{"id":721,"date":"2018-04-24T10:54:35","date_gmt":"2018-04-24T08:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/?p=721"},"modified":"2018-04-27T10:55:54","modified_gmt":"2018-04-27T08:55:54","slug":"janelle-monae-dirty-computer-review-vagina-monologues-from-a-far-off-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/?p=721","title":{"rendered":"Janelle Mon\u00e1e: Dirty Computer review \u2013 vagina monologues from a far-off star"},"content":{"rendered":"

At first glance, Dirty Computer looks like business as usual for Janelle Mon\u00e1e. Like its predecessor, 2013\u2019s\u00a0The Electric Lady<\/a>, it\u2019s a concept album with a title that posits its creator as a part-human, part-cyborg figure, and it comes accompanied by a film in which the heroine struggles against a futuristic dystopia. Once more, the influence of\u00a0Prince<\/a>\u00a0hangs over proceedings. On The Electric Lady he was to be found duetting with Mon\u00e1e and firing off a typically incredible guitar solo on Givin\u2019 \u2018Em What They Love, and he was apparently working on Dirty Computer at the time of his death. His exact contributions are unclear, but echoes of his music resonate throughout: from the Let\u2019s Go Crazy-ish beat of closer Americans \u2013 as unexpectedly euphoric an excoriation of that country\u2019s current ills as you could wish to hear \u2013 to the chord changes in So Afraid, to the Kiss-like jangle of guitar that opens Screwed.<\/p>\n

And yet, there are clearly changes afoot on Dirty Computer. The one thing the gushing profiles and op-ed pieces about Mon\u00e1e never mention is that the singer can\u2019t get a hit: not one of the singles released from\u00a0The ArchAndroid<\/a>\u00a0or The Electric Lady even made the\u00a0Billboard Hot 100<\/a>. Dirty Computer takes some decisive steps to try and rectify this state of affairs. The more outr\u00e9 aspects of its predecessor, not least the filmic instrumental suites, are gone. You occasionally wonder if an understandable desire to cross over commercially might not be at the root of the album\u2019s less inspired moments: there\u2019s something commonplace and risk-averse about the pop-R&B backing of Crazy, Classic, Life and I Got the Juice. They\u2019re certainly not bad songs, but they pale next to Dirty Computer\u2019s highlights: Django Jane, on which Mon\u00e1e unleashes a ferocious rap, skilful and funny enough, as it shifts its focus from racism to sexism (\u201clet the vagina have a monologue\u201d), to suggest she could make a straightforward hip-hop album were she so inclined; the drifting ballad Don\u2019t Judge Me, shimmering with electronic effects that make it sound as if it was recorded under water; the irresistible 80s pop of Take a Byte.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, she reaches out beyond her tight-knit Wondaland collective to the kind of songwriters you pay to get you into the charts. Make Me Feel was co-written by Sweden\u2019s Mattman and Robin and current golden team Justin Tranter and Julia Michaels. The end result is a brilliantly executed, hook-laden and supremely funky Prince homage, a song that seems to have the same undeniable multi-platinum-selling pop power as Uptown Funk or pre-outcry Blurred Lines. You listen to it, then look at its chart placing \u2013 No 99 in the US, No 74 over here \u2013 and think: what does this woman have to do to impress a mainstream pop audience? Handstands?<\/p>\n

The other big difference is that Dirty Computer is supposed to be a \u201cvery deep, very personal\u201d album: so personal,\u00a0Mon\u00e1e recently claimed<\/a>, that she spent years wondering whether she could even release it. This would certainly come as a dramatic shift. In a world of oversharing, Mon\u00e1e has always cut a mysterious figure, so keen to conceal herself behind robotic personae that more than one interviewer has left wondering if her answers weren\u2019t rehearsed. Indeed, it\u2019s hard not to wonder if her failure to connect with a mass audience might be because her desire to work with concepts and characters, rather than unburden herself,<\/p>\n

If it is, then you wonder if Dirty Computer will change things. There\u2019s certainly a bit more detail about Mon\u00e1e in these songs \u2013 we learn that she has a liking for magic mushrooms and at some point had an interracial relationship that ended badly; we hear that she\u2019s riven with self-doubt and that her parents were too poor to buy her the latest trainers as a child \u2013 but you would never call it the stuff of painful, soul-baring confessional. Like the videos that preceded the album\u2019s release, it drops heavy hints about\u00a0Mon\u00e1e\u2019s oft-discussed sexuality \u2013 Pynk<\/a>\u00a0sounds like a Prince-esque paean to cunnilingus, rebooted as an anthem for female empowerment \u2013 while gently rebuffing further inquiries: \u201cDon\u2019t make me spell it out for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are plenty of reasons why Mon\u00e1e should be a huge star. She can\u00a0act<\/a>, sing, rap, pay homage to her idols without descending into pastiche, and she can write about the kind of hot-button topics that artists currently feel obliged to address regardless of whether they have anything to say about them, with real wit and infectiously righteous anger. But she is as elusive as ever, and her mystery remains intact. Without a true loosening of her poise, her position on the margins of pop could remain intact as well.<\/p>\n

This week Alexis also listened to<\/h2>\n

Paddy Kingsland \u2013\u00a0The Changes<\/a><\/strong>
\nUnexpected highlight of my Record Store Day trolley-dash: a 1976 Radiophonic soundtrack that\u2019s as eerie as the plot of the futuristic kids\u2019 drama it once accompanied.<\/p>\n

Source: https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/2018\/apr\/27\/janelle-monae-dirty-computer-review-vagina-monologues-from-a-far-off-star<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At first glance, Dirty Computer looks like business as usual for Janelle Mon\u00e1e. Like its predecessor, 2013\u2019s\u00a0The Electric Lady, it\u2019s a concept album with a title that posits its creator as a part-human, part-cyborg figure, and it comes accompanied by a film in which the heroine struggles against a futuristic dystopia. Once more, the influence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=721"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":724,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions\/724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}