Tag Archives: music

Janelle Monáe: Magical Black Womanist Revolution Music

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Guest post by Maria Jackson. You can read her last guest essay here.

I have been a fan of Janelle Monáe since 2008’s Metropolis: The Chase Suite. Hearing her music was like hearing my inner most thoughts, desires, and interests manifest. Her electric, bouncing, soulful, sci-fi sound paired with strong, storytelling lyrics of a quest for freedom had me hooked. Everything Monáe has presented and produced has been created thoughtfully and with a clear-eyed purpose.

Janelle-MonáeMonáe has been hyper aware of her image and how others perceive her ever since she came onto the scene over seven years ago. Preferring to be covered up than baring skin or being “revealing” was choice dictated not only by style, but also by conscious and personal comfort. Her iconic look, bouncy pompadoured coif with a black and white tuxedo (although her wardrobe has expanded and her hair has been down recently) is a uniform in tribute not only to her parents, but also to working class people:

“When I started my musical career I was a maid, I used to clean houses and the girls I used to clean houses with used to always beg me to sing while we cleaned. I lived in a boarding house with five other girls and I would sell my $5 CD out of my room. My mother was a proud janitor, my step-father who raised me worked at the post office, and my father was a trash man. They all wore a uniform and that’s why I wear my uniform to honor them. I have work to do. I have people to uplift. I have people to inspire. And today I wear my uniform proudly.”

 
Beginning with narrative Cindi Mayweather vs. The Wolfmasters, much of Monáe’s musical catalogue tells the story of a future society where androids are sold at auction for the pleasure of their buyers. Specifically androids are the “others” whose independence and freedom are feared by the very same who have created and own them.

In Cindi’s musical sojourn to be free, Monáe references negro spirituals and melds them with the origins of modern sci-fi, citing the influences of Philip K. Dick and the 1927 silent film, Metropolis. Fusing retro fashions of suspenders and the pompadour, while blending sci-fi vision with the frustration and joy entangled in the current realities of living as marginalized person in the U.S., Monáe’s artistry has always been about the very revolutionary act of bringing the outsiders to the forefront of their own stories about love, freedom, humanity, and self-acceptance.

These womanist themes of living at the intersections have continued through each album reaching a commercial and pop culture peek in her 2013 release of Q.U.E.E.N featuring Erykah Badu. Q.U.E.E.N, which stands for Queer, Untouchables, Emigrants, Excommunicated, Negroid, tackles themes of respectability politics, morality, black femininity, white supremacy, inequality and poverty. So, when she and the other Wondaland artists spoke up about police brutality during their performance on the TODAY Show (and were cut off), no one should have been surprised.

Earlier that day the Wondaland artists released Hell You Talmbout (a rework or sequel to the Electric Lady bonus track of the same name) a percussive protest jam made for marching where the names of men, women, boys, and girls killed by police brutality are shouted. Monáe described the meaning behind the song her Instagram:

“This song is a vessel. It carries the unbearable anguish of millions. We recorded it to channel the pain, fear, and trauma caused by the ongoing slaughter of our brothers and sisters. We recorded it to challenge the indifference, disregard, and negligence of all who remain quiet about this issue. Silence is our enemy. Sound is our weapon. They say a question lives forever until it gets the answer it deserves… Won’t you say their names?”

 
The only way you could be unaware of Monáe’s views on Black life in America is to be wholly ignorant of her body of work.

Guest essayist Maria Jackson is a thirty-something, 4th generation Georgia Peach who writes for Shakefire.com and can be heard trading opinions and laughter on the Nerdgasm Noire podcast, with Arsenal For Democracy columnist De Ana and others. Co-owner and full time fatshionista for luvfattax.com.

Policing Black Women’s Emotions and Opinions

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The bigger picture framing Nicki Minaj’s frustrated tweets about the VMAs.

Nicki Minaj at the 2010 VMAs. (Photo Credit: Philip Nelson / flickr)

Nicki Minaj at the 2010 VMAs. (Photo Credit: Philip Nelson / flickr)

I’ve said before that there is an unwritten code of conduct that Black women must adhere to in order to be taken seriously, listened to, or even allowed to live.

Most other people will quickly claim it’s the attitudes of Black women that causes us to be dehumanized, but that is untrue. Even when we’re being polite, any disagreement from Black women is treated as aggression. So where and when are we allowed to speak up if we’re being mistreated, when everything we say is considered an attack?

On Tuesday, rapper Nicki Minaj took to Twitter to vent about the VMA nominations. Nicki is by far the most popular female rapper out there right now. She has found major pop success as well. But she has always been very vocal about how Black women in the music industry often don’t get the recognition they deserve for their work.

She’s no stranger to the way the public sees her (and other Black women) either, so in her tweets on Tuesday, Nicki Minaj states plainly her disappointment at her record breaking video for Anaconda being snubbed for Video of the Year. Nicki points out that although her video was a viral success, broke Vevo records, and was even parodied on the Ellen DeGeneres show, her video did not receive a nomination. She also points out that her video was a celebration of women’s bodies, but it seemed that this type of celebration was only acceptable on thinner artists.

Then this happened.

Within the hour, articles popped up all over the internet about a “feud” between the two women, stating that Nicki Minaj had attacked Taylor in her tweets, even though Taylor Swift’s name wasn’t mentioned once, nor had Nicki been malicious towards other artists.

Nicki, in her own words, was pointing out where she saw how misogyny played a part in who was considered worthy of accolades and who was looked over. She was pointing out a complex problem in the most direct way possible. But it seemed that the media wanted to skip over her entire point and instead focus on a non-existent feud between the her and Taylor Swift.

Taylor Swift’s tweets did more than just derail a real and important point that Nicki Minaj was trying to make. Aside from being the most obvious case of a hit dog hollering, Taylor’s tweet demonstrated a huge issue that mainstream White Feminism has when it comes to dealing with Black women and other People of Color.

They don’t get that our experiences are different from theirs and often try an chastise us for perceived slights against them, while ignoring the real ones we face. Although Nicki Minaj’s tweets are a criticism of the VMAs, Taylor tries to make it seem as if Nicki is “pit[ting] women against women” for simply speaking about her experience as a thick and Black woman in the music industry.

Instead of understanding that Nicki’s experience as a woman is different from what her own might be, Taylor instead falls back to a very narrow — and White — view of what life is like as a woman.
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