Janelle Monae performed her anthemic song 'Turntables' on Stephen Colbert's The Late Show. She wrote the song for the documentary 'All In: The Fight for Democracy', starring Stacey Abrams, and in this rendition, it came out as soul Rage Against The Machine.
An interesting interview with Janelle Monáe in the Guardian, covering a lot of subjects:
On her sexuality: For me, it is a journey, not a destination, as I gather more information about who I like
On growing up “as a Baptist kid in a very small, Republican state”: You feel, oh my goodness, I don’t know how I even have this conversation with my loved ones when all I’m hearing every Sunday is: if you are not heterosexual, you’re going to hell. And people using the Bible as a whip
On working on her artistic identity: I had time to say no to things that didn’t work for me. I had time to find myself, to prepare myself for some of the obstacles that would come my way, and to understand that my story’s not supposed to be everybody’s story
On systemic racism: My ancestors were forced to come to America and work for free, and the first institution of policing was the slave patrol, which was meant to hunt down and kill black people who had run away. So when we’re screaming, ‘Defund the police’, that’s what we are speaking to: we are reminding people that the police were not meant to protect and serve our community; they were meant to terrorise us. It’s a system built on traumatising black folks
Janelle Monáe shared her rich new song 'Turntables', taken from the upcoming documentary 'All In: The Fight For Democracy'; Knucks dropped his jazzy grime song 'Thames'; Painted Shield is a no-supergroup, made of Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard and Matt Chamberlain (former PJ), folk singer Mason Jennings and singer Brittany Davis, their new song 'I Am Your Country' is psychedelic, big, and dark; Eartheater's 'Volcano' is ethereal and calm; 'Letting Me Down' is a lovely song with a lovely video of the singer Margo Price dancing through ruins; Jesse Kivel just put some simple bass and a few guitar sounds in 'William'; the title says it all in Rodrigo y Gabriela's 'Electric Soul'.
Eight nominees in the category Album of the year: H.E.R. - 'H.E.R.', Brandi Carlile - 'By the Way, I Forgive You', Drake - 'Scorpion', Various Artists - 'Black Panther: The Album', Kacey Musgraves - 'Golden Hour', Post Malone - 'Beerbongs & Bentleys, Cardi B - 'Invasion of Privacy' and Janelle Monáe - 'Dirty Computer'. Grammy.com has full list of nominees.
"Being a queer black woman in America, someone who has been in relationships with both men and women – I consider myself to be a free-ass motherfucker" - that's how Janelle Monáe described herself in Rolling Stone interview. On her sexuality: "I read about pansexuality and was like, ‘Oh, these are things that I identify […]
