Take a little bit of funk, a little bit of psychedelic rock, a huge chunk of Broadway, a whole bunch of Outkast, and vocal deliveries that bounce between James Brown, Beyonce and ragtime. Wrap the whole thing in a futuristic world influenced by Fritz Lang’s the Metropolis — a world in which androids have become a discriminated-against minority. It sounds like a recipe for an overcooked pretentious disaster. Instead it all adds up to the most compelling album of the year, The ArchAndroid. And at the center of it all is rising star Janelle Monae, a powerful vocalist and performer who is clearly unafraid to try anything.
Although 2010 is the year Janelle Monae has risen to prominence in the national music scene, it’s not as though she’s some instant internet buzz artist. After originally moving from Kansas City to New York City to pursue a career on Broadway, she followed her muse to Atlanta to concentrate on music. There she spent years developing herself as an artist with the Wondaland Arts Society — the collective she helped to create as an outlet for like-minded artists in the Atlanta area.
She explains that she wanted to understand what it took to be a great artist and performer and to develop herself in the right way. She had goals that she set at the very beginning and has followed through in an effort to reach a larger audience over time. “We started on this path a long time ago,” Monae points out. “We purposely independently released our first couple of EPs. I think it’s very important to have a slow build. It’s important to have a support base that is part of you. I like growing with my audience.”
The slow build culminated in the release of the ArchAndroid earlier this year. The album was co-released by Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Bad Boy Records and prominently features fellow Atlantian Big Boi from Outkast. Since its release, it’s been garnering breathtaking reviews from almost every notable music critic in the country — it currently sits as the highest rated non-reissue album of the year on the review collating site Metacritic. With the classic R&B flavor of “Tightrope”, the bouncing melody of “Faster” and the pulsing modern track “Cold War” there are a lot of highs. But it’s the depth of styles and Monae’s ability to convey emotion in her lyrics, despite the dense subject matter, that make this a solid album all the way through. “My music and the lyrics are written from the heart; I’m trying to directly connect to people.”
Though Monae has spent the last couple of years touring with such acts as No Doubt and Erykah Badu, her current tour with Of Montreal seems to have struck a special cord with her. It’s not as if the bands were strangers going into the tour. OM’s lead singer Kevin Barnes wrote “Make the Bus” off of the ArchAndroid and Monae is featured on two songs on the latest OM release, False Priest. Still, Monae seems especially impressed with how things have turned out. “The tour has been magical. It’s not a typical set up with just a standard opening act. We have decided to mesh our sets and cross-pollinate our worlds. We are very immersed in each other’s world. It’s been exhilarating.”
It’s easy to see why the two performances would mesh so well, as each artist takes the performance aspect of the live performance very seriously. For Monae, a lot of it comes from her background in musical theater. With all the theatrics and bigger concepts at play in her music, it’s easy to wonder if Monae has thought about turning the ArchAndroid and her full Metropolis suite into a full-on musical. Monae doesn’t deny that it would be great, but she also stays focused on the moment. “I would love to have a huge bill on Broadway that says the ArchAndroid. But we are creating this as we go along. You don’t have to do just performance art or music. We can integrate the more theatric parts into our live performance and I am looking forward to continuing to evolve as the tour goes along.”
Certainly a modern artist in almost every sense of the word, Monae regularly updates her Twitter account, and was recently named an account to follow by Spin magazine. “I think it’s very important and necessary. I like doing Twitter because you are writing your own history. You get to say things without filtering.” She explains that she can’t do it all the time and often needs breaks so she can stay in the moment. “In general, I like staying connected to the fans.”
Though she’s in the middle of a breakout year, it’s not too early to wonder what’s next for someone who seems so creative, yet closely tied to her current futuristic android persona. “I definitely have lots of things planned going forward. But right now I’m really excited about the journey. I don’t know what’s going to happen next for Janelle Monae and that’s really exciting for me.”
It’s really exciting for the rest of us too. The only problem is that next time she comes through town, the Canopy Club is probably not going to be big enough to hold her or her audience.
Janelle Monae performs with Of Montreal tonight at the Canopy Club at 9 p.m. Single performance tickets are sold out; festival wristbands will get you into the show and are still available.