Tag: janelle monae (page 1 of 1)

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December 15, 2018 / 0 Comments

2018 in Music

“Miss me with that bullshit. You ain’t really wild, you a tourist. I be blackin’ out with the purest.”

— Kendrick Lamar

Unapologetically black. That’s how I liked my music this year. Not just black, per se, (though that was where my head was tbh) but unapologetically whatever it was trying to be. That could be unapologetically pop. Unapologetically fun. Unapologetically woke. Whatever. Just make me feel like it’s real, that I’m real, that who I am and what I am is not only okay but brilliant.

King’s Dead did that for me from its very first notes. Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock, James Blake, and Future with my favorite of all the songs on the epic Black Panther Album (Music from and Inspired by the Movie) is ultimately a villain’s anthem but one that reeks of authenticity. It sounds like California. Black California from the bay to the South of LA. When Jay Rock says, “My name gon’ hold up. My team gon’ hold up,” I feel that shit.

My last.fm charts will say that All the Starz from the same album is my top track, but it’s treating King’s Dead from the Black Panther album and Jay Rock’s Redemption as two separate tracks. Combined, it’s close to 100 spins.

The 2018 Mixtape

My methodology this year for figuring out my faves was to look at each month separately rather than focus on my listens in aggregate though those numbers were a secondary factor. My mixtape reflects my favorite song of each month from January through November as well as my favorite discovery.

I like this approach better because it acknowledges the rhythms of time more than the inertia of routine and the impact of the Spotify algorithms on my listening behavior. So instead of seeing a playlist dominated by a few albums and artists, you’ll hear some tracks that I forgot I loved right next to the records that I played the hell out of for a few weeks at a time. There’s a little symmetry here as well with a song featuring Sza—artist of my favorite track of 2017—and ends with a song by Janet Jackson who I have admired since I was knee-high and who just got nominated for the Rock & Roll hall of fame. She’s still got it.

The Albums

I haven’t looked at many of the end-of-year lists yet, so I don’t know what the consensus is around the top releases though I’m guessing some of my faves like Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer and Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy are on them. I know they are both GRAMMY nominated for Album of the Year. They weren’t my very top albums this year despite trying hard to convince myself otherwise.

Black Panther—both the compilation mentioned above and the Ludwig Göransson score—set the tone for everything I would listen to for the rest of the year. It primed me for Jay Rock’s full length, an artist I wasn’t checking for before King’s Dead and his instant anthem WIN which was the theme for the LA Sparks season well before it was played at nearly every sporting event the rest of the year. The score re-ignited my interest in film compositions which led to an April filled with the soundtracks to Arrival and Annihilation and Westworld and many a Black Mirror episode. Combined, Kendrick Lamar’s curated playlist for the best black popcorn movie ever released and that score was the best thing going all year. Full stop.

Beyond that, I enjoyed grown folks hip hop from Beyoncé and her husband and Phonte. I liked expansive sounds from The Midnight Hour and Abstract Orchestra, clever reworks from Kelela, and a pretty perfect pop album from Ariana Grande who is, perhaps, an even more interesting artist than she is a celebrity. She, too, is figuring out how to be unapologetically herself with each release.

My Fave Albums of 2018

  1. Black Panther Album & Black Panther Soundtrack

  2. Redemption – Jay Rock

  3. Dirty Computer – Janelle Monae

  4. Everything is Love – The Carters

  5. Invasion of Privacy – Cardi B

  6. No News is Good News – Phonte

  7. The Midnight Hour – The Midnight Hour

  8. Sweetener – Ariana Grande

  9. TAKE ME A_PART, THE REMIXES – Kelela

  10. Dilla – Abstract Orchestra

Other Notes

Shout-out to Drake for great singles and better videos. Jordan Rakei, Nightmares on Wax, and Little Dragon for great live shows. Rapsody, Gifted Gab, Noname and Princess Nokia for providing excellent counter-programming to the overwhelming masculinity and aggression still dominating popular hip-hop. And Aretha Franklin and Mac Miller for having existed.

Thank u, next.

The Raw Data


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May 13, 2018 / 0 Comments

This is America

“America, I just checked my followers list, and you motherfuckers owe me.”

— Young Thug


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I intended to write this last Sunday just 12 hours after Childish Gambino’s This is America entered the public consciousness as song and video. I’d watched the visuals several times by that point. I’d seen the SNL performance. I’d listened to the music alone on Spotify. I’d read the many Twitter reactions and overreactions.

But I didn’t have the words. A week later, I’m not sure I have them now either but if you feel the urge to write, there’s no reason to put it off.

This week, I’m grateful for art and artists that defy definition. This is America is dense and complex and complicated. It’s bold and obtuse. My brain hasn’t entirely been able to wrap around it and hold it with any certainty. Donald Glover has chosen not to explain it’s intentions or meaning. I appreciate that.

It is somewhat tricky, I imagine, to create art in 2018 that can survive the hot take unblemished. On David Letterman’s Netflix show, Tina Fey discusses the impact of the social media reaction to her SNL Weekend Update bit from last August. She’s not even on Twitter, and the hot takes bruised her bit—a segment that I still think is pretty good—and her perception of it.

This is America, though, remains a thing to be unpacked and considered and reconsidered. Even as the remixes and memes began yesterday, I found it undiminished. What I most appreciate about Glover’s recent works—with this song, with Atlanta, hell, even his acceptance speeches at awards ceremonies—is that he isn’t overly precious with Black American popular culture. For him, it is a thing that exists and to be treated the same as any other aspect of the American experience. He respects it on it’s face. He does not feel the need to explain or defend it. He recognizes that it is a thing to be played with, challenged, deconstructed and reconstructed.

