The New Yorker Radio Hour - Janelle Monáe, from the Future to the Present

Episode Date: October 30, 2018

Janelle Monáe is an unlikely pop star. Her music is rooted in soul and R. & B., but also in pop, punk, and New Wave; her early releases were science-fiction concept albums, influenced by Fritz Lang��s “Metropolis” and modern Afrofuturism, set far in the future, and starring herself as an android.  She didn’t follow the Zeitgeist—she made her own Zeitgeist. Then, after gaining recognition as a major figure in pop, Monáe made an impressive acting début as one of the leads of “Hidden Figures,” and appeared in the Oscar-winning film “Moonlight.” Monáe sat down with David Remnick to talk about her latest album, “Dirty Computer.” Despite the title, it’s not at all science fiction. For the first time, she’s dealing frankly with the issues that she’s facing—and that our country is facing—right now. Plus, the staff writer Judith Thurman hits the streets of multiethnic Queens with a linguist who speaks so many languages that he’s lost count. Luis Miguel Rojas-Berscia says the trick is to be fearless, and shameless, about engaging strangers in conversation.  “You have to get rid of that inhibition,” he says, “if you want to speak a language.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of The New Yorker and WNYC Studios. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. When Janelle Monet came on the scene in pop music about 10 years ago, you might not have picked her out right away as a future star. Her music was rooted in soul and R&B and also punk and new wave. And Monet wrote these kind of sci-fi concept albums set in the future,

starring herself as an android. It was just kind of out there, kind of weird sometimes, and it could have been ridiculous, except it wasn't. It was great. And Janelle Monet actually got the acclaim and recognition that she deserved. More recently, she started acting seriously in film as one of the stars of hidden figures and in moonlight. And this year, she released an album called Dirty Computer.

Despite the title, it's not science fiction at all. She's dealing frankly with the issues that she's facing, and our country is facing right this very moment. She joined me in the studio, and I wanted to begin at the very beginning. So at The New Yorker, we have a whole fact-checking department. Yeah. So I want to start with a fact-checking thing. Sure.

I read that as a kid, you wrote an entire musical inspired by the Stevie Wonder album, Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants, all about photosynthesis. What was it like? What was this musical like? Well, my uncle was a huge Stevie Wonder fan, and he played the album, and then I was like, oh, we're learning about photosynthesis in our school. And I started to just write about me because I was living with my grandmother at the time. We were in between houses, and I started to write about me and just this attack on, or not an attack, or attack on humans from plants. How old were you?

Shoot, I had to be in, like, elementary school because we had science class and maybe like the fourth or fifth grade. Who were the writers and even performers or songwriters that were just inflaming your imagination when you were that young? When I was young, I was really influenced because I was with my family. If you grew up in a big family like me, I have over 50 first cousins. My grandmother had 12 children. And I have a huge family. And so I was just with them a lot. And I come from a musically inclined family.

My great grandmothers both play organ and piano at their churches. The church was a huge inspiration for me growing up. Did you sing in church in the way that singers that from an earlier generation did the way Aretha kind of grew up knowing the music of Sunday morning and Saturday night? You know, I did sing in church, but it's not the type of song that you would think would be sung in church. It's not traditional gospel. No, I actually was that five, six-year-old kid who would be sitting in the pew and my pastor would be between yelling and sweating and sweating. and about to get the Holy Ghost, and I would bust out and see Michael Jackson's beat it,

and then I'd be escorted out to the children's church. You kind of got kicked out. Yeah, I was a rebellious Christian. Now, you were also interested in musicals and musical theater, and did you have access to that, or was it all through records and radio? I did have access to musical theater. What roles did you play as a kid?

I was Cinderella. I can totally believe it. Yeah, we did a production, I went to a predominantly all-black, high school, Latino, and black high school. You got all the leads, didn't you? I didn't actually. It's funny.

When did you not get the lead? The whiz. I did not get the whiz. I wanted to be Dorothy so badly. You're still mad about it. Kind of. I'm kind of still, but I understood it, but it crushed me growing up. It really crushed me. Now, at what point did you think

I can have a big life? Like something that's beyond being in the high school musical something beyond being maybe the best singer at your high school, something larger than that. I don't think it registered until I went to New York, post-high school. I went to the American Musical and Dramatics Academy, and I started to learn more, and I started to grow. And when I realized that there was just more potential that I hadn't tapped into, There was just unaccessed potential that was there. And that led me to leave.

I left school because I realized that I wanted to tell fresher stories. Who were your heroes at that time? Lauren Hill. Lauren Hill was my biggest inspiration. And I loved Judy Garland. Yeah. Lauren Hill and Judy Garland were my heroes. Those are pretty different performers.

Why those two? They were just women that I felt really used their voices. They had, first of all, a unique tone. and they just came across a strong. I didn't know a whole lot about Judy Garland. Obviously, I'm from Kansas and The Wizard of Oz, you know, and her being in that. I felt like she was a dreamer and she was a strong woman. I know she had a complex life.

But Lauren Hill in particular resonated with me as a black woman who did an album and made a career fully being herself. She did not shy away from her religious belief. She didn't shy away from, you know, being a mom. during a time where people said that she could not have a child or ruin her career. She was an actress. She was an actor. She was a singer.

