Janelle Monáe: She's Got the Juice

Janelle Monáe’s existence—from her wardrobe to her music—defines her sense of self through reliance on her roots. She draws direct inspiration from her family forbearers, as well as from the larger traditions of Black American culture. However, the practice of using the uniforms and musical constructions of those who came before her flies in the face of what Todd Lubart considers to be Western creativity. He says that in the West, creativity is defined by what’s both novel—“original, not predicted, and distinct from previous work”—and appropriate—“is useful or fills a need.” Monáe’s work is purposely similar to previous work. Its genius, then, lies, in its appropriateness. Janelle Monáe’s pop culture presence is uniquely suited to the social politics of the early twenty first century.

Although Monáe has recently broken from her fashion modus operandi, for many years she was known for her red-carpet uniform of black-and-white. And it was a uniform indeed. In a 2013 interview with the Huffington Post, Monáe said, “I’m a minimalist by heart, but a lot of it had to do with me wanting to have a uniform like the working class, like my mom and my grandmother.” Interestingly, despite purposely attempting to recreate something from the past, Monáe’s wardrobe is instead something refreshing and unique; Vogue’s Janelle Okwodu observed that in replicating the uniforms of the past, “Monáe has crafted one of Hollywood’s most individual wardrobes.”

Monáe’s most recent album, Dirty Computer, has also drawn on the historical. Specifically, she wanted to include the legacy of Afrofuturism in her music. In an interview with Billboard Magazine, Monáe said she wanted to reflect and pay homage to Afrofuturism because “I feel like it’s a great time to be presenting the projects that you have in your heart. If you grew up being rejected or teased for being a science-fiction nerd or geek and you were black, to me this is the time you would be celebrated,” and for her, the genre of Afrofuturism (think Olivia Butler or Black Panther) is a perfect way to “[tell] our stories from our mouths and through our own eyes.” In this way, Monáe’s recycled sound profile is appropriate—it fills a need to tell stories in an individual-centric light.

Janelle Monáe’s work is very creative because of how appropriate it is to the current climate, and I believe that although it does not fit Lubart’s definition of novel, applying an old aesthetic in a new context does indeed create a newness that allows the work to be truly creative. By doing so, Monáe creates a fresh look on the history of herself, and fulfulls what she views as her artistic responsibility: “it’s about taking a journey that might not be often taken, and in doing so, being an example of the belief that we don’t all have to take the same coordinates to reach our destination.”

Photo: http://www.jmonae.com/