I Came for the Sapphic Vibes and Stayed for the Revolution

Janelle Monáe’s “Dirty Computer” is a radicalizing force in a world that insists on marginalizing people.

The first time I listened to “Dirty Computer,” I put on my good headphones and laid down on my bed. Having read about the concept for the album before Janelle Monáe’s voice ever reached my ears, I knew that it deserved my full attention.

From the first note of the first song, I was drowning in feelings. A clear voice with simple harmony, a touch of electronic modulation, lyrics that spoke directly and personally to my experience. Being so seen in something marketed to the masses is almost unsettling.

I’m not that special, I’m broke inside, crashing slowly, the bugs are in me . . .

The depth of feeling behind knowing with clarity that I am not who I am supposed to be vibrated inside me. After all, “it’s only me, your dirty computer.”

I’ve never been a huge sci-fi buff, but it doesn’t take an encyclopedic knowledge of Ray Bradbury or Isaac Asimov to identify with the symbol of a dirty computer, an android with a virus–something that is not-quite-human, that even among a group of other not-quite-humans, is defective. This isn’t dramatic, this is what we are being told today as the supreme court of the united states enforces their view that Black people, poor people, and queers that we are not deserving of the rights and privileges that others in our country enjoy.

As this short opening tune ends and the wave of sadness, of acceptance that I am never going to be in the human class, the clean class, the album moves into a spoken word statement about equality and a hopeful synth background, then into youthful vocals. Janelle Monáe declares “I am not America’s nightmare, I am the American dream.”

I don’t know if I’ve ever been able to claim myself in that way, to declare that the American dream as it has been fed to me is not, in fact, a dream at all, but a cage. I’ve never had the audacity to declare that the dream is wrong, and that all along the dream was in me, the dream was me. The longing for a “Crazy, Classic Life” is something I’ve only just begun to verbalize aloud. I didn’t know I could want that. I didn’t believe I deserved it, but today as I rage-mowed my yard after reading about the scotus’ latest decisions on affirmative action, the first amendment as it relates to queer rights, and student loan debt, I sang it aloud.

I am not a small, beautiful Black woman from Kansas City, Kansas. I’m a fat, white, suburban mom from the pacific northwest. Visually, Janelle Monáe and I could hardly be more different. Experientially, we have significant differences also. I have will never experience the marginalization that Black people, much less Black, queer, women face every day, so there are aspects of her songs that I learn from more than I identify with.

Some of her experiences speak to my own life, most of which was spent in a fairly insular community with very specific expectations. I have lived in a world where there was a specific vision for my life imposed on me by outside sources, and where the core of who I am did/does not match up with that specific vision.

I have never been and never will be “Black Waldo dancin’ with the thick brows.” But I have looked around me knowing I did not fit. I was the tomboy, the soft butch Waldo trying not to stand out. I have known what it’s like to look at those who conform, who already fit, and wish I could be loved in the way they are loved.

This is the power of allegory, the power of a metaphor like a dirty computer: it’s not about embodying one specific identity, it’s about solidarity among those of us who are fighting for our lives, our rights, our opportunities for joy in our skin and bones.

Neither Afro-futurism as a genre nor Janelle Monáe’s Afro-futuristic world is directly about me, and it is not born of me or my people. However, a world where Black, queer women are fully human is a world where I am fully human, too. Janelle Monáe’s work envisions a future that is better for Black people and for queer people, which is a world that’s better for poor people, disabled people, fat people, and all people.

All of us will be dirty computers sometime. We will become old, poor, fat, or disabled and then we will not be sitting near the top of an unjust hierarchy. At some point, we will all wonder if upholding the hierarchy ever really served us at all. At some point, they will come for your rights, too.

I have also experienced the pain of having my labor and my talent exploited and claimed by others. “Take a Byte” starts with a galloping beat reminiscent of a classic rock song before it settles into a trot as Janelle invites the listener to “Take a byte, help yourself.” In the film the artist has dubbed an emotion picture, this song plays as the main character’s memories are extracted. The dirty computer is being cleansed by the ruling New Dawn regime that demands conformity.

How often have people taken pieces of me? The song speaks to extraction, to the way different forms of cleansing remove who we are and force us into homogeneity. The sexual undertones also bring up feelings about the way womxn in our society are painted as the energy source for others. We are all just flies in spider webs waiting, waiting for others to puncture us and take what they need and want, leaving only a hollow husk behind before moving on.

In another reading of “Take a Byte,” which has lightly synthesized vocals, an android is inviting someone to a sexual encounter, an inherently queer act for an android. The dirty computer is embracing the pleasure that is available to them, even as others try to take it away.

Just as we begin to dip our toes into the waters of despair, we swing into an upbeat synth-pop rebellion. “We’ll put water in your guns, we’ll do it all for fun! . . . We’re all screwed. You f*cked the world up now we’ll f*ck it all back down.” Instead of rage, we get a “no f*cks left to give, so let’s burn it down in a massive rager” vibe.

In the world I come from, which is a world not too dissimilar to the one republicans and their scotus are trying to create, everything is moral. Every sex act, every substance, every piercing, every article of clothing, every life decision is moralized. It is an environment driven by fear with an objective of impossible conformity and perfection. “Screwed” touches on all the parts of me that rage against these rigid demands, and it turns that rage into the freedom of not giving a single f*ck about any of it, the freedom of deciding to be who I am in spite of it all, the freedom of fighting back by taking what is otherwise reserved for a special few.

