Janelle Monáe, from the Future to the Present

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2018

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Janelle Monáe is an unlikely pop star. Her music is rooted in soul and R. & B., but also in pop, punk, and New Wave; her early releases were science-fiction concept albums, influenced by Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” and modern Afrofuturism, set far in the future, and starring herself as an android. She didn’t follow the Zeitgeist—she made her own Zeitgeist. Then, after gaining recognition as a major figure in pop, Monáe made an impressive acting début as one of the leads of “Hidden Figures,” and appeared in the Oscar-winning film “Moonlight.” Monáe sat down with David Remnick to talk about her latest album, “Dirty Computer.” Despite the title, it’s not at all science fiction. For the first time, she’s dealing frankly with the issues that she’s facing—and that our country is facing—right now. Plus, the staff writer Judith Thurman hits the streets of multiethnic Queens with a linguist who speaks so many languages that he’s lost count. Luis Miguel Rojas-Berscia says the trick is to be fearless, and shameless, about engaging strangers in conversation. “You have to get rid of that inhibition,” he says, “if you want to speak a language.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.
0:09.8	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:14.3	Monet a left foot.
0:18.1	Another day.
0:20.2	I take your pain away. When Janelle Monet came on the scene in pop music about 10 years ago, you might not have picked her out right away as a future star.
0:29.2	Her music was rooted in soul and R&B and also punk and new wave.
0:34.4	And Monet wrote these kind of sci-fi concept albums set in the future, starring herself
0:39.1	as an android. It was just kind of out there, kind of weird sometimes, and it could have been
0:43.9	ridiculous, except it wasn't. It was great. And Janelle Monet actually got the acclaim and
0:49.8	recognition that she deserved.
1:00.5	More recently, she started acting seriously in film as one of the stars of hidden figures and in moonlight.
1:02.5	And this year, she released an album called Dirty Computer.
1:06.1	Despite the title, it's not science fiction at all, she's dealing frankly with the issues
1:10.1	that she's facing
1:11.1	and that our country is facing right this very moment. She joined me in the studio, and I wanted to
1:17.3	begin at the very beginning. So at The New Yorker, we have a whole fact-checking department.
1:23.6	Yeah. So I want to start with a fact-checking thing. I read that as a kid, you wrote an entire musical inspired by this Stevie Wonder album, Journey
1:33.3	Through the Secret Life of Plants, all about photosynthesis.
1:37.3	What was it like?
1:38.3	What was this musical like?
1:40.3	Well, my uncle was a huge Stevie Wonder fan, and he played the album, and then I was like, oh, we're learning about photosynthesis in our school. And I started to just write about me because I was living with my grandmother at the time. We were in between houses, and I started to write about me and just this attack on, or not an attack, or attack, or attack on humans from plants.
2:02.7	How old were you?
	...

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