Since the publication of The Wizard of Oz in September of 1900, citizens throughout the world have come to realize that fantasies can come from the tiniest, nondescript places, and that the most wondrous journeys can begin in your own backyard? especially if your home is located in Greater Kansas City, Kansas. Like Dorothy, the aspiring producer, songstress and actress Janelle Monáe is a native of Kansas. And like Dorothy and other famous fairy tale heroines, Janelle has a big, bright smile and grand ambitions that involve leaps of imagination and different ways of seeing the world.
This imaginative sensibility started early at the age of nine when Janelle Monáe decided that the world should be a different color: ?preferably purple.? Thinking back on it now, Janelle says, ?I was different. Of course, I did the normal, little-diva-in-training things like running up phone bills by dialing 1-800-Be-A-Star and singing Anita Baker?s ?Sweet Love? for anyone that would listen?but I was also on some different stuff?there was a lot of confusion and nonsense where I grew up so I reacted by creating my own little world?I began to see how music could change lives, and I began to dream about a world where every day was like anime and Broadway, where music fell from the sky and anything could happen??
In pursuit of this world, Janelle moved to New York after high school so that she could attend The American Musical and Dramatics Academy, a musical theatre conservatory program. In this program, she fell in love with the soaring melodies and harmonic possibilities of classical music, as well as labored endlessly onstage and off to perfect her vocal instrument. Deciding to change the world beyond Broadway, she soon headed to Atlanta, the home of progressive soul and hip hop music to start her music career. ?Musically, I was ready to do something big, wild and adventurous. And I knew if Atlanta was big enough for the vision of Outkast, it?d be big enough for me.?
Within eight months of arriving in Atlanta, Janelle had met Nate ?Rocket? Wonder and Chuck Lightning of Wondaland Productions and begun work on her masterful debut album Metropolis. ?Metropolis is the place I?ve been dreaming about all these years. A city inside your head. It?s an adventure the music brings alive.? Like a daring epic film, the album concerns a cybergirl?s struggle to love in the futuristic city of Metropolis. With such innovative subject matter, it is no surprise that Metropolis doesn?t sound like your average R & B record. In fact, many of the songs sound simply otherworldly: ?Violet Stars Happy Hunting? sounds like a frantic Disney song played by the Sex Pistols; the achingly beautiful, string-laden ?Cindi? sounds like a moving Broadway classic crafted by Rodgers and Hammerstein; ?My Favorite Nothing? mixes doo-wop sass with swirling new-wave synths, electrifying handclaps and urgent rhythm guitars; ?Lettin Go? moonwalks on a bed of bubbling synthbass, Philly soul strings, and hypersoul vocals; while ?Metropolis? is a soulful blue waltz through a Bladerunner-like world where cyborgs fall in love with humans at their own peril.
In the summer of 2005, Janelle performed ?Dear Mr. President,? a soulful, Curtis-Mafyfield-like political burner, complete with strutting bass and blaring horns, for an audience of one: the hip hop legend and musical innovator known as Big Boi. After hearing this single song, Big Boi was an ecstatic believer. Positive that he had found the leading lady of his new Purple Ribbon label, he quickly gave the emerging talent a starring role in his new enterprise: two song placements on his compilation record Big Boi Presents?Got Purp Vol. 2, as well as the opportunity to write and record on several songs on the forthcoming Outkast album.
However, after coming from a closed studio session with Andre 3000, Janelle is surprisingly grounded and clear-eyed about the future: ?I feel so blessed. I have so many people I look up too: Bjork, Outkast, Fiona Apple, Janet Jackson, Madonna?I want to take the things they?ve taught me to the stars?.?
