Unique talent

At Stylist’s photoshoot, Monáe is a force to be reckoned with. Under a pink spotlight – that colour again – she pulls old-school Hollywood poses, breaking off frequently to ensure she looks just right, that she’s representing herself exactly how she wants. Her trademark monochrome tuxedos have been put away today: “The reason I wear my tuxedos is to put a middle finger up to a society that says I have to look a certain way to become successful,” she reveals. Instead, she’s sparkling in sequins and glitter. She picks the soundtrack from Hitchcock’s Vertigo, so the room booms with drama – somewhat overwhelming at 11 o’clock on a Monday morning. “I’ve found that I prefer to feel like I’m in a movie when I’m doing anything that has to do with photoshoots,” she explains. “It puts me in a very cinematic space.”

When we sit down to chat, Monáe is decompressing in a white dressing gown and Gucci sports socks. She’s an intense presence, with pin-sharp intellect that dares you to get on her wrong side. She speaks in long, explanatory sentences, answering questions with the kind of flourishes you’d find in a politician or a preacher. There’s not much of the wry humour she’s been showing off in recent videos in evidence today – she’s thoughtful and considerate, and very focused and serious – but, as she’s said before, she means business.

On her first album, The ArchAndroid (2010), she spent a lot of time performing as her alter-ego, a robot from the far future called Cindi Mayweather. For Dirty Computer, she’s back to being herself. “I did spend a lot of the past years sitting in my basement, going to the recording studio, trying to decide if I was going to tell Cindi’s story or if I was going to tell Janelle Monáe’s,” she says. “I think Janelle Monáe won this time around.”

There’s a new frankness to Dirty Computer. Was it important to show the world that side of you?

Vulnerability and honesty were what mattered this time around. I always knew that I had to write this project. I had this title already, but I just wasn’t ready. I needed to live more. I needed to have something more to fight for. I hate that these events [since Trump’s election] have happened, but in a sense, it’s allowed me to realise that there’s too much at stake to be silent. It was important that people were able to understand me as a more complex, complicated human being. There’s too much at stake to wrap things in a bow, or to wrap sh*t in a bag with some rose-petal wrapping paper to make it look better. No. This is where we are, and if we don’t make some significant changes within ourselves, and as a community and as a nation, we’re screwed. We’re f**ked.

What changed for you with this album?

I had to have conversations with myself. I had to really understand, for instance, in [recent single] Django Jane, how I felt when I said, “We gon’ start a motherf**kin’ pussy riot, or we gon’ have to put ’em on a pussy diet.” I hadn’t really opened up that side of me. I needed to get over what I thought anybody’s expectations were gonna be for me. I had to have real conversations with Janelle, like, ‘OK girl, you are an African-American woman, you use the word “n*gger” and you feel like you can use that’. Because I am that. I’m taking the power out of that word, you know. I wouldn’t want a white person saying that to me because that’s not their word. That’s not something that they have been oppressed by.

Janelle Monáe on why she's now at “peace” with herself