Albums Of The Year: ‘Dirty Computer’ and The Liberation of Janelle Monáe

By Clarkisha Kent


On April 26, 2018, Janelle Monáe came out as pansexual. I remember because I practically sh-t myself as I frantically let one of my editors know that I wanted to write about it. I required space to digest what this announcement meant, considering that it had come only one day before the release of her third album and “emotion picture,” Dirty Computer.


What is a Dirty Computer? As Ms. Monáe told Beats 1’s Ebro Darden in April: “Songs one, two, three, four — that’s the reckoning. That’s the sting of being called n----r for the initial time by a white person,” she mentioned. “Feeling the sting of being called bitch by a gentleman for the opening time. Feeling the sting of being called queer or a f----t by homophobic people. It’s a reckoning and dealing with what it means to be called a Dirty Computer.”


Those first songs — “Dirty Computer”, ‘Crazy, Classic, Life”, “Take A Byte”, and “Jane’s Dream” — live with you, adorning your ears with defiant guitar chords and bombastic synthesizers. Dirty Computer's first act serves as one’s reckoning with self and why one’s self contends with the world around them — a global that may not readily accept them. The subsequent act contends with what this reckoning is like once you are a “other.” And the final act wrestles with the fear that accompanies any time as soon as you should confront that reckoning with your own truth.


This spirit of reckoning, of simultaneous anger at having had to hide oneself and of a cheeky jubilation that one no longer has to hide, is what sixth track “Django Jane” is all about. “We ain’t concealed no more, moonlit n---a, lit n---a!” Is what Jane declares (in obvious nods to Monáe’s turns in crucial and commercial smash hits Hidden Figures and Moonlight). And in the same song, she reminds us of the lines she’s had to toe her entire career: “Remember as soon as they used to mention I look also mannish?” It’s a callback to and callout of the sheer confusion several expressed for Monáe’s earlier affinity for nicely-pressed suits. “Make Me Feel”, an incredibly funky song where you could practically feel the presence of her mentor and friend Prince, serves a similar purpose here, also, albeit in a more eye catching style. In an eye catching display of sexual freedom and openness, Monáe sheds the constraints of her former persona and, at one point, humorously shuffles between sexy love interest Ché (Jayson Aaron) and even sexier love interest Zen (Tessa Thompson) under what has become lovingly referred to as “bisexual lighting.”


In short, this is where Monáe re-introduces herself as… herself.


Which is maybe the hugest statement she may possibly make so far. It serves as a nod to her Black and queer fans that we should give ourselves permission to be ourselves, however also as an admission that she was afraid to give herself that space in the past, on previous albums like The Electric Lady and The ArchAndroid where we saw her adopt the fine-tune ego of Cindi Mayweather. Monáe spoke at span about how Cindi, her android persona, represented the “other,” how she greatly related to being “the other,” and why it helped her cope with entering her chosen industry as a different kind of “other.” An “other” that defies, while paying homage, to others that preceded her. It makes her switch here, in Dirty Computer, that much more enthralling. Monáe reintroduces herself here as Janelle (or, rather, Jane 57821, per her emotion picture), someone who defied all your expectations coming into the industry; a queer Black woman who loves females, boys, and each person in between, and the same woman who probably inspired you to look up “pansexual” in the dictionary for the initial time in your life.


Still, that isn’t the last impactful thing Monáe does with this album. There’s something about Monae’s contentment with the fact that she's a Dirty Computer, someone who society has deemed also eclectic to function and has determined that she should be “cleaned.” However, she’s still here. She persists. This patience, to exist as one is, is also Monáe’s unique vision for America; she says just as much in “Americans” if she sings “love me for who I am," a message compounded upon by the line “I’m not America’s Nightmare, I’m the American Dream” that she belts in “Crazy, Classic, Life.” It illustrates, once again, that all her marginalizations, contradictions, and everything that makes her “dirty,” is uniquely, painfully, and inseparably American.


To put it plainly, Dirty Computer is a masterpiece. I don’t use that word lightly, yet what else do you call such a full body of work? It uses Monáe’s love for science fiction to gift us poignant visions of contemporary love, self-love, and acceptance infused with just the correct touch of Afrofuturism, nevertheless also adds a harrowing warning of what our futures may hold if we don’t fight people like our country’s current president, a male who has bragged about his ability to “grab [women] by the p*ssy.” What do you call an album that declares that if we are boxed in and made to abandon the most astonishing parts of ourselves — our Blackness, our queerness, or non-binaryness, etc. — Categorize in attempt to live a conforming life, then that life isn't worth living at all? That to forget ourselves, and what makes us special, could be to essentially die?


You call that album a masterpiece.


Janelle Monáe didn't just use this album as a possibility to liberate herself from the restrictions that the industry had placed her one. In liberating herself, Monáe liberated several of us as well. And so changed the course of her career, and also pop culture, forever.