Janelle Monáe and the Revolutionary Politics of Dirty Computer

A year ago today, while on a trip to Japan, I was walking through the streets of Aoyama, Tokyo. I was headed to a bar, and on my way, something special happened. You see, for months I had been waiting for the release of Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer, and just like this year, the new Avengers film was also about to come out, and I distinctly recall everyone in my circle trying to avoid spoilers. I’m bringing this up because that’s how I had been treating Dirty Computer: no spoilers bruh. It was the first time in my 35+ years of life that I had ever done that with a record. The thing is though, since 2008 when I first accidentally stumbled upon Metropolis: The Chase Suite, I have been a diehard Janelle Monáe fan. Every release she’s produced since then has been like an event film for me. I knew that I didn’t want to hear any music or see any visuals until the complete product had dropped. That’s what made that walk to the bar so special. In the west, it was around midnight, but for me it was the middle of the day. I had already preordered the digital version of the album and it had just magically appeared on my phone. I immediately began the process of consumption.

One year later, I was granted the opportunity to spend about two weeks in Japan again, with my trip ending in Tokyo on the day of the Tokyo Rainbow Pride parade in Shibuya. I love Japan, I love music and I love J-Pop, and while I was there, I could have listened to anything, but one year later Dirty Computer is still such a magnificent, ironclad record, and Janelle Monáe is such an important artist to me that I spent the entire two weeks listening to & exhaustively combing through every song in her catalogue.

Now without going too deep, I just want to briefly touch on the personal experience of first hearing the record. It was reflective, emotional, global and super black. Janelle’s three previous records are saturated in afro-futurism, but the experience of being able to enjoy her records in a situation like the one I found myself in, inundated with new sensations, fascinating smells, traversing unfamiliar locations, hair flowing free, nappy, or ‘chiri-chiri’ as they call it in Japan, that experience is uniquely afro-contemporary.

Afro-futurism is fantasy as we might envision; afro-contemporary is reality that we currently experience. Anyone who understands the effects that the diaspora has on the soul should be able to instantly understand the value of just seeing us out here, or simply, as in my case, being out here. If you know what it is, if you know how it came about then you know that every single step that you take means something. Afro-contemporary is the consumption of Janelle Monáe. It is the ‘Yes We Can’ of a President Barack Obama. It is going to a bar or store in any corner of the world and all they’re playing is our music. It is even me, walking through Japan, speaking Japanese and simply being amongst the people. It’s powerful. It is now. We are indeed out here. That’s why, when that album dropped, in a moment that was already so beautiful, so reflective, I had found myself moved to tears.

Janelle Monáe is probably the first truly generational artist that is a direct product of the millennial perspective. If things continue as they have gone since 2008, she is likely our Prince, our Madonna, our Michael or our Bowie. She has been an unabashed product of her influences since the beginning, first introducing herself as an alien from outer space, and a savior without a race. She was Cindi Mayweather, Jane 57821, the Archandroid. In short, she wasn’t one of us, and with each record after Metropolis, she further separated herself from us. Now we can take a deep dive into why she was doing that another time, but in short, she was channeling the power of parable. What Janelle was doing was combining the soul of the Negro spiritual with the cultural mystique of Philip K. Dick in order to directly tap into the collective cultural zeitgeist and globalize her message.

Now to be clear, this resulted in some of the most fantastic rock and roll that I had ever heard. But then she dropped Dirty Computer, and she took all that work, world building and science fiction and cast it off. Her titular track “Dirty Computer” plays like a letter of intent. Where in the past, there was distancing, on this album she makes it simple for us. She says, ‘I am flawed, I am all messed up, I’m vulnerable.’ In other words, she is just like us, fabulously imperfect and beautifully human.

Rather than stand on the shoulders of giants as she had in the past, with Dirty Computer she simply positions herself among them. I am convinced that at some point during their five years of collaboration Prince had come to recognize her as more peer than apprentice, spiritually and perhaps literally passing her the torch. Considering that Prince characteristically absolutely ripped his feature appearance on “Givin Em What They Love” (Electric Lady) and yet was still unable to overshadow the charismatic and sexually charged performance of a still developing Jane, to literally writing the synth line on the love without borders anthem “Make Me Feel” just before his untimely passing, I genuinely feel that this was the case. Dirty Computer is Janelle Monáe’s fourth record, but it is her debut as a fully realized artist.

