What does it mean to be "cool"? I don't know. Maybe if I were able to adequately describe it, then it wouldn't be cool anymore. The mysteriousness is part of the cool. I do know that I can feel it when I am in its presence, the cool. I would guess that it's some mixture of doing what you do really well and being who you are completely effortlessly and without an agenda. But who's to say? Not me. I'm not cool.
Janelle Monáe, on the other hand, is the coolest motherfucker on the planet. After spending a week with her music, I am confident that I will never experience anyone cooler. I'm going to talk about the music and how great it is too, don't worry, but I want you to know right from the beginning that this is my main takeaway from this week of Record Club—Janelle Monáe is cool.
You ever wonder why, in certain movies and TV shows, there are hangers-on who are always surrounding the cool kids, like little annoying wannabes who are always just outside the inner circle and seem to be cool with that? Think about those three jabronis in Grease who are always palling around with Danny and Kenickie. Doody, Sunny, and Putzie are not cool, and yet they are so enamored with Kenickie and the way he cocks his head and lights his cigarette with a fireball lighter that they can't help but dress like him and hang around him constantly, just to be in his presence and get a little taste of the leftover coolness. That's me with Janelle Monáe this week. I am not cool, but I'd gladly make a fool of myself to just be in the presence of that cool. I'd lick Janelle's boots if she asked me to, and I'd like it.
I think she knows it, too. "I am not America's nightmare, I am the American cool," she sings in "Crazy, Classic, Life." But the funny thing about it is when I hear her say something like "I am cool," then I can't help but give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she is using the "royal I," and saying that her whole aesthetic is the cool part. She's not bragging, she's planting a flag. To be yourself is to be cool. The self that Janelle Monáe embodies is cool as fuck.
The music, obviously, is a big part of that. Look, let's acknowledge that Monáe's music exists in the same context and framework as some incredibly uncool pop music stars. You'll find her on Top 40 radio just like you'd find Lizzo, or Jack Harlow, or Olivia Rodrigo, or Harry Styles. Not to say that these other pop stars aren't talented (success doesn't necessarily equal talent, but the two are related). I'm just saying that Janelle Monáe, unlike these other artists, makes it seem effortless, and completely without ulterior motive. She's not obsessed with her own branding like Lizzo. She is the anti-Harlow in that she is overflowing with charisma. She has agency in her music, and is its central figure, unlike the pop industry-manufactured Rodrigo. She incorporates a vast range of musical styles into her catalogue, but unlike Styles, it never feels like a costume.
I have an unusually sensitive bullshit detector. This Holden Caulfield-esque flaw has also allowed me to know, to feel, when an artist is being genuine or acting the part that the great pop music machine requires them to be. The bullshit detector has been completely silent this week. I detect no phoniness. This is Janelle Monáe. So either she is most sincere and real pop artist of our generation, or she is so talented a bullshit artist that she fooled even me. Either way, I say we praise her for it.
I mean, she just does so much on Dirty Computer. I know that the main role is "pop star," but she finds so many variations on it, and she does each one of them masterfully. She can out-Prince Prince on "Make Me Feel." A fourth single and maybe seventh-best song like "I Like That" can feel like it would be the best song on a Beyoncé album. She can do Missy Elliott and straight-up rap on "Django Jane." On "Dirty Computer," she can even allude to the granddaddy of pop music, the Beach Boys, and then make Brian Wilson himself sing backup harmonies. It's a thrill, running all over the map like this.
And it's cool, too, is what I'm still trying to say. I think it's especially cool to consider the context of this album and its themes, that Janelle Monáe was able to express this much joy and celebration from deep within the trump era. There is power in saying that your pussy grabs back. There is strength in loudly proclaiming who you are when there is a sizable portion of your country who wants to punish you for being who you are. I feel pride when Monáe calls America "my country," because it's true, but it requires courage all the same, since there will be pushback from people who claim that a queer black female cannot be a "true" American. In these contexts, Dirty Computer broadcasts a gigantic FUCK YOU to all those who disagree with these self-evident truths, to all those who are, in fact, very uncool.
Watching the Dirty Computer movie (sorry, emotion picture) did nothing to disavow of these notions, by the way. Sure, it mainly consisted of music videos strung together by a somewhat hokey sci-fi tale. But you watch it yourself, and you tell me that Janelle Monáe doesn't come off like the coolest person on earth every second she's on screen. Whether it's donning the signature tux and rapping off the throne, going Blade Runner and having a party at the bottom of an empty pool, or even dancing in the desert while wearing a ridiculous pair of pink vagina-shaped parachute pants, she epitomizes the ultimate cool (though, to be fair on that last example, it's hard not to look cool when probably-partner, similarly insanely attractive Tessa Thompson's head is popping out between your legs).
Though it's not all aesthetics. I'm trying to imagine a Janelle Monáe who acts this cool but who doesn't have catchy music to back it up, and I can't do it. The hooks are essential to the coolness. The incredible funk of "Take a Byte" somehow finds the middle ground between robot Robyn and cheesy Toto (via John Mayer? nah, takes the "Africa" riff in the opposite direction). The dance-through-the-apocalypse jam of "Screwed" is a guitar-led shout-along. I love the stutter-step beat of "I Got the Juice," and its production practically mandates the Pharrell feature.
Monáe just has this way of making the music seem so much bigger than it actually is. And that's cool because there is zero flopsweat produced in the act of leveling up. It's effortless. There are so many moments when a song starts chill and then all of a sudden, with like one or two tiny modulations, it all of a sudden feels fucking huge. My favorite example is on "Pynk," which is mostly just a sparse robot synth and finger snaps, but then when it slides into that chorus, it all of sudden feels EPIC, and really all she does is add a big guitar riff. Nothing else changes, and yet, everything changes. How cool is that?
So cool. Everything about this is cool. Everything about Janelle Monáe is cool. Well, except maybe for her voice acting in the live action remake of The Lady and the Tramp. That was not cool. But the fact that I've seen that movie at least two dozen times and still decided that the hook of this album review should be "Janelle Monáe is cool" should tell you all you need to know about how cool Janelle Monáe is.
I just couldn't help it. There is no other way to write about this extremely special musician. I'd never sat down and listened to Dirty Computer, or any of Monáe's music for that matter, before this week. I was completely fucking blown away. How did it take me this long to understand? That probably goes to show you how uncool I am. It's all good. I just appreciated being in the presence of cool.
GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5
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