Janelle Monae

Off-topic a bit, but I never made through to the end of "Damaged" until now. As obnoxious and chintzy as most of the song is, the last minute is great, probably because it sounds like something from Press Play.

we should get yung joc to post here

meet me at the borad, it's goin dowwwn

i love her.

"Lettin' Go" = all-time jam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOP98zdmanY&feature=related

anyone heard this seeming grab-bag of pre-spacey songs that's about? (includes 'lettin go', 'time will reveal' and so on.) on wiki it is masquerading as a 2003 album called the audition but i dunno, the whole thing is a bit fishy to me

anyways historical suspicious aside it is quite impressive (on levels i havent thought about too hard yet)! raving about the song 'cindi' would only go and show up my weakness for musicals a bit overfar so check my other jam 'my favourite nothing' instead - it sounds like some passable 'hey ya' shit at first but pay attention to the lyrics cos i don't wanna spoil it

(sort of the lol/waaah audio version of that cat w/ no face blog if it's any incentive)

"Many Moons" video is absolutely amazing:

Full Length Album is coming out January 20th.

I must say Diddy is doing a pretty good job promoting her... and obviously he's putting a lot into her project because the "Many Moons" video looks like it had a pretty big budget..

man i've seriously never heard one bad thing about her but i kind of think she's really corny

she is laying it on thick in that video

it's really too much

Really? What don't you like about her?

I think she is soooo fly... the voice, the music, the lyrics, the style, and if you watch interviews with her she's really intelligent and thoughtful. She's just such a breathe of fresh air, and I love this whole sort of Afro-Futurist aesthetic/movement that she's kind of a part of (along with J*Davey, Sa-Ra, etc.).

well i actually like the futuristic american bandstand vibe, but i just think she could deal to lay off a bit. it's like when wayne plays the guitar and you just wanna scream WE GET IT BRO. i feel bad hating cuz it's so singular and vibrant and she is obviously having the time of her life hamming it up, it's just gets to a point where it's too much for me

i mean the song is okay but i don't get excited about it the way i don't get excited about solange. it's a nice piece of retro-pop and i'd probably be way more receptive to it if i just heard an mp3 or whatever

Muthafuckas act like they forgot about Imani Copolla.

So I'm listening to Metropolis right now and it's making me smile a LOT

i <3 JM despite her overplaying the space alien angle at times (esp when the music is not always as imaginative and more conventionally rock). but all i have is the EP. theres must be more out there.

I like this girl's voice and ideas, but the songs don't quite live up to them yet.

titch, sk out "The Audition", her unreleased demo or album or something from 03-ish

I take back my earlier comment, 'Sincerely, Jane' is absolutely terrific, and the other tracks on the ep have grown on me as well. Really looking forward to the full album now.

saw her live at bonnaroo, one of the best performers i've ever seen...painted a painting with her hands while singing a creepy ballad, handed it to someone in the audience still singing...climbed up on a bar stool to sing 'smile', had 1000+ sweaty white people in tears

she did a song there called 'atl' that people in the audience were yelling for that isn't on her album?

she's fucking mindblowing live. i'd never heard of her before i saw her open for an act i was seeing in april and i've been a huge fan since...she's such a fucking star. i will say that the jordans of the world who find her corny probably wouldnt have been swayed, it's quite over the top.

talking to a friend who works at a club in atlanta:

mce: babysitting janelle monae audition drummers omg kill me
somedude77: hahaha
somedude77: they can't be as annoying as janelle monae herself
mce: no but i have to listen to 20 drummers in a row play over her stupid music
somedude77: lol
somedude77: you have my sympathy dog
mce: its awful. 2 down and 18 to go
mce: oh great her heinous is here
mce: its so gay she made all her people like get dressed up
mce: what a cunt
mce: no wait she sent a clone!
mce: roffles
mce: she's a "representive of janelle monae"
somedude77: hahaha
somedude77: and the representative is dressed up like her?
mce: yes she is wearing what id imagine janelle monae would wear on a saturday morning.
mce: and i do think its her and she lied.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxvEn9wNkBQ

rock lobster?

Such a great voice.

After a series of sci-fi-soul EPs, funk futurist Janelle Monáe is finally ready to drop her debut album, The ArchAndroid, which is due out May 18 courtesy of Wondaland Arts Society/Bad Boy. According to a press release, the LP is not merely another collection of songs but an "EMOTION PICTURE"

http://i40.tinypic.com/vpds2p.jpg

She sounds like Liza Minnelli to me. I don't get the appeal.

still love 'many moons' but i can see this chick grating like nellie mckay quick fast

She's coming to DC shortly (with the presumed winner of the drummer audition mentioned above)

I would rather listen to lady gaga than this bullshit

i like what i've heard of janelle a lot.

i hear a lot of her sound in Beyonce's Radio

realizing that r&b'ers will be forced to listen to of montreal if they listen to this record ^_^

What was the "song of the century" at the top of this thread? The Youtube link's broken and I'd like to hear it!

I love this woman so fucking much.

i think this new song is kind of missing a chorus -- and comparing it to "1 thing" is pretty much blasphemy in my eyes

it sounds mostly like raphael saadiq throwback soul way more than it sounds like rich harrison

it's definitely not missing a chorus but idg the "1 thing" comparison either

sounds like james brown schtick with neo-retro production. more than anything it reminds me of that one christina aguilera record, or cupid '369'

james brown schtick with neo-retro production

That pretty much describes the two tracks I heard from the forthcoming album. She seems to have so much potential, but it's almost like she's trying to be as unoriginal as possible on these two songs. If it weren't so retro maybe I would like it less, but is it really necessary to clobber us over the heads with the retro references?

the poster upthread was closer with the liza minelli reference - 'tightrope' et al is twee retro, obviously, but theatrically framed in way that i think is different to its soundalikes. i do agree with the general criticisms here though in terms of it being of tiresomely little use as a single per se, but since nearly everything she's done so far has been album-orientated i'm not taking it as such just yet.

plus the production's pretty admirable for this kinda thing, especially for the second half.

i dunno, monae and her fans can & do often lean toward being pretty annoying, but all things considered there's many worse cases of those same annoyances flourishing in other popular artists that i'd much sooner rather stfu. for the moment, anyway.