Dirty Computer is Janelle at her most declarative, direct and musically creative. The contrast between this release and her previous work, which, when compared to her contemporaries, are undoubtedly classics, was something for me, like a hit of LSD. It’s an awakening, it’s Morpheus presenting you with a red pill. It is a kick-in-the-mouth aggressive masterpiece, a manifesto from love’s latest valkyrie. It is without a doubt the greatest galvanizing call to arms that this generation has witnessed and it has been presented to us in the form of nothing but banger after banger of unapologetic jams.

A lot happened between 2013 when Electric Lady was released and 2018 when Dirty Computer came out, and I believe that for someone who is so clearly sensitive, empathetic and rebellious to the core like Janelle, it was truly gobsmacking and disorienting. Like, ‘Wait, what? We’re just hoods-off fascists now?’ A lot of us still don’t want to believe it. Many of us are still stuck in the denial stage of grief when it comes to the sheer volume of hatred and shameless rhetoric that has been allowed to proliferate, ‘how can that be possible?’ they ask. Many of the more discerning amongst us are in the equally harmful stage of acceptance, ‘how can it not be?’ To be shamefully upfront, this is probably where I landed, witnessing all that I have and viewing things from the historical lens that I do. I believe that Janelle, being the fighter that she is, found herself somewhere closer to the anger stage. Now here, I think she is correct, because her anger is righteous. It is fueled by love and magnified by hope.

That’s why I am of the opinion that in Dirty Computer she did a complete about-face when it comes to her approach. No longer was parable her weapon of choice. This time she chose to take on love’s enemies head on with a serrated meat cleaver. Where in the past, she might have composed a clever piece of poetry about the persecution of fictional futuristic androids and expected us to do the legwork of drawing the comparison to the oppression of those who are criminalized around the world for simply choosing to love freely, the five years between her last two records only illustrated one thing to her: we’re too stupid for all that. In Dirty Computer she says everything straight. She doesn’t have time for that shit anymore. Hell, none of us do. And I mean that in a truly existential way. None of us have time for this shit anymore. Isn’t that what “Screwed” is about?

Janelle is right to be angry, and perpetually so. The five stages of grief refer to coping with death. The hatred that we are surrounded by right now is not death. Hatred is poison, and poison is curable. We can’t accept, we cannot acquiesce, and we cannot be apathetic. Janelle is telling us and showing us with every instance of exposure, that we have to fight.

When I think about Janelle the fighter I think a lot about “Django Jane”. Every song on Dirty Computer is powerful, but what she does here is so purposefully direct and surgical in both execution and methodology that it truly resonates with me as the soul of the album. First of all, it is the only entire rap song that she’s ever done. Secondly it is one of the hardest rap songs ever written. Conceptually, there is nothing like this anywhere in music, even though I’m pretty sure there is a high demand for more of it. The entire premise of the song is, ‘Men, shut the entire fuck up and sit the entire fuck down.’ And you know, being a man myself, I entirely fucking agree. This shit is totally out of hand.

We live in a world where almost every issue pertaining to women’s health, their bodies, their freedom to move within the collective space, how much bread women are empowered to earn and on and on and on, is legislated by men. How is that even possible? That just ain’t right. I actually find it viscerally disgusting and tremendously embarrassing. It is also totally and transparently driven by insecurity and desire to enslave.

Experiencing “Django Jane” live is an entirely different experience. For me, it was when Janelle performed at The Hollywood Bowl. She was carried out on a throne and her power was palpable. The performance sent shockwaves through the crowd. Every single bar of this song is harder and more crucial than the previous. I looked over at my wife as Janelle so casually and effortlessly broke dudes down to their most subatomic form and there were tears of reverence rolling down her face. I looked to my left and a woman amongst the group of lesbians that happened to be jamming next to us looked at me and screamed, “THIS IS CHURCH!” Then she offered me a hit of the weed and I silently partook. What an experience.

