Janelle Monáe To The LGBTQ Community: “Protect Each Other”

metroweekly.com:

“I’m having the best time of my life,” Janelle Monáe says. “I’m in the most carefree, ‘I don’t have shit to prove’-phase that I’ve ever been in.” As a result, the queer pop star conceded during a recent Zoom interview with Metro Weekly she’s not sure when she will next release new music.Aside from the occasional single written for film — including “Turntables” from the 2020 documentary All In: The Fight for Democracy and “That’s Enough” from the 2019 remake of Disney’s The Lady and the Tramp — Monáe hasn’t put out new music since 2018.With each album, she “wanted to prove that I could be successful at being myself, being honest with myself as a human.

But I think at this point, I’ve already done that.”Monáe certainly achieved that with 2018’s Dirty Computer, released in the wake of her officially coming out as LGBTQ — specifically, as bi- and pan-sexual, with nonbinary added more recently.As high concept and innovative as the others in her repertoire, the 14-track album would go on to earn two Grammy nominations, including one for Album of the Year.A companion 46-minute dystopian sci-fi film, or “emotion picture,” was also released, coalescing seven album-produced music videos to tell a broader story about repression and rebellion in a homophobic, government-controlled state.Dirty Computer has continued to inspire the 36-year-old, helping motivate her to pursue an altogether new creative endeavor during the pandemic.The result is her debut book, The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer.