Spare Me The Janelle Monae Think Pieces

Published in

ZORA

4 min readMay 16

Sorry, Black women don’t owe you one-dimensionality in their artistry.

Photo source: Unsplash via Jovaughn Stephens

Janelle Monae is having the time of her life leading up to her new album release, and the girls are upset. The Age of Pleasure is set to hit the streets on 6.9.23! (I’m sure the date is purely coincidental, *wink*.) And as someone who has been a fan of her virtually her entire career, I find it annoying that so many people are writing misguided think pieces about her so-called transformation. So, I decided to write a little think piece of my own.

Humble Beginnings

It took many people forever to discover the insane talent that is Janelle Monae simply because she never fit into the boxes they usually feed off of. She’s an incredible talent who can sing, dance, and up until recent years, used to show very little skin in public. She has spoken many times about why that was.

And in case you don’t know the story, Janelle Monae used to dress almost exclusively in black and white suits as a tribute to her working-class mom and grandmother who helped her become who she is today.

To be clear, she was never actually wearing these costumes in the name of modesty. Instead, they were meant to be an ode to minimalist living and how the working class is the star player in the lives of many. And she really made the style her own.

So, I’m not quite sure why everyone is holding her to some chaste standard she never even set for herself. But, nevertheless, here we are. I’ve seen plenty of long-winded tweets about how much “she’s changed” and how disappointed people are in her transformation.