I think that with this song Jane really tapped into an emotional and logical place that women of every level of power throughout time, be it Cleopatra, Harriet Tubman, the scientists who inspired Hidden Figures, educators like my mother, maids like like my grandma and so on, have felt in one way or another, but may not have been able to articulate so succinctly due to the pain & repression that one might experience when you are perpetually underestimated and then once you prove yourself beyond a shadow of a doubt, men are eagerly crawling over each other trying to silence you. And boy, in a world where we have a literal cavalcade of weak ass dudes unironically referring to themselves as Men’s Rights Activists who are really angry because they feel that women just aren’t oppressed enough, topped off with a president who has openly bragged about committing sexual assault, stating that it’s ‘a dangerous time for young men,’ this anthemic gospel is right on time.

One last thing I’ll say about this song is that I wish that Charlamagne Tha God had really paid attention to it before he unwittingly embarrassed himself during Janelle’s The Breakfast Club interview. It really encapsulated why this song is so important. Because women have to suffer Herbs like Charlamagne all the time. Charlamagne is what I call a casual misogynist, in that while I can’t say beyond reasonable doubt that he hates women, just like how I can’t say beyond reasonable doubt that there was indeed collusion, time after time, my eyes saw what my eyes saw and my ears heard what my ears heard. The dude appears to have used his platform to repeatedly and unashamedly culturally align himself with a segment of society that maligns and disrespects women. Now if he had listened closely to “Django Jane” before the interview, he could have avoided getting folded like origami.

So what had happened was, Janelle came to promote the record, and before she could even breathe, he began the interview that was supposed to be about the content of her artwork, by commenting on how good she smelled. To me, this seems like a move that men do to casually diminish women and reroute conversations that should be about their expertise and accomplishments to the ways in which they appeal to the male gaze. He said, “Damn. You smell good. What’s that smell?” Without missing a beat, she replied, “Black girl magic!” That’s when I was like, “Oh damn, she’s a samurai.” She wielded her wit with such grace, poise and precision that he didn’t realize that he had already been cut down to size in a single, swift strike. In many cases like this, men never even realize they’ve been cut. In the world of the samurai, this technique of drawing your blade and cutting your opponent down in one smooth, elegant, lethal movement is called ‘Iai-jutsu.’

These instances of casual reduction, veiled as compliments happen so often and in many cases are unintentional or perhaps unconsciously intentional, on behalf of the men who transgress, but women are highly attuned to it and see exactly what’s going on. The way Janelle handled it makes it so painfully apparent that she’s been in that very situation, underestimated by someone beneath her, numerous times before. Janelle Monáe doesn’t have time to be talking about how she smells with motherfucking Charlamagne Tha damned God and so she redirected the conversation to what she is here to talk about, the same thing she is always here to talk about, which is empowerment of individuals and groups that have been systematically disenfranchised, in this case women, and more specifically, Black women. Black. Girl. Magic.

One of the most challenging elements of this piece, aside from choosing which tracks to talk about and which not to talk about, was actually deciding what my favorite track on the album actually is. To be honest, it really changes depending on the situation, because the moods and emotions communicated on this record vary in appropriateness all the time. Is morning not the perfect time for “I Got The Juice”? Don’t you find yourself holding your significant other just a little bit more tightly when “Don’t Judge Me” plays? Is “I Like That” not forever a feeling? We all have a story like that math class story. Doesn’t “Pynk” just feel like, ‘damn, women sure are having a lot of fun when men aren’t around?’ That’s how I feel, especially when I see the music video. But if I had to choose a song that simply resonates with me in every way, I think the best way is to just go by the number of rotations it gets. In that case, it’s gotta be “Screwed”.

First of all, from the immediate invocation of “Kiss”, to the playful and free-wheeling vocals of Janelle and Zoë Kravitz, “Screwed” is an undeniable, instantly infectious pop jam. Content-wise, “Screwed” plays to me like a sequel to “Cold War”. When Janelle released “Cold War”, I thought, ‘wow, this is a revolutionary song, she is saying quite a lot here.’ In 2010 when it came out, like most of her music, it seemed right on time. Barack Obama was president, and people were still operating in accordance to our relatively newly established post civil rights movement social Geneva Conventions, but something horrible was bubbling under the surface. The truly attuned were keenly aware and Janelle was trying to warn us, others seemed to want to take things at face value and appeared to be under the impression that everything was all good. It was indeed the very definition of a cold war. Well since then, that war has gotten hot than a muthafucka, and that’s where “Screwed” comes in.

If you look at America, our standing in the world, who we are as compared to who we claim to be, probably, the global perception of who we are is more fair than it’s ever been. We have been an oppressive, despotic machine of imperialism for years, we’ve interfered with governments much like ours is being interfered with now, we’ve claimed to be the good guys while committing worldwide mass murder in the name of empty words like ‘glory’ and ‘exceptionalism.’ To many people, including a massive segment of our own citizenry, we have been terrorists. But despite that, much in the way that black people in America have with white people, the world has continued to try and play nice with us and form continued alliances. It was a handshake of hope. Trying to see the best in us in order to then hopefully bring out the best in us. Then the devil met with Russia and he just made a deal. Many alliances were shattered, nuclear agreements were tossed out the window. And you know what, no matter how altruistic a society may be, it is very likely that it will always be more capitalist. And in a capitalist society, there is always someone coming to take your stuff. So those deals that we lost are never coming back. We are kind of screwed. And honestly I don’t care. Because I am not a capitalist. I ain’t got no capital to capitalize on. I’m just a dude that’s chillin’. From a historical standpoint I’m not sure that humanity is in a worse place than it has been in in the past, but I do know that people are angrier and more anxious than possibly ever. We are looking at the power elite like, ‘You fucked the world up.’ And as anger, hatred and anxiety continue to be used as a wedge to divide the people, it is becoming more and more apparent that an aggressive campaign of love, like what Janelle symbolizes, is the only weapon worth wielding. So yeah, let’s fuck it all back down.

There’s an element of “Screwed” that I found tremendously surprising. Of course this would be the rap break. “Screwed” is a song that I would call ‘Pop populist’ in that it is a song that speaks to all of us who feel marginalized by someone who has fraudulently assumed a position above us, for whatever reason. The rap break, however, is personal. It’s about Janelle and her own experiences with marginalization, particularly after fame, after she appeared to shoot through the glass ceiling like the meteoric star that she is. All of the lines are poignant, whether she is going at hoteps or exposing phonies. But one line in particular reminded me of a specific incident in which I believe she was forced to suffer a public indignity for the purpose of advancing her cause.

In the first line of the break she says, “One hundred men telling me cover up my areola while they blocking equal pay sipping on their coca colas.” On the surface, this might seem like a reference to the infamous Janet Jackson Super Bowl ‘nip rip’ in which Justin Timberlake revealed one of Janet Jackson’s nipples and miraculously avoided all consequences, and was even invited back while Janet seems to have been blackballed from almost everything. I believe, however that this is a reference to The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

In 2015 Janelle was promoting Wondaland Presents: The Eephus — EP. She and Jidenna were to perform the summer smash, “Yoga”. Now you wouldn’t know it, because Janelle Monáe is a pro and wouldn’t show it on her face, but unless someone with authority on the matter tells me otherwise, I truly believe that there was a conversation before she performed “Yoga” for the show in which they told her that she could not sing what is likely the most poignant line in the song, “You cannot police me so get off my areola (ola, ola)/Get off my areola.”

The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon seems to have literally done exactly what the lyric was about. They appear to have policed her. And for what? The technical word ‘areola?’ The irony was thick like sludge and the entire situation was absurd on its face. Janelle’s job in chief is to sell records so while I understand why she did what she had to do, I simply find it offensive that she was even asked to do it. Additionally she presents as a queer intersectional figure and for the many individuals that she stands for, representation and exposure are extremely vital. She powered through. She wore a smile that night during that performance, but I also believe that her heart was aching in that moment and that it’s something that she never forgot.

Now what I find particularly incensing about the situation is not even that she had to do it, it is Jimmy Fallon himself. Jimmy Fallon is a proven worm and a classic example of an inept white male who has been tremendously rewarded all his life for producing nothing but total and all-encompassing mediocrity. Who is he and who are his people to dictate whether or not Janelle or any woman should be censored for daring to invoke the nipple?