Plus, even if Tightrope isn't your cup of tea, "Cold War" is straight fire.

And ends with a fade out that could lead into Boulevard of Broken Dreams, oddly enough.

no, that one actually is dire whatever context you put it in.

I TIP ON ALLIGATORS
AND LITTLE RATTLESNAKERS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwnefUaKCbc

BUT I'M ANOTHER FLAVOR SOMETHING LIKE A TERMINATOR

monae got heat

I'm ridiculously excited to see her next week

janelle monae is a tremendously talented performer but isn't a particularly strong songwriter. i appreciate that she wants to write her own weird shit but the songs are almost never as good as her performances!

i find this record's vibe deeply cringe tbh

I feel like at this point, aside from a few songs, she has more fun making her music than I do listening to it

For a fun summertime record it's weirdly devoid of hooks. It's cool that all the tracks flow together but that doesn't work when none of them are particularly good. I'll echo that it's kind of cringey, idk what it is exactly but she's just so universally liked and obviously she's super attractive and talented to boot, so the fact that it's so confrontational just feels a little odd. also the fact that this whole thing seemed to be handled a lot better on Dirty Computer, idk. but it's still an okay record. I like the horns a lot.

I think my favorite song of hers is still “Oh Maker.”

Yeah sorry to say but this feels super bland.

She's...not a good songwriter.

This was true a decade ago. She's a triumph of image, and I love that image; I'll always extend her goodwill. In many ways she was ahead of the curve in 2010.

When that first album came out, I saw a couple of shows of hers that just completely blew my mind. But then I saw her several years later with Prince, and something had changed, and it was all just a bit too much, and at the same time not enough.

Yeah, this is pretty thin. Vibes, but uh, not much else. And I say this as a huge Janelle fan (I’ve seen her twice - once opening for Badu way back when and again touring for the last album, which was an absolutely amazing show) who was really looking forward to new material.

hey, "Oh Maker" my fave too. the kind of song a great songwriter writes, even.

feel like the new one's all hooks, or maybe I don't know what a hook is

I feel like she was still producing awesome music through "electric lady" though it started to go downhill around that point
Well, this kind of album is what streaming services are for

well I've listened 3 times and don't remember much outside of the general vibe and some lyrics, compared to her other stuff which sometimes was just bursting with melody

tbh I don't really know what her creative process is, she doesn't talk much about it and the one article I've read about it makes it sound like a bunch of people are involved. indeed all her songs have like 5-7 writers credited on them. maybe it's like a Taylor Swift situation but who knows could just be a different songwriting team

I listened to this back to back with the Amaarae and boy does this suffer by comparison. It's fine, but a lot of it to me feels like outlines more than songs — like, "this is the banger," and "this is the sex jam." Nothing jumped out like the best 3-4 tracks on the last one.

nate wonder is still her main collaborator on this but chuck lightning is less involved than previous albums, and nana kwabena and sensei bueno are newer collaborators (kwabena only previously contributed to a few tracks on dirty computer)

I'm enjoying it enough, but I agree that it suffers from having been released on the same day as the Amaarae album which I'm much more inclined to reach for at present.

i like the reggae and afrobeats stuff better than the disney-fied trap (why even try this sound in 2023?), but it still feels like a xeroxed version of music made by contemporary artists who live and breathe those genres. "lipstick lover" sounds somehow worse in album context.

One of those not-uncommon artists whose records get worse each time. The first two kind of stand up, but I never go back to them.

Strong disagree, I think Dirty Computer was great and filled with bangers. I grow to appreciate it more with each passing year.

^^ this

I miss the droid shit tbh

maybe it represents the closet or whatever but it was fun

if I was having a better time like I hope she is now I'd probably be more into this one

The record's a party! The next pool party I attend I'm going to ask to stream it.

i'm with you, miss the Android stuff but she was bound to change styles/gimmicks at some point

I like this more than the earlier stuff myself. The Android thing was never very convincing to me and actively detracted from my enjoyment of those albums. Maybe I am boring.

I like this album, its low stakes-ness seems like part of the point? It is like a (more) poolside ready version of Meshell Ndgeocello’s Comfort Woman.

yeah I've come around to it too. No great songs, but she masters a groove where make believing is the real thing.

I dug it ok, can't remember how any songs go though. but sounded good.

monae just has theater kid vibes she can't ever completely shake is the thing.

low stakes albums are cool and all but it's kind of a weird choice at this point in her career. her last one was 5 years ago and it got a lot of hype, she's landed a starring role in a fairly big movie since and is starting to become sort of a household name, so now would be the time to drop a big magnum opus with a dozen guest spots and a bunch of singles. I mean I get it she probably just didn't have time for it but idk it feels like right now could have been her moment

so now would be the time to drop a big magnum opus with a dozen guest spots and a bunch of singles

would this be preferable though?

the guest spots on here are largely wasted imo

amaarae sounds great, ckay okay, but grace and sister nancy seem to be here because monae admires them, not because she had any great ideas about how to collaborate with them

would this be preferable though?

I think so. idk maybe that Off the Wall thread is making me think of how MJ absolutely seized the moment, because that's what superstars do. and I think Monae wants to be a superstar. so yeah putting out an album that's been mostly received as "it's nice but I don't remember any of the songs" seems kinda bad