2018 was a landmark year for Janelle Monáe, and thereby a landmark year for music in general. Over a decade into her career, she released the magnum opus that is Dirty Computer, where she shed the android armour she’s been donning for years and gave us a peek into the real and raw Janelle.
But that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been giving us insight into her life, her politics and herself throughout the years, so we decided to take a look, and rank, every Monáe single to date.
17. What Is Love
Of course, Janelle Monáe is just as known for her acting prowess today as she is her artistry, but you might not know that her first ever film role was only a speaking role in the animated Dreamworks flick Rio 2. Naturally, she lent her vocal talents to the lead single from the soundtrack, titled What Is Love, and it is completely inoffensive, family-friendly, island fun.
16. Heroes
Okay, Monáe has to be the first artist to ever be at the helm for ad-campaign songs for both Pepsi and Coca-Cola. Take them for all they’re worth bb!
15. Lettin Go
The innocence and oblivious optimism that beams out of Monae’s voice on her debut single is almost palpable. Monáe’s entire discography is anchored in the concept of hope in the face of strife and Lettin Go proves that that has been the message from day one. It melts those futuristic R&B and soul sounds together seamlessly – a skill that she’s only perfected since - and, despite being released when she was just 18, shows a sonic wisdom that would later become synonymous with her.
14. Violet Stars Happy Hunting!
The first song that marked Monáe’s Metropolis concept album series that covered every record up until 2018’s Dirty Computer, Violet Stars Happy Hunting! is peak Android behaviour. It’s drenched in Afrofuturism and wild sci-fi fantasy, a la Black Panther, but given that sweet Janelle touch. Also marking the start of the story of Cindy Mayweather, a droid who fell in love with a human in Metropolis, Monáe started forging herself as the visionary she’s since become.
13. Open Happiness
Also featuring Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump, Panic! At The Disco's Brendon Urie, Gym Class Heroes' Travis McCoy and Cee-Lo Green, never has late stage capitalism sounded this good.
12. Electric Lady (feat. Solange)
Sometimes, Monáe shines brightest when she strips things back to basics. Such is the case with the Solange-featuring Electric Lady. It’s a song that doesn’t need the depth of some of her other work, and its lyrics about empowering the woman beside you are drenched in sunny melodies and sizzling guitar riffs.
11. I Like That
If Electric Lady was about empowering the woman beside her, then I Like That is Janelle empowering herself. It’s the impossibly cool ode to herself, flaws and all, as she embraces the paradoxical nature that exists within all of us. If any lyric of Janelle Monáe’s best describes her, it’s “I'm always left of centre and that's right where I belong.” She takes pride in her otherness, sources strength from it and, as such, urges you to do the same.
10. Dance Apocalyptic
When thinking of 2009 – 2013 Janelle Monáe, it’s hard not to think of the boundless, explosive energy that she packed into each song, each video and each performance. No song is more indicative of that then the festival-ready Dance Apocalyptic. It’s a little kitsch and it’s a little chaotic but, more than anything else, it is a lot of fun. She bounces off the walls and barely stops to take a breath, and when you listen to it, you’ll be doing the same.
9. Django Jane
Django Jane is Janelle Monáe’s war horn. It’s a fierce and ferocious as Monáe cements herself in the game – she, and all her sisters beside her, aren’t going anywhere. It’s by all definitions a protest song, a fearless presentation of self and an anthem of her womanhood. The patriarchy can either step aside or be run down – she doesn’t mind either way.
8. Primetime (feat. Miguel)
It is rare that we see a tender Janelle. With a discography that is largely fast-paced and electrifying, it would seem strange that one of her brightest moments is in the scorching hot duet with Miguel – Primetime. Sexy slow jams are Miguel’s bread and butter, but Monáe slides in to that pocket with ease. Their booming voices carry the song and intertwine with one another. It’s incredibly steamy and vulnerable, cloaked in orchestral grandeur and the neon buzz of a late, late night.
7. PYNK (feat. Grimes)
It’s the quintessential “I am woman” anthem of 2018. Monáe’s entire existence in the music sphere is empowering, but PYNK is her at her most in-your-face – just how she wanted. A song that is really incomplete without the spectacular video, PYNK serves as a strong testament to womanhood and pussy power in all its forms, and it makes damn sure you know it too. Following the same unshakable confidence and assertion that Django Jane has, PYNK is a sex positive jam whose melody is stripped back just so you can hear Monáe crystal clear.
6. Many Moons
Monáe never does anything by small proportions, but in 2008 she gave us her most epic work yet in Many Moons. It’s an entire saga compacted into five-and-a-half minutes of relentless energy. The whole Metropolis universe in confined within its unique, hard-to-catch beat. It’s a high concept track that is so astoundingly original it is difficult to compare it to anything that came before or since.
5. Tightrope (feat. Big Boi)
Tightrope is probably the song that gave Monáe the break she’d so long deserved, and it’s not hard to hear why. It completely hyperbolises everything that makes Monáe’s music her own. It’s unapologetically fun, it merges sounds of yesterday and tomorrow and makes them feel fresh and it feels completely free. Monáe has no fear of falling on Tightrope – instead she’s a daredevil, doing cartwheels, flips and precarious jumps all while making it look so damn easy.
4. Cold War
Theatrics and drama flows through Janelle’s very veins. She is at home when her creativity can flow to the broadest stretches of the imagination and her ideas aren’t confined in the slightest. So naturally, when she delivers the scorching Cold War, and its beautifully understated video, it might come as a bit of a shock. But the scale of emotion – from bravery to despair and from hopelessness to pride – that pours out of her voice is palpable, as Monáe continued to build her legacy as one of the most daring artists of recent memory.
3. Yoga (feat. Jidenna)
When Janelle goes full pop, she does it right. Yoga – the only song she released in between The Electric Lady and Dirty Computer – is unashamedly pop and unapologetically sexual but still done in a way only she could. It’s one for the Beyoncé and Rihanna fans out there, as Monáe melts elements of trap, EDM and hip-hop together and gives it a sparkling pop kick. Chuck in Jidenna’s saucy lyrics delivered with his rich voice, and you have the lusty counterpart to the deep, intense love of PrimeTime.
2. Q.U.E.E.N. (feat. Erykah Badu)
The lead single to 2013’s The Electric Lady was a brave, unmistakable feminist protest that positioned Monáe as the leader she is. As the bassline struts along with sex appeal and coolness matched by Monáe herself, she bounces back and forth sarcastically questioning whether all the things that make her ‘different’ or ‘dirty’ in the eyes of the straight, white, male gaze and then puts in the extra effort to shove it all in your face. In her best rap performance of her career, she fearlessly calls out the structures that work against her despite the promise of equality – “She who writes the movie owns the script and the sequel/So why ain't the stealing of my rights made illegal?” – and reminds us of her raison d’etre: she is so much more than the labels placed upon her.
1. Make Me Feel
After years of using her using her Cindi Mayweather android character to get her message out, 2018 was the year Janelle Monáe stepped out and publicly embraced herself as the strong, queer, black woman she is – and in the process gave us her best song to date. Make Me Feel is a bi/pansexual anthem for the ages, managing to combine funky nostalgia with sexy futurism. It’s honest, it’s fun, and it’s human. If we’re a world of dirty computers, Janelle Monáe is the motherboard and she’s making sure her message is screened loud, clear and so fucking real.