Jimmy is the same coward who not only refused to use his tremendous platform to speak out against a despotic and openly fascist presidential candidate, but also humanized and enabled him, and rubbed his toupee on television as if anything about this situation is normal. You tell me what is more vulgar; a nipple, which has never done anything but provide pleasure and nutrition to almost every mammal that has graced the earth, or a dotard that can’t even be bothered to read national security briefings, has savaged every beneficial social institution America has, jails the babies of refugees, has failed to condemn nazis to a degree that one can only label as a conscious decision, refuses to address global warming, and has wrought existential destruction to America’s foreign policy in a way that we may never recover from. But yes, the nipple is dangerous. It must be stopped.

Before I talk about her anthemic call to arms, “Americans”, there is something that I must make clear about Janelle Monáe. She is not simply an entertainer. She is an artist in its purest form. Entertainers sing, dance and act. And of course, Janelle can do all that, and fabulously so. But artists stimulate thought. They offer critique of what they see around them; they create more critics as a result of their critique. They provide us with enlightenment into the way in which they perceive things. Janelle does what she does for us and she does it because she is driven to do so, and I believe that she is driven to do so because at her core she is a black woman. She is a woman who is black and she is trying to empower us, because that’s just what black women do. They look out for other people. They do this thanklessly and often to their detriment. I have witnessed every black woman in my life, no matter how lost, no matter how found, demonstrate this capacity in one way or another. I don’t know where it comes from, or why it is this way, but I do know that the rest of us don’t deserve it.

In a world where so many of our celebrities are at worst, highly predatory, or at best, unwilling to say anything of substance if they feel that it may interfere with them collecting a check, Janelle reveals herself as an individual of tremendous character time and time again. She is so incredibly talented that she could just sit back and collect checks and nobody would begrudge her at all. She doesn’t owe anybody shit. And yet, for her, that path, so well worn, was never an option. She said it herself, she came in peace. But she means business.

Which brings me to “Americans”. This may be the single most important song on the record. She invokes a classic kind of Americana rock, purposefully taking the ‘don’t tread on me’ type of energy that fuels songs like “We’re Not Gonna Take It” or any of the other good ol’ boy inspired tunes that you might hear blaring from the jukebox of your average American dive bar and flips it on its head in order to create a rallying cry for the REAL real Americans that the self-labeled real Americans are always trying suppress.

These real Americans are so weird to me. Because so many of them seem to love confederates and nazis. Now I don’t know about you, but I am the progeny of an America that defined itself by its opposition to nazis and the absolute ass kicking of those who would rather kill their own countrymen than simply not own actual people, so it’s really hard for me to accept the idea that you’re anything but a traitor if you deify those types or identify with any of their values.

In “Americans” Janelle positions herself as a proud social justice warrior and she wants both us and them to know that not only is this fight not over, but we’re actually winning. If anything, we are witnessing a tantrum. The defiant death throes of a generation of miserable-to-the-core haters that simply can’t stand to see lovers leaving them behind. They are crabs in a barrel and they know it. That’s why they don’t even approach arguments in good faith anymore. They just say whatever they can to feel as if they’ve ‘owned the libs,’ even if it means they’ll risk going bankrupt because they can’t afford something that should be a perfectly normal quid pro quo from the government to the people, like healthcare. They are little boys with big guns and weak, underdeveloped hearts. They call us weak when we express empathy, sensitivity and love, but they can’t even handle seeing regular things like a trans person walking down the street, or two people with different colored skin holding hands, or two, maybe even three beautiful men engaging in a deep and passionate kiss. But yeah, we’re the snowflakes. I actually believe we should embrace that term, because frankly, I’d rather be a snowflake than a piece of shit.

Janelle dispenses truth and intention on this song with an energy that I can only describe as cold compassion. We are the real Americans. Minorities, racial or religious. LGBTQ+ people. Women. Poor white Americans. Black men. Don’t try to take my country. I will defend my land. We are here to stay. We aren’t the ones deifying dead Europeans. We will fight for this shit. She said what she said and if you don’t like that, you’re going to have to hold it anyway.

So here we are at the end. It has been two weeks. Today is the day of the Tokyo Rainbow Pride parade. Japan has not been a particularly good country to LGBTQ+ people, but I still sit here optimistic, empowered and hopeful, because as the parade goers are demonstrating, as Janelle Monáe has shown us, we are going to rock on regardless of what happens. You can’t legislate us out of existence. Love has warriors too, and we always, always win.