Blackness can handle it. The people it represents can handle it. In fact, we’re better for it when we neither apologize nor overly celebrate what we make and who we are. He centers blackness. Full stop.

We use terms like unapologetically black or, in the past, unforgivable blackness. For my money, what feels different about Glover’s current output (and Beyonce’s Coachella performance and, perhaps, Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer) is that they remove those signifiers. There are no demands of their presentations of blackness other than to be.

This is America, man.

This is us.

We are America.

And I’m grateful.

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April 29, 2018 / 0 Comments

Another Fine Day

“One fine day—day from now—we’ll stand still watching how things went right.”

— Jazzanova

Meditation: Love and Gratitude, seven minutes

We exited the California African-American Museum heading towards the Science Center, and Melle noticed something to our right.

“That’s a big beautiful bush,” she said. I didn’t reply with the twelve-year-old’s retort that entered my brain. The bush was stunning and tall, a shock of beauty that demanded attention.

“Let me take your picture,” she said. Tiffany declined, but I was into it. I remembered previous photos of myself amongst the poppies or in the pool in our villa in Jimbaran Bay with a flower in my hair. Those moments where how I felt inside actually came through the camera lens.

I brought my hands to my chin mimicking many an Instagram selfie. The young ladies next to us who were also taking pics said, “SAAAAME,” and my grin grew.


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I thought they were taking pictures for a wedding but after our viewing of the King Tut exhibit—a thing you should do—we realized it was prom night for many a local high school, two of whom were having their coming-of-age event in Science Center venues around Exposition Park. We stopped and watched a bit as couples arrived at the Wallis Annenberg Building. A red carpet had been rolled down the staircase. Underclassmen lined the carpet to greet arriving guests while teachers stood at the top in their chaperone attire.

In the rose garden, parents took pictures and friends greeted each other with delight and surprise, seeing each other dressed to the nines for perhaps the first time. A young woman walked towards her friends in a dark, full-length gown, the bodice elegantly beaded and stitched. Her hair was perfect. Unlike others, she wasn’t struggling in her shoes. She couldn’t contain her smile as she approached and her braces gleamed in the evening sun.

“Yolanda, what the heck,” her friend shouted looking her up and down. They grinned at each other and hugged and quickly got in formation for another photo.

Tiffany was emotional. “I love these big moments of transition,” she said. I do, too. Those moments when we believe anything is possible. Those few times in life when we feel both accomplished and anxious for what’s next.  Prom night in Los Angeles in 2018 amongst the big beautiful bushes of expo park with a bunch of goofy grinning old heads gawking at them, those kids were the stars.

And I was grateful.

I wrote about my latest read yesterday.

I’m halfway through Wild, Wild Country. I’m a bit familiar with the story because of a 99% Invisible episode from a few years back. Sometimes, though, you’ve got to see it to not believe it. The 80s were, ahem, wild.

Oh, that’s just somebody who’s worried about you taking their place.

White Donald would be James Franco—a guy doing a lot of different shit, none of it interesting.

Dirty Computer.

And you,

Always you.

Remixed by Jazzanova

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April 28, 2018 / 0 Comments

Sing, Unburied, Sing


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“I’m not America’s nightmare. I’m America’s dream.”

— Janelle Monáe

In the movie The Neverending Story, Bastian is so engrossed in the book he’s reading that he feels he’s become part of the story (in fact, he has). What the book’s protagonist, Atreyu, feels, Bastian also feels. This is the connection I felt with Jojo in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing. I don’t know the last time I was that engrossed in a novel.

There’s a point where Jojo recalls cutting his foot, the description so vivid it settled into my mind as if it were my memory. When not reading the book that day, I kept coming back to that moment and the sharp pain of the laceration, the blood, the fear, the curiosity of being sliced open. I dreamed about it that night. When I opened the book the next morning, I reached down towards my own foot feeling the phantom of an injury I never personally experienced.

When his stomach hurt, mine twisted in knots. When he was disappointed, I was heartbroken. When he protected his sister, I believed I would do the same. When the terribleness of the world reveals itself to him, and he stands up to meet it, I stood with him as if we were one.

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There’s mysticism at the root of this story, and magic in Ward’s words. The perspective shifts between three characters, all damaged by the terrible traditions of race in America. It’s Jojo, though, who is our hero. Somehow his spirit overcomes all that wants to sink him. He’s not indomitable or indefatigable, but his humanity is undeniable. Unburied despite being born in the dirt. Who he is resonating like a song from the pages.

I sang along.

September 10, 2013 / 0 Comments

A Couple Updates

“They call us dirty cause we break all your rules down.” – Janelle Monáe, Q.U.E.E.N.

One Year After “The Red Wedding”

My friend and colleague Kim also wrote about last week’s odd anniversary. Also, it was nice to hear from some folks I hadn’t talked to in awhile and reminisce. There was something comforting in all the calm, and peace, and uncertainty in many of our hearts and minds. Nothing wrong with change if you know when to roll and when to push.

Turn Your Rdio Up

After a little over a week with rdio, I have thoughts:

  • Community features are awesome. There’s something elegant about how it tracks and showcases user/friend behavior. Informative without feeling voyeuristic.
  • Rdio’s apps are way strong. And being able to pick up right where I left off listening from my laptop to my iPad to my phone is a spectacular feature that I didn’t know I was missing.
  • Getting used to the radio features of rdio. I think I like them but am having to train my personal station a little more than I expected.
  • I wish you could start radio based on a playlist. I used this all the time on Spotify because sometimes even my regularly updated workout playlist feels stale.
  • I miss the last.fm app inside of spotify as a way to easily capture recommended albums.
  • I’m listening to Electric Lady on it right now.