Janelle Monáe Looks Back On Debut Album ‘The ArchAndroid’
Janelle Monáe has spoken about the way her music has been received over her career and looked back at her debut album, The ArchAndroid, in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
When asked whether she feels limited by the way your music has been classified Monáe reflected,”Music is just about a feeling and people gravitate towards the feeling. You can say,’I’m going to do a jazz album’ or ‘I’m going to do this or that,’ but if the feeling’s not there, I don’t think people will talk about it. If you can capture a feeling and an honesty and a frequency that people want to make their soundtrack, then you’ve got a hit, you’ve got something special.
“Once I knew that people understood the feeling that I was trying to get across, the breaking away from expectations, creatively and musically, and the community that I was trying to make and the journey that I was on, that gave me the confidence that I needed. And it wasn’t about everybody. It was about the right people.”
The interview came ahead of her appearance at the inaugural I Made Rock ‘N’ Roll Festival, which falls on a significant day for the singer: “I’m all about the element of surprise, but the night is going to be even more special because May 18 is the anniversary of the day The ArchAndroid came out, so it’ll be cool to play this festival and celebrate it.
“That album meant so much for me because I wanted it to reflect my nonbinary way of looking at music and blurring the lines when it comes to genre. If you listen to that album, it sort of foreshadowed the music that I would make and the freedom that I would have musically. It was sort of like a blueprint to what I was telling the world I was going to do and that I wasn’t going to be boxed in simply because you don’t understand Blackness in relationship to science fiction, in relationship to hip-hop, to rock’n’roll, to punk, to classical, to opera, to jazz. That album gave me freedom