each other more.”
It’s a kindness Monáe has tried to extend inward over the past year in particular. Her various identities have rallied her: “I’m a part of the LGBTQIA community. I’m a black woman. My parents are working class,” she says. None of us, she adds, has “our shit together,” so why not just own it, whatever we are?
“We can pull down the fake wallpaper, break the mirror that has been lying to us and making [us] believe that we need to be perfect,” she says. “We don’t need to be perfect to be respected.”
Kaitlyn Greenidge is the author of We Love You, Charlie Freeman.
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After enduring many years of speculation about her sexuality, Janelle Monáe is coming out on her own terms.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Janelle confirmed that she identifies with tenets of both pansexuality and bisexuality. “Being a queer black woman in America, someone who has been in relationships with both men and women — I consider myself to be a free-ass motherf*cker,” she told the magazine. While she initially believed this line of thinking meant she was bisexual, “later I read about pansexuality and was like, ‘Oh, these are things that I identify with too.’ I’m open to learning more about who I am.”
For privacy reasons, she demurred on saying who she’s dated in the past or who she’s dating currently. But she was willing to share the genesis behind her androgynous, robotic-heavy public persona, which was created as somewhat of a defense mechanism to prevent people from looking too much into her private life. In fact, she believe she needed this persona as a black woman in the industry: “It had to do with the fear of being judged. All I saw was that I was supposed to look a certain way coming into this industry, and I felt like I [didn’t] look like a stereotypical black female artist.”
Of course, Janelle doesn’t owe anyone an explanation about her sexuality, no matter how much speculation exists. But her coming out the way she wants is important. By publicly identifying herself as a queer black woman, Janelle knows she’s in a unique position to speak to minority communities who don’t easily have access to role models like herself. And with her new album, Dirty Computer, she hopes that spirit will shine through. “I want young girls, young boys, nonbinary, gay, straight, queer people who are having a hard time dealing with their sexuality, dealing with feeling ostracized or bullied for just being their unique selves, to know that I see you,” she explained. “This album is for you. Be proud.”
The 2018 awards season has already delivered many powerful moments, particularly in light of movements such as #MeToo and Time’s Up. From fashion displays of solidarity to emotionally charged acceptance speeches, inspiration has abounded from the red carpets to the ceremony stages and beyond. The 2018 Grammy Awards continued this long-overdue tide of change, with one moment in particular standing out: Janelle Monae’s gripping speech calling Time’s Up on the music industry.
Monae took the stage to introduce Kesha’s performance of “Praying”—a performance already loaded with meaning, given Kesha’s personal story of survival and resilience in the face of alleged workplace harassment and sexual assault. But Monae’s spoken words were every bit as riveting as the onstage performance that followed, with the artist calling for the waves of change to carry over into the music industry.
“I am proud to stand in solidarity as not just an artist, but a young woman, with my fellow sisters in this room who make up the music industry—artists, writers, assistants, publicists, CEOs, producers, engineers, and women from all sectors of the business,” Monae opened. “We are also daughters, wives, mothers, sisters, and human beings. We come in peace, but we mean business.”
She went on to declare that this movement isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. “To those who would dare try and silence us, we offer you two words: Time’s up,” Monae said. “We say time’s up for pay inequality, discrimination or harassment of any kind, and the abuse of power.” She continued: “It’s not just going on in Hollywood, or in Washington, it’s right here in our industry as well. And just as we have the power to shape culture, we also have the power to undo the culture that does not serve us well. So, let’s work together, women and men, as a united music industry committed to creating more safe work environments, equal pay, and access for all women.”
Monae concluded by calling the “fearless” Kesha, as well as Cyndi Lauper, Camila Cabello, Andra Day, Bebe Rexha, Julia Michaels, and the Resistance Revival Chorus, to the stage for a performance of “Praying” that echoed the sentiments Monae spoke of: solidarity, strength, and, support.
