With The Electric Lady, Janelle Monáe Translated Science Fiction Into A Different Medium
I’m packing my space suit, and I’m taking my shit and moving to the moon
Tristan Young @talltristan
It’s always so easy for literature and film to deploy a narrative or visual acumen designed for political messaging- just throw in a robot uprising. Easy. Dating back to the origin of science fiction (at least insofar as film goes) it has been tailor made for being purposed as a metaphor for the issues that define whatever time they came from. The X-men comics and the earlier iterations of Star Trek are iconic emblems of the utility of science fiction as a means to articulate a political or cultural message. Music, as it exists as a medium, doesn’t really have access to the same tool set of communication, not as far as the delineation of genres go. Instead of science fiction or horror, there may be electronic or metal, although the corresponding concepts don’t cleanly translate from one form to the other in the slightest. Lyrical poetics can weave densely layered sentiments but it seems more functionally utilized towards internal matters of the heart and mind. When music tends to get political, it also has few options other than to get literal (see our recent piece on Propagandhi). That is of course unless the music being discussed is The Electric Lady, by Janelle Monáe. With her 2013 second LP she successfully translated science fiction into the medium of music, and in doing so birthed one of the most thoroughly realized and theatrically ambitious concept albums of the decade; one where the dazzling wonder of her retro futuristic dystopia serves as a vivid allegory for some of the most urgent concerns of our past, future, and- most importantly- present.
Monáe didn’t just want to jump into the soul and RnB game the same way so many of her contemporaries did. She had a plan and it was a hell of a plan at that. Part of a, still yet to be completed, suite of EPs and LPs dubbed the Metropolis series (named after what is largely considered to be the first science fiction film ever), The Electric Lady’s synopsis reads like the opening scroll of a retro grade 60s sci-fi film akin to Flash Gordon. The very notion that the album even has a synopsis is telling in of itself. Monáe casts her self as Cindy Mayweather, an android constructed amongst countless others in the year 2719. Mayweather has risen to celebrity status, a vaunted and uncommon position amongst the persecuted sub class that androids are derided as, as interplanetary pop star, The Electric Lady. When she’s not headlining shows with fellow Electrified Beta android back up singers, Mayweather harbours a darker secret- that she is secretly the underground resistance leader fighting for android rights, The Arch Android. While hiding an outlawed alter ego was manageable enough for Mayweather, she made one vital mistake: falling love in with a human. Such a heretical challenge to her own programing and place in the universe deemed her targeted for being dismantled, and Mayweather was forced to go on the run. If it all sounds slightly surreal to read an album described in such cinematic and narrative terms, that’s the point. This is all in the story, and it’s expansive. The Electric Lady, comprising Suites 4 and 5 of the 7-part story, is allegedly a prequel to prior releases, covering Mayweather at the height of her fame, and having to give it up to evade the authorities. It’s quite the ride.
From the onset of the Tarintino-esque grindhouse pageantry in the opening Suite 4, the album cultivates not just a future imperfect audio setting, but more specifically an anachronistically envisioned one, dating back to our ideas of the future as they existed back in the 60s. Think the Jettsons; think rudimentary notions of flying cars and robot butlers. Before the Orwellian depictions of future dystopias ala Blade Runner, The Electric Lady posits that such Americana tinged ideas of the future were already subtly dystopian. Not to a human race benefiting from a seemingly endless affluence, but to the lower class of synthetic beings. Tracks like Look Into My Eyes, Dorothy Dandridge, and Queen articulate the 60s Americana take on science fiction with a striking fidelity. While Monáe’s own lyrics and narrative exposition solidifies the sci-fi intonations, the instrumental choices on their own carry a distinctive paleo-futuristic, world-of-tomorrow kind of feel.
Even more pronounced than those sci-fi underpinnings is just how audaciously flashy this album is. The Electric Lady is positively bursting with bravado and hyper stylized energy, to the extent that it could have skirted by even with out the narrative ambition. Queen will appropriate your sense of bodily control with its explicit funk-core keyboards. The blaring pop balladry of Electric Lady- featuring Solange, no less- is golden era soul incarnate. Dance Apocalyptic, with its zombie-in-your-front-intoning is pure, unmitigated fun. The furious passion and runaway excitement of Ghetto Woman is a force, and even that’s nothing compared to the monolithic, sonic intimidation of the certifiable weapon that is Given Em What They Love. The Electric Lady was produced by Monáe colleagues from the Atlanta based Wondaland Arts Society including Nate Rocket Wonder. While working with her alumni, Monáe played demos of the album at Atlanta strip clubs to make sure it was something the dancers could get behind. Watching a performer do their thing to the backdrop of Queen needs to be required bucket list material for pretty much all of us moving forward. For an album that explores a renegade alter ego trying to stay on the down low, it has a bombastically expressive personality. Anonymity through hiding in broad daylight, as it were. Or in this case, in the spot light.