In the hardcore rap, Django Jane Janelle does not come to play. She is “gon [lead] a motherf*ckin p*ssy riot . . . or put ’em on a p*ssy diet.” Her boldness, her surety that she is powerful and that she can and will use that power to create change gives me courage I don’t have on my own.

Bass beats, deep vocals, and an almost aggressive energy in Django Jane somehow flow naturally (her albums all have amazing transitions) into a lighter exploration of the power in the feminine, Pynk. Soft, dreamy vocals engage us in a seductive exploration of pynk, which Janelle Monae uses as an emblem of feminine energy. It is pride in womanhood and pride in sapphic energy/desire expressed in high-pitched melodies and pink vulva pants (per the video).

Here we are in the car leaving traces of us down the boulevard. I wanna fall through the stars, being lost in the dark is my favorite part. Let’s count the ways we can make this last forever.

There is power in anger, there is power in heat, in rage. But there is also power and joy in softness. There is power and joy in embracing our most delicate parts. It is revolutionary to say, “My softness isn’t weakness, it is strength.” Personally, I am still reconciling and balancing what it means to embrace them both.

A previous version of myself would see “Pynk” as being lewd or crass, but today it feels like an affirmation, like a hymn to the ways in which female anatomy (not vulvas exclusively, but lips, hands, flesh, muscle) stand as divine aspects of womanhood and femininity.

The next three songs are all high octane beats filled with self-love and queer joy. I let Janelle’s rapture in “Make Me Feel” supplement my own when I can’t seem to scrape enough together for a meal. When I can hardly imagine believing I’m worthy of love or pleasure or attention, that I have any “Juice” whatsoever, I let Janelle and Pharrell believe it for me. In moments when I am the only one who seems to be some type of way, who is left of center, I pretend for a moment that “I don’t even give a f*ck if I was just the only one.” “I Like That” reminds me that I am “right where I belong.” I have never had the swagger to believe I was the shit, but I can borrow Janelle’s swagger, and the more I borrow hers, the more mine begins to take shape.

Vulnerability prevails as the album moves into slower, smoother, minor tunes. “Don’t Judge Me” and “Afraid” are a lyrical exploration of the feelings of fear and exposure that come with stepping into one’s self, that come with standing boldly in one’s own skin. To fully love and be loved, to bring ourselves to the revolution, we first have to know and be known, acts which require us to experience fear, to open ourselves to having our softness exposed knowing full well that it won’t always be received, accepted, or embraced. Insecurity is an unavoidable part of self expression and empowerment, and Janelle doesn’t hide from it or pretend that she is impervious. She lets us see it and be seen in it.

Furthermore, when we reach this point in the album, we have no choice as dirty computers but to take real action, and the potential personal costs of taking action are often terrifying

After all, what if we lose? We all need the shell of safe, close people, but finding them is difficult and vulnerable all on its own. Acknowledging our fear allows us to do the hard work of liberation. Janelle Monáe is speaking to the fear and pain experienced by the violence that’s been perpetrated against the Black and queer communities in particular, and also to the violence and fear that everyone, even powerful people, experiences under hegemony.

Our favorite android brings the album to a close by painting us a picture of what America could and should be, with the refrain of “love me for who I am.” It’s neither a demand nor a request, but a clear statement of what they expect, of what we all need and deserve.

I was raised to believe in American essentialism and manifest destiny–that god brought white people here, that the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution were divinely inspired, that this hierarchy based in white supremacy is the way it’s supposed to be, the way god wants it to be. In my past life, someone may very well have said the words, “don’t try to take my country, I will defend my land,” with all of the context of white supremacy and colonialism behind it. But Dirty Computer’s final track “Americans” uses the phrase to reference a country where “women can get equal pay for equal work . . . same gender loving people can be who they are . . . Black people can come home from a police stop without getting shot in the head . . . [and] Latinos and Latinas don’t have to run from walls.”

The beauty of this song, the part that brings me to tears, is the way she has turns a phrase that my people said from a place of bigotry into a battle cry for a revolution where everyone is equal, where each of us deserve the space we need to be “free azz muthaf*ckas.”

My introduction to Janelle Monáe’s music came from her recent Lipstick Lover video. The link was sent to my partner by a mutual friend with the comment “a sapphic dream.” It is a sapphic dream indeed! And it’s also a creative dream, a collectivist dream, a freedom dream. It is sexy as hell, but it isn’t just sexy, it is queer from top to bottom. I had to know what else this human being had made, and I was not disappointed.

I dove head first into her full discography, and I could write a similar love letter to The Electric Lady. Even The Archandroid, which isn’t overtly queer in the same way as their more recent work, is queer in the sense that it breaks boundaries of genre and style. It is queer in its essence, just as Janelle Monae has always been.

Since my obsession with Janelle Monae began, she has released her album “The Age of Pleasure”–a party album with Pan-African vibes that sounds wholly different from “Dirty Computer” while still reflecting a natural evolution of the artist herself.

I came for the sapphic dream, but I stayed because Janelle Monae’s work reflects and furthers the internal work I’ve been doing for years; it opens me to understanding the ways their experiences and evolution as an artist, a person, a woman, differ from my own, and the ways we dirty computers all stand in solidarity with one another.

I came for the sapphic dream, but I stay for the revolution.