Secondly and more
positively, Idlewild was important because it was the first time I heard
Janelle Monae. She was the silver lining on that album. We both heard the death
of one of black music’s greatest and most innovative bands and the birth of
fearless young artist.
Fast forward to 2010 and
Janelle Monae showed that I was right to take notice. She released an album
which left my jaw on the floor. Although I am 26 years old, I feel like an old
bastard and regularly complain about the quality of music today – especially
black music. The ArchAndroid was all my complaints answered. It was ambitious,
expansive and it took risks jovially – sometimes it missed the mark
spectacularly (Make the bus, for example) but most of the time it hit highs
that left me in goosebumps (Oh, maker).
The ArchAndroid is a
modern day classic. I genuinely thought Monae did a Nas, she made her Illmatic
and would be hard pressed to repeat the trick.
…
With Electric Lady,
Janelle has proved how special she is. Monae has grown remarkably as an artist
and it shines blindly through on this album. Electric lady doesn’t manically
bounce from genre to genre like its predecessor, this is more of a traditional
R’n’B album.
When I say R’n’B, I am not talking about her contemporaries such
as Beyonce or Rihanna, I am talking the R’n’B of Prince, Stevie, Michael and
Aretha and Marvin – that is who you must compare Janelle to after hearing this
album. I can give no greater compliment than that.
Suite four is where all
the fireworks are stored. It tells you a lot about Janelle’s confidence when
she starts the album off with His Royal Purpleness. What makes ‘Give em what
they love’ spectacular is not only the appearance of Prince (by the way, this
is the Controversy, Dirty Mind, Sexy MF Prince and not the jut found religion
Prince), but the fact that Monae isn’t an afterthought once the song has
finished. She stands toe to toe with the great Purple one and this prologues the
greatness in the album.
In fact, every guest
appearance on this album manage to sprinkle a little bit of magic to the
proceedings and threaten to overshadow the headliner – but every single time
Monae manages to rise above them. When Badu strolls silkily onto the funky-ass
Q.U.E.E.N like a panther, Monae has a fierce rhyme reminiscent of Chuck D and
KRS-1 to bat her off with. Janelle response to Solange’s irresistible 90’s TLC
vide with a grin-inducing serenading rap-verse that makes you ache for Left
Eye.
When Primetime, featuring
Mugel, rolls around you start to appreciate the change in Janelle Monae’s
attitude and you suddenly realise a great flaw in her previous album. This
Monae is much more open than the one listeners met on The ArchAndoid. “Tonight, I don’t want to be mysterious with
you”, she says on what can only be described as a bedroom jam, a song which
would have never appeared on ArchAndoid. She no longer strictly sticks to her
alter-ego Cindi when she is performing, in Primetime you feel like you are
getting your first glimpse of Janelle.
…
Although Suite four may
have all the headliners, the best of the album is found on Suite five. This is
the Suite which propels this from just being a great album to being a jaw
dropping one. Suite five shows you that Janelle wanted achieve more on this
album other than catch people’s ear and show them how many different genre’s
she can pull off.
If you close your eyes,
you can see a young Michael Jackson shuffling around and singing It’s Code with
his brothers backing him up. Ghetto
Woman could happily sit in the middle of Stevie Wonder’s classic Innervisions
and not be out of place at all. This isn’t to say that Janelle Monae is trying
to imitate these artist, you don’t get that impression at all – you feel like
she understands what made the greats great and she taps into that and makes
their style her own.
In this regard, Ghetto
Woman is an extraordinary extraordinary song. She updates a sound which is
timeless and familiar and entirely owned by a legendary artist and claims it as
her own (I would kill for Stevie to cover this song). This is a worthy
successor to Living in the City and after Kelindo does his usual fantastic
guitar solo, Monae’s Andre 3000 like rap lifts this song into a stratosphere
that I thought modern day R’n’B would never reach. I would love to know what
Wonder thinks of this song.
Victory is my personal favourite.
Again, this song shows how much more willing Monae is to open up to her
audience. She feels vulnerable on this song, something that I never felt on her
previous album. It is a song for when everything in your life has gone wrong
and you need to find something, anything, to make you get up off the floor
before the count. Again, there are shades of the greats on this song – Aretha
and Ms Hill come to mind – but this song is totally Janelle’s own.
…
By the time the closer
comes to your ears with its 80s synth chords, you feel exhausted. It is a
different exhaustion to the one you feel at the end of ArchAndoid – here you
succinct impression is that Janelle has given you all that she can emotionally
as well as talent wise.
Some listeners will be
disappointed with this album for not being The ArchAndoid and not being as
experimental – I can understand that but I don’t feel that way at all. I have
someone I can champion after the untimely death of Amy Winehouse. Janelle could
be the woman to take black music out of its oversexaulised, boring and risk
adverse state that it has been in for years.
I am not naïve enough to
believe that this album will be a commercial success. I do think that people
will come to this album and this artist slowly throughout the coming years and
will see her for the innovator and trail blazer she is.
Janelle Monae is the real
queen of the new school and at 27 I don’t think she will let go of that crown
anytime soon.