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Janelle Monae |
Ask Janelle which performers have inspired her brand of avantrock meets R&B soul and she'll say, "I draw my inspiration from lots of people that are dead." Ask about her retro/futuristic style and extravagant costumes and she'll impart, "I think fashion is just something you do, not something you talk about. It's kind of a turn-off."
But even though she doesn't answer your questions directly, you can't help falling for her, in part because she gives off an enchanting air of mystery and creativity. Take the Wondaland Arts Society, which serves not just as her label but as an Atlanta-based collective that hosts parties featuring cotton candy machines, rabbits, floating bookshelves and other fanciful diversions. If you're lucky enough to score an invite you might meet her manager, Lord Rico ("you'll have to check his birth certificate if you want to know if that's his real name," Janelle says) or Outkast's Big Boi, who discovered her.
He put her on his 2005 compilation Big Boi Presents Got Purp? Volume II, and she later performed in his Atlanta ballet "big" and appeared on the soundtrack of Outkast's Idlewild movie. Having signed with Diddy's Bad Boy Records, she recently released her Metropolis: The Chase Suite (Special Edition) EP to much acclaim, and her first fulllength album is due in January. It will also be based on the 1927 German black and white film Metropolis, and continue her plot concerning a character named Cindy Mayweather, an android who has fallen in love with a human in the dystopian year of 2179.
Monae herself is a beautiful and stylish 24-year-old talent with bravado and a tremendous singing voice. But what makes her brand of highly- theatrical, challenging yet radio-friendly pop so compelling is that she refuses to pay much of any attention to trends. Among the dead people she lists as influences are James Brown, Elvis and Buddy Holly, but she adds that she's not afraid to draw inspiration from sources from across the spectrum of the arts. After growing up underprivileged in Kansas City, Kansas, Monae made her way to New York's American Musical & Dramatic Academy and desperately tried to find her way onto Broadway. Not having found enough roles to her liking, however, she came Atlanta on a relative whim, and her career took off.
Yet she remains committed to stoking artistic fires beneath others who grew up in difficult circumstances. She says she plans to start a performing arts school somewhere in her native Kansas, which will feature not just instruction but plenty of counselors. "I want the students to understand that just because you are of a certain environment, that doesn't mean you have to act accordingly," she says, adding that the school will be modeled on Hogwarts from the Harry Potter series.
It can be difficult to determine where Janelle Monae's reality ends and her dreams begin. Clearly, that's exactly the way she likes it.
