When singer, actress, and musical visionary Janelle Monáe dropped her third studio album Dirty Computer in April, it was a landmark moment. Recorded under the mentorship of Prince, it’s Monaé’s Afro-futurist love letter to women, people of color, and LGBTQIA folks.
“Dirty Computer is really an album that celebrates marginalized groups today,” she explained in a recent interview with “Ebro in the Morning” on Hot 97. “Think about what it means to have the color of your skin or who you love be looked at as a bug or a virus or something to get rid of… We have the leader of the free world and [Vice President] Mike Pence, who still believes in conversion therapy.”
Accompanying Dirty Computer’s release is Monáe’s excellent Emotion Picture, a visual album set in a near-future dystopia where certain people are scooped up and isolated to have their memories wiped clean in an attempt to “fix their bugs.”