Where as the aforementioned tracks draws from soul, funk, gospel, American blues, 80s hair metal even, Monáe peppers the album with just enough sci-fi lyrical imagery to keep the experience strictly situated in her narrative, without becoming an obnoxious gimmick. As she defies the notion that sexual exploration in droids is deviant, she defiantly asks, “Should I reprogram, de-program and get down?” It’s Code explores the synchronous faults of DNA and synthetic programming, how both lead us- human and android alike- to succumb to the baser failures of jealousy and paranoia (someone get Monáe a glass of merlot-blanc, stat). She bridges contemporary and sci-fi imagery with the phrase, “who said the ghetto’s just a place where queens dance naked on the moon”, in Ghetto Woman. In the subtly contemplative but fiercely raw Sally Ride, Monáe articulates the unyielding frustration of so many under represented groups of people with the wonderfully declarative and succinct line, “I’m packing my space suit and I’m taking my shit and moving to the moon”. There is something comfortingly fitting in the idea that if Monáe must resign herself to a life of isolation as a fugitive on the run, she would find solidarity with Sally Ride, the first female astronaut to leave planet earth; to leave it all behind, however briefly. Those sororal feelings are rendered formidably strong with the wrenching and feral guitar chords, scorching the earth they would both depart from.
“Anonymity through hiding in broad day light, as it were. Or in this case, in the spotlight”
That sub plot of Monáe, as the Arch Android, forced into a life on the run for the cardinal sin of falling in love, provides the Electric Lady with a compelling sense of dire urgency and forlornness, despite its ostentatious strut. We Were Rock And Roll precipitates a sense of tension and passion, the uncertainty of a life as a fugitive; a longing desire for better times- the way things used to be- all in past tense. Cheeky references to bounty hunters always a step or two behind her pop up on Dance Apocalyptic and the DJ Crash Crash (more on him in a moment) interludes. In the cinematic equivalent to one of those big budget set piece scenes that is Giving Em What The Love, Monáe stares directly into the proverbial camera- stares it down even- and declares, “I aint never been afraid to die or look a man in the eye”. She sets her dire stakes early on the album, embracing them no matter what heartbreak, or worse, it will bring her.
Which is not to imply that heartbreak isn’t its own exquisite form of trauma, one that androids are just as capable of experiencing. This is gorgeously articulated in the stunning ballad Can’t Do Without Your Love. Prior to the release of The Electric Lady, Monáe’s talent and vision was apparent to all, but she was slightly maligned for having a steely, too-cool-for-school demeanour. An unreasonably thick suit of armour buttressed her veneer of hip sensibilities, so they said. Can’t Do Without Your Love is the response to such critiques, and it is a convincing one. In it Monáe mournfully remembers a relationship, torn asunder by her life as the Arch Android. Did she have to leave her partner because of the target on her back? Did her ardent protests against a subjecting system push the other one away? It doesn’t matter, the Electric Lady is hurting here, and you are going to hear about it. Amidst cosy and introspective guitar strumming and whispy synth, the angst coming from her voice is palpable. “Autumn’s coming and summers not the same/ it’s like winter without your smile”, she sings for the first time with a very atypical demeanour- desperation. She seems breathless and panicked and as she begs us to believe, “love aint never did a thing to me”, she internalizes her own lyrics with unnerving vulnerability. She can weather all the bounty hunters and prejudice the solar system has to throw at her, but not this.
If the Electric Lady is to acquiesce to a life of heartbreak and pursuance, Monáe makes sure we understand in no uncertain terms it is for a worthy cause. Like the best offerings of film, this whole experimental extrapolation of science fiction into the medium of music is meaningless if it doesn’t mean something. To that end, The Arch Android’s rebellions are analogous to the civil rights battles of the black community and the LBGTQ community, both of which Monáe is part of. Her intrinsic understanding of these cultures allows her to articulate and translate their struggles into her story in distinct and acute ways. As a modern day queer icon, the album contains not so subtle instrumental nods to drag show pageantry in tracks like Queen, Suite 5, and Electric Lady. While the climax of Given Em What They Love, is a mollifying experience, it’s the quiet denouement that provides the most fascinating lyrical- and in terms of pacing, just intoxicating- contribution: “Two dimes walk into a building, wearing fancy cloths”, Monáe flusters, later on signalling, “When they walked in the room we didn’t know what to do”, going on to explain the way android /gay love has been stigmatized in equal measures.
In Queen, she is more defiantly overt, grandstanding with, “Am I Freak for Watching Mary?” Later in the album she explores the vital history and utility of expressing joy as a means of black protest and resistance in Victorious. These are terms that would be touched upon by album contributor Solange years later in A Seat At The Table. Monáe understands the different avenues in which gay and black culture have organized their resistance to systemic oppression and expresses them with confident specificity, even through the lens of a fictional character and setting.
Perhaps even more importantly is the manner in which she advocates such resistance, for it’s on this point that The Electric Lady aims to convey its thesis. Resistance needs to be fierce, aggressive, disruptive, but never violent. Queen is instructive for several reasons on this regard. In one of the best delivered lines on the album she retorts, “they’re like ‘oh let them eat cake’/ but we eat wings and throw them bones on the ground”. Monáe and her contemporaries are not some dilatants to be placated and then ignored. They are here to disrupt, to make a scene, to leave an impact. In a rare braking of her character she tersely says, “I’m tired of Marvin asking me ‘what’s going on?”, referencing the seminal works of Marvin Gaye who preached resistance through pacifism. Pacifism didn’t work, she pleads; people need to organize, they need to be loud; no more taking this shit lying down.
The album is just as carful to advocate a non-violent approach, however, oddly enough through some of the most comedic and perfectly conceptualized interludes of any album out there. Promotional spots from the android DJ Crash Crash and his radio show, hyping Cindy Maywaether’s upcoming concert, regularly interrupt The Electric Lady. As he hypes her performance and takes call’s from listeners, we get a surprising amount of robust world building and also straight up hilarity. While he trades flirtatious back and forths with like-minded androids, he also deals with an eclectic and deranged mix of callers. As a clearly brutalized and fed up android advocates riots at the next Electric Lady show, DJ Crash Crash shuts that down: “love not war, we are tired of the fires, quiet not riot, don’t break no glass, just shake your ass”. The Electric Lady is appropriately aggressive, but understands the separation of aggression and violence in service of a cause, and is careful to stay on one side of it.
“Bring your punk ass in here looking for Cindy Mayweather, and ya might get hurt”
DJ Crash Crash, even without such thematic markers is a never-ending wellspring of amazing one-liners and conversations. He has no patience for someone suggesting- on the air for all to hear- that Mayweather may actually be The Arch Android. The ‘robot love is queer’ tirade from a despondent caller is as bizarre and cheeky as it gets. The high point is clearly when Melanie 45221 and Assata 8550 come on to hype an upcoming Mayweather show, warning against any attempted disturbances. “No bounty hunters; bring your punk ass in here looking for Cindy Mayweather, and ya might get hurt”. If one had to condense the vision of The Electric Lady’s sci-fi concept in to one singularity, that’s the line.
It’s interesting that two of the most striking parts of the album are when Monáe breaks character and reverts to her real self. Tellingly she does so in the exact same manner in both cases, a kinetic spoken word sequence in Queen and Ghetto Woman. For all of the RnB and soul sensibilities that Monáe inexorably radiates, it also needs to be noted that good lord can she spit a verse. The hectic verbosity of both sequences is thrilling, especially in the later. An unyielding ode to her mother and all that shared her story; the final lyrical sequence of Ghetto Woman is something of a revelation. The flurried precision in which she documents the tumultuous hard ships her mother weathered to get Monáe this far is heart breaking and stunningly inspiring all at once. A low-key triumph of instrumental and lyrical interplay occurs as the piercing snare drums synch up perfectly with the phrase, “we would move around in the city place to place/ the land lord came for the rent face to face”. The tactile force of those lines, structured by the percussion is remarkable. That the sequence segues into an incendiary guitar solo makes for a track of almost embarrassingly generous proportions.
Indeed, one can only dissect The Electric Lady for so long before unavoidably coming to the real star of the album- Kellindo Parker: the man behind the guitar. His sequences in this album are unforgettably grand, a work of technical and melodic wonders. The aforementioned solo in Ghetto Woman moves with such a locomotive pace, exhibiting not only graceful finesse, but also a thick and rough tactile feedback. It’s like the choreography of a Kung Fu film. The simmering, unconstrained passion of Prime Time’s guitar is beautifully moulded. The frantic and tense energy of the scales of We Were Rock and Roll perfectly articulates the desperate circumstances Monáe finds her self in. The Behemoth of a guitar solo in Given Em What They Love is the album’s highest peak. Pulling a ripcord and igniting the song, Parker’s work here is one of the most visceral and torrential guitar sequences any genre has to offer. If there is one singular part of The Electric Lady that needs to be experienced, it’s Parker in Given Em What They Love. The notion that such a statement is offered despite the fact the very same track also features fucking Prince should not be lost on anyone.
That Prince is on this album does not necessarily imply any kind of generational lineage, but make no mistake, Janelle Monáe is undoubtedly his true successor, with all the iconic responsibility that comes with such a distinction. Monáe is uniquely capable to carry the weight. As a black, gay woman, she understands the value of how powerful a message, a vision, and an avatar for such things can be. She does not wield these ideas frivolously. With kooky personality, and audacious contexts, sure, but not frivolity. If fiction, cinematic entertainment, and allusions of robots and future perfect clubs on the moon are required to offer a genuinely urgent message, then she will create all of those things. She will embody them all and make sure you take notice in service of her myriad causes, because there’s just not enough of that going around right now, not that there ever was. She may be an android on the run with a show tonight, 700 years in the future, but there is only one place one and time on her mind. Now is the only time.