Musician, actor and activist Janelle Monae seems to have pulled out every great talent she has and piled them into her latest project. The adventurous R&B star released her highly anticipated new album, “Dirty Computer,” back in April, accompanied by creative and stunning visuals that music lovers, film lovers, and activists can appreciate.
In recent years, many artists have created multi-platform projects to enhance albums and send out a strong message. Other big projects like this one include Beyoncé’s Lemonade video album, and Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park’s “Post Traumatic Art Addition” book. These special projects have been enriched with personal experience, such as break ups, forgiveness, death, suicide awareness, or in Monae’s case race, gender, and sexuality. In today’s world which is so filled with controversy, artists are doing all they can to influence the public and remind them that they are not alone, and that art can help get important messages, such as love and acceptance, across.
Monae calls the album an “emotion picture,” taking viewers through an honest and striking story, “of a young woman named Jane 57821 (Monae), who is living in a totalitarian near-future society where citizens are referred to as computers.” Monae told Rolling Stone, “I play a citizen, living life, finding love, being myself in a society where that makes me an outlaw, something ‘dirty’ that the society needs to get rid of. I think it speaks to where we are right now, and what we’ve gone through recently as black millennials, and as women, and as Americans.”
Monae, along with the brilliant and creative minds of Beach Boy Brian Wilson, Zoe Kravitz, Pharrell Williams, and more, pull in fans from all different generas of music to reach as many people as possible.
In the months leading to the release of Monae’s forthcoming album, the artist dropped several tracks with their visual companion to give fans a hint of what was to come. In February, Monae started off with the release of “Make Me Feel” and “Django Jane.” The two videos show the opposing directions that this album would take: one direction being a protest anthem for women everywhere, and the other being funky, hypnotic, and danceable tunes.
“Django Jane” starts with Monae sitting on a throne, digging right into the heart of women’s rights issues: “We gave you life, we gave you birth, we gave you God, we gave you earth…Hit the mute button, let the vagina have a monologue,” and for black women in particular: “Black girl magic, y’all can’t stand it.” This is one of Monae’s most political, and most personal songs to date.
“Make Me Feel” is hailed as a bisexual anthem by The Daily Beast and InStyle. The song is personal but relatable, judging on the video’s thousands of YouTube comments praising Monae. This video is fun, funky, and - maybe most importantly- purple. Prince might have worked with Janelle on her album before his passing, and it’s easy to feel a Prince vibe all over this song in particular. Monae told BBC that she had worked with Prince in the past, "before he passed on to another frequency, and [Prince] helped me come up with sounds," she said. "I really miss him, it’s hard for me to talk about him.” This song is sexy and colorful, while shouting out the message that she is who she is. The presence of Prince in this song is used to shout this message out even louder. Rolling Stone said Monae “weaponizes Prince’s fluidly radical pop-funk spirit for a new power generation, targeting oppression on various intersectional fronts.”
Following “Django Jane” is a strong and somewhat controversial female anthem, “Pynk.” “Pynk” has over 13 million streams on Spotify and 10 million views on YouTube, drawing people to the song either due to its female empowerment qualities or its funky beat, helped created by electronic artist Grimes. Monae describes this track as a “brash celebration of creation. self love. sexuality. and p*ssy power! PYNK is the colour that unites us all, for pink is the color found in the deepest and darkest nooks and crannies of humans everywhere.” The video is extremely visually pleasing, with warm pink tones in almost every shot. The video shocked fans at its release, perhaps due to the “vagina pants” that Monae and her dancers are styling, or to the hinted romantic relationship between the Janelle and actress Tessa Thomson, who plays a reoccurring character named Zen throughout the video. The point of this video was to go over the top with the message the inside, we are all the same- boy or girl, straight or gay.
Another single off of the album, “I Like That” is surreal and futuristic, with periodic technological glitches, relating back to the story line of this emotion picture. In this song, Monae unapologetically sings about the fact that she couldn’t care less what other people think; even when she was young and got made fun of, Monae confidently sings, “even back then I always knew I was the sh*t.”
This “visual masterpiece” ends with Jane and Zen going against the system controlling and erasing the idea of dirty computers, and escaping. Janelle is showing us that if we keep fighting for the things we believe in, we together can escape the system telling us we all have to be a certain way. The video argues that there is no reason we should try and erase our differences. We can all live together in acceptance, embracing the differences of those around us.
Today’s pop landscape is rather cluttered and repetitive, with most songs being about a relationship or about success and material things. Dirty Computer goes against the normal sounds and visuals of today’s hits to put something out into the public that was so noticeably different, that maybe people would actually listen to its message of individuality and acceptance.
Watch the full emotion-picture here: