Janelle Monáe
Janelle Monáe Robinson is an American singer, songwriter, rapper and actress. She has received ten Grammy Award nominations, and is the recipient of a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Children's and Family Emmy Award. Monáe has also been honored with the ASCAP Vanguard Award; as well as the Rising Star Award and the Trailblazer of the Year Award from Billboard Women in Music.
Monáe began her musical career in 2003 with the release of her demo album, The Audition. She signed with Bad Boy Records to release her debut extended play, Metropolis: Suite I . It received critical acclaim and narrowly entered the Billboard 200. She signed a joint venture with Atlantic Records to release her debut studio album, The ArchAndroid, which peaked at number 17 on the chart. The following year, she guest performed on fun.'s 2011 single "We Are Young," which received diamond certification by the Recording Industry Association of America and peaked atop the Billboard Hot 100. Monáe's second studio album, The Electric Lady, debuted at number five on the Billboard 200.
Monáe's third studio album, Dirty Computer —also a concept album—was released to widespread critical acclaim; it was named best album of the year by several publications. The album peaked within the top ten of the Billboard 200, and was accompanied by both Monae's Dirty Computer Tour and the science fiction film of the same name. In 2022, she wrote the cyberpunk story collection, The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer, based on the album. Her fourth studio album, The Age of Pleasure was nominated for Album of the Year at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards, becoming her second nomination in the category as a lead artist.
Monáe has also ventured into acting, first gaining attention for starring in the 2016 films Moonlight and Hidden Figures. For portraying engineer Mary Jackson in the latter, she was nominated for the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has since starred in the films Harriet and Glass Onion, and the television series Homecoming. In 2022, she won a Children's and Family Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Form Program for her role in the TV series We the People. She launched her record label, Wondaland Arts Society in a joint venture with Epic Records in 2015, and has signed artists including Jidenna, Roman GianArthur and St. Beauty.
In 2019 she inducted Janet Jackson into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Early life
Janelle Monáe Robinson was born on December 1, 1985, in Kansas City, Kansas, and was raised in Quindaro, a working-class community of Kansas City. Her mother, Janet, worked as a janitor and a hotel maid. Her father, Michael Robinson Summers, was a truck driver. Monáe's parents separated when Monáe was a toddler and her mother later married a postal worker. Monáe has a younger sister, Kimmy, from her mother's remarriage.Monáe was raised Baptist and learned to sing at a local church. Her family members were musicians and performers at the local African Methodist Episcopal church, the Baptist church, and the Church of God in Christ. Monáe dreamed of being a singer and a performer from a very young age, and has cited the fictional character of Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz as a musical influence. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, which Monáe bought two copies of with her first check, was another source of inspiration. She performed songs from the album on Juneteenth talent shows, winning three years in a row.
As a teenager, Monáe was enrolled in the Coterie Theater's Young Playwrights' Round Table, which began writing musicals. One musical, completed when she was around the age of 12, was inspired by the 1979 Stevie Wonder album Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants".
Monáe attended F. L. Schlagle High School, and after high school, moved to New York City to study musical theater at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, where she was the only black woman in her class. Monáe enjoyed the experience, but feared that she might lose her edge and "sound, or look or feel like anybody else". In a 2010 interview Monáe explained, "I felt like that was a home but I wanted to write my own musicals. I didn't want to have to live vicariously through a character that had been played thousands of timesin a line with everybody wanting to play the same person."
After a year and a half, Monáe dropped out of the academy and relocated to Atlanta, enrolling at Georgia Perimeter College. She began writing her own music and performing around the campus. In 2003, Monáe self-released a demo album titled The Audition, which she sold out of the trunk of a Mitsubishi Galant. During this period she worked at an Office Depot but was fired for answering a fan's e-mail using a company computer, an incident that inspired the song "Lettin' Go", which in turn attracted the attention of Big Boi.
