Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer Helped My Queer Journey

This LGBTQ+ History Month, we’re asking writers to replicate on a second in queer popular culture historical past that has allowed them to expertise queer liberation in their very own lives. Check out our protection right here.

When Janelle Monáe launched “Make Me Feel,” the funky hit single off her third studio album, “Dirty Computer,” in February 2018, the tune consumed my ideas. I used to be 19 on the time, and the yr had been a major one for me — I had been coping with my dad and mom’ divorce, began rehashing non secular trauma, and shaved all my hair off. And on prime of all that, I started to query my sexuality.

But Monáe’s catchy lyrics — “That’s just the way you make me feel” — saved echoing in my head. The tune itself was instantly praised as a bisexual anthem, and Monáe’s music video with Tessa Thompson portrayed an irresistible flirtationship between the 2.

At that time in my life, I’d usually struggled to place my sexuality into phrases, so I’d run away from the considered labeling myself. But one thing modified that spring, and I do not assume it is a coincidence that “Dirty Computer” was launched alongside my very own journey, offering a soundtrack to feelings I’d lengthy saved deep inside myself.

Since childhood, I’d attended weekly Sunday service at my Baptist church with my dad and mom and went to a non-public Christian college from kindergarten to eighth grade. Years of homophobic, transphobic, and misogynist language was spouted from the mouths of my Sunday college academics and the dean at my college, however that by no means stopped me from listening to secular music.

I used to be 11 after I first heard Monáe’s music, and it was mockingly throughout a Kmart industrial for the back-to-school season, because it performed “Tightrope” that includes OutKast’s Big Boi. The catchy monitor — which occurred to be the debut single for 2010’s “The ArchAndroid” — feels timeless and nonetheless holds a spot on Monáe’s setlist for his or her ongoing “The Age of Pleasure” Tour. I sometimes listened to “The Electric Lady,” however one thing clicked when “Dirty Computer” was launched.

Perhaps it was as a result of, alongside “Dirty Computer”‘s launch, Monáe gifted their followers a complete 48-minute “emotion picture” of a dystopian and science-fiction scope right into a world that started along with her character Jane 57821 being labeled as “dirty,” which referenced the marginalized and oppressed. The movie and album additionally launched me to the idea of Afrofuturism. Little did I do know that Monáe’s utilization of Afrofuturism all through their discography portrayed a future filled with Black, queer individuals, one which I felt I might really belong to.

In highschool, I assumed that my allyship to the queer neighborhood ended there — however nothing extra. As I surrounded myself with extra buddies that recognized as LGBTQ+ and consumed extra queer media through Tumblr, although, I started rethinking my sexuality. I used to be astonished by Monáe’s unapologetic nature to their Blackness, womanhood, and queer identification, which is one thing that I did not know was attainable to do directly. Between the album’s empowerment anthems like “Django Jane” and colourful labia-lined pants from the “PYNK” music video, I shortly grew to become obsessive about the album and attended the “Dirty Computer” Tour thrice the next yr.

“Monáe perseveres past the misogynoir, and I’ve been taking notes.”

Five years later, your complete album feels timeless and as shifting because it did on the primary hear. In “I Like That,” Monáe made a reference to being referred to as “weird,” and as a Black lady who’s positively leaned on the “otherness” or different spectrum of Blackness, I really feel seen each time I hearken to it. Their androgynous, suit-forward fashion has been an inspiration for my evolving fashion, and their public stance to be a “free-ass motherf*cker” will all the time encourage me to specific myself to the fullest. Beyond fashion and character, I’ve admired Monáe’s method to sexual liberation amid on-line discourse that has revolved round others making an attempt to police their physique.

Regardless of the detrimental pushback they’ve acquired for his or her music movies or performances that remember sexual autonomy and Black our bodies, Monáe perseveres past the misogynoir, and I’ve been taking notes ever since my 19-year-old self first listened to “Make Me Feel.”

Indeed, the summer time after “Dirty Computer” was launched, I attended my first Pride and have not missed an annual celebration since. Although I have never come out to a majority of my household, I might hope that my expression of Blackness and gender identification can silently communicate for itself. As I revisit Monáe’s discography, I’m grateful for his or her enduring queer bops.

In September, I even attended Monáe’s “The Age of Pleasure” Tour at Brooklyn’s Kings Theatre. The three-act present was the second sold-out cease in New York City, and though the evening was a precursor to town’s latest flooding, you’d do not know that Brooklyn was plagued with rain, because of Monáe’s dazzling efficiency. Described by the singer as a “safe oasis,” the two-hour set was an ode to the pleasure politics of “The Age of Pleasure” whereas paying homage to the revolutionary queer anthems from “Dirty Computer” and “The ArchAndroid.”

Five years in the past, I could have identified little or no concerning the intersection of my queer identification and Black womanhood, however because of Monáe’s artistry, I’m in a position to commonly replicate alone revolutionary politics and apply them to my life.