Career
Career beginnings (2005)
Monáe appeared on the Purple Ribbon All-Stars album Got Purp? Vol. 2 as well as on OutKast's 2006 album Idlewild, where she was featured on the songs "Call the Law" and "In Your Dreams". Big Boi told his friend Sean Combs about Monáe, of whom at the time Combs had not yet heard. Combs soon visited Monáe's MySpace page and according to a HitQuarters interview with Bad Boy Records A&R person Daniel 'Skid' Mitchell, Combs loved it right away: " loved her look, loved that you couldn't see her body, loved the way she was dancing, and just loved the vibe. He felt like she has something that was differentsomething new and fresh."Monáe signed to the label, Bad Boy, in 2006. The label's chief role was to facilitate her exposure on a much broader scale rather than develop the artist and her music, as Mitchell noted: "She was already moving, she already had her recordsshe had a self-contained movement." Combs and Big Boi wanted to take their time and build her profile organically and allow the music to grow rather than put out "a hot single which everyone jumps on, and then they fade because it's just something of the moment".
''Metropolis'' and ''The ArchAndroid'' (2007–2011)
In 2007, Monáe released her first solo work, Metropolis. It was originally conceived as a concept album in four parts, or "suites", which were to be released through her website and mp3 download sites. After the release of the first part of the series, Metropolis: Suite I in mid-2007, these plans were altered following signing with Sean Combs's label, Bad Boy Records, later in the year. The label gave an official and physical release to the first suite in August 2008, which was retitled Metropolis: The Chase Suite and included two new tracks. The EP was critically acclaimed, garnering Monáe a 51st Annual Grammy Awards Grammy nomination for Best Urban/Alternative Performance for the single "Many Moons", festival appearances and opening slots for indie pop band of Montreal. Monáe also toured as the opening act for band No Doubt on their summer 2009 tour. Her single "Open Happiness" was featured in the 2009 season finale of American Idol. Monáe told MTV about the concept for her new album and also discussed an alter ego named Cindi Mayweather. She said:Cindy is an android and I love speaking about the android because they are the new "other". People are afraid of the other and I believe we're going to live in a world with androids because of technology and the way it advances. The first album she was running because she had fallen in love with a human and she was being disassembled for that.
In a November 2009 interview, Monáe revealed the title and concept behind her album, The ArchAndroid. The album was released on May 18, 2010. The second and third suites of Metropolis are combined into this full-length release, in which Monáe's alter ego, Cindi Mayweatheralso the protagonist of Metropolis: The Chase Suitebecomes a messianic figure to the android community of Metropolis. Monáe announced plans to shoot a video for each song on The ArchAndroid and create a film, graphic novel and a touring Broadway musical based on the album. The Metropolis concept series draws inspiration from a wide range of musical, cinematic and other sources, ranging from Alfred Hitchcock to Debussy to Philip K. Dick. The series puts Fritz Lang's 1927 silent film Metropolis, which Monáe referred to as "the godfather of science-fiction movies", in special regard. Aside from sharing a name, they also share visual styles, conceptual themes and political goals, using expressionistic future scenarios to examine and explore contemporary ideas of prejudice and class. Both also include a performing female android, though to very different effect. Where Metropolis android Maria is the evil, havoc-sowing double of the messianic figure to the city's strictly segregated working class, Monáe's messianic android muse Cindi Mayweather represents an interpretation of androids as that segregated minority, which Monáe describes as "...the Other. And I feel like all of us, whether in the majority or the minority, felt like the Other at some point."
Monáe received the Vanguard Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers at the Rhythm & Soul Music Awards in 2010. Monáe covered Charlie Chaplin's Smile on Billboard.com in June 2010. In an NPR interview in September 2010, Monáe said she is a believer in, and a proponent of, time travel. Monáe performed "Tightrope" during the second elimination episode of the 11th Season of Dancing with the Stars on September 28, 2010. Monáe performed at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards in 2011 alongside artists Bruno Mars and B.o.B; they performed the synth section of B.o.B's song "Nothin' on You" and she then performed the track "Cold War" with B.o.B on the guitar and Mars on the drums. The performance received a standing ovation. Monáe's single "Tightrope" was also featured on the American Idols LIVE! Tour 2011, performed by Pia Toscano, Haley Reinhart, Naima Adedapo, and Thia Megia.
In September 2011, Monáe was featured as a guest vocalist on fun.'s single, "We Are Young", which achieved major commercial success, topping the charts of more than ten countries and selling over ten million units worldwide. The song garnered Monáe three Grammy nominations at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards, including Record of the Year. Nate Ruess, the lead singer of fun., performed an acoustic version of "We Are Young" with Monáe. On December 11, 2011, Monáe performed at the Nobel Peace Prize concert in Oslo, Norway, including her songs 'Cold War', 'Tightrope', and a cover of the Jackson 5's 'I Want You Back'.