She was a producer. She was a polymath. And that was how I wanted to model my career. Now, let's hear a song from an early album that's called Violet Stars Happy Hunting. And this is from an album called Metropolis, the Chase Suite. I'm an alien from outer space. I'm a cyber girl without a face. A harder a mind.

Oh, my goodness. I haven't heard it in a long time. Now, that sounds like something out of a musical. Is that what you said out to write? Yes. You know what? Well, I wouldn't say a musical. What I wanted to do was figure out how I could sing songs, have concepts for them if I wanted to talk about science fiction, which was a huge inspiration to me after I watched Fritz Lang's 1927 German expressionist silent film.

When I watched that... Metropolis. Oh, yes. It inspired all of my words. work, really. It was the birth of Metropolis, the EP that Violet Stars Happy Hunting that we just heard. But what I wanted to do was figure out how do you take, how can I take all of me on stage? Like, I am theatrical. I love singing. I love R&B. I love rock and roll. I love dressing in this black and white tuxedo to pay homage to my family. I love David Bowie. I had just

gotten into Bowie at that time. I love Pink Floyd's The Wall. I love Isaac Asimov. I love science How can I blend all these these these different elements and innovate in in in the space of music? Now, you had in those in those early days and alter ego, Cindy Mayweather, why? It's not that you were hiding behind her, but you were projecting this self, which was a complicated thing, which I'll let you explain. Why use her, as it were, instead of being yourself and as you are now and in the latest album, Dirty Computer.

Well, I think that Cindy Mayweather represented aspirations for me. That's who I strive to be more like. How so? She is in the future, and in the future, she's more evolved, and she doesn't have ego, all the things that make me imperfect, she's able to master those. So this is a self-critical expression by having an alter ego in some way? Absolutely. What were you being self-critical about in your younger self?

Well, my younger self, I just felt misunderstood a lot. People would call me weird. They'd be like, oh, that's not commercial enough. They just did not understand how they were going to market what it was that I was doing. And just... What did they want you to be? I don't think it was about wanting me to be something. I think it was really about not wanting to do the work in the development that it would take.

to figure out how to bring something new to the industry. It was like the quick thing would be, well, you know, change your hair, one, change your outfits, you need to sexually be appealing. The songs also, you know, they shouldn't be so dense. They should be more simple and accessible. But the temptation to fold must have been something financially and in terms of fame and all the things, the rewards that the record industry can bring. the temptation to kind of compromise a lot must have been significant.

Oh, yes. Oh, my goodness. Are you kidding me? I had just been fired from Office Depot because I was responding back to one of my three fans that I had at the time. I was singing on the library steps, living in the house with six other girls in a boarding house, you know, driving my Mitsubishi Galant, selling my CDs out of my trunk. I needed, I needed money, you know, I needed to be successful. Yes, I was broke. I didn't want to go home. What did you do at Office Depot? Selling ink. And you were bad at it?

Slang in ink. I was, no, no, you said, was I bad at it? Yeah. No. I was good at it. Absolutely. So what kind of scrape did you get into? Well, I was responding to one of my three fans on the company's computer.

And I was just trying to tell them, hey, I'll be at the library steps and meet me at 7 o'clock. And they were like, Janelle, come to the back. And they just made it easier for me. I don't think I would have, I would be here right now had I. had I been working there because I would have kept making excuses. Tell me about the decision to make dirty computer. First, what a dirty computer means has a really rich meaning in the lyrics of these songs, first of all. And second of all, the album is about you.

It's no longer a thrown character. It's no longer an alter ego. It's about Janelle Monet. It's about identity. It's about oppression. It's about sexuality and marginalization. And much else. and you're speaking in your own voice, not the voice of a character?

Well, I guess it depends on how you look at it. I think we all are characters and we have aspects of us that we allow to be seen. This is a concept and a part of me that I had before I released my first album, the Arc Android. So they're all connected. All the albums are connected. This is sort of a prelude. I wrote the Dirty Computer album in the Obama era, and then things shifted in November of 2016. And before then.

But you're writing the album in the Obama era with what kind of head, meaning how was the Obama era influencing what you're doing? Oh, I was inspired. I was inspired by seeing, you know, not just our first African-American president, but someone who genuinely cared about the people that I cared about. How deep into the creation of Dirty Computer were you when along came Donald Trump in the election of 2016? I was deep. I was probably 70%. Did it interrupt the process? It did. Absolutely. Did you almost abandon it?

I took a break because I would go into the studio upset and angry. and then it didn't turn into this just album that was Janelle Monet centered. Community kept coming up and it was like we need to build a community because right now the people that I care about and the things that I care about are being erased through laws, through media. and I want to create this project and a tour experience that allows all the dirty computers in the world, those who are told because they're unique or they're different.

Dirty computers mean non-conformist in some way or not, well, you explain it. Well, a dirty computer is someone who is told their bugs and their viruses are negatives. And a dirty computer sees themselves or sees those bugs and viruses as attributes, as features. And this project is about, the erasure of identity and what it means to hold on to your identity despite what the world says about you and how I mean we have a vice president that that is talking about conversion therapy you know we have so called fixing the computer yeah we have outright just racist sexes remarks around women and black folks immigrants to those in the LGBTQIA plus communities

to lower class, citizens to just like my parents and my grandparents, would be considered a dirty computer. Let's listen to a song from the new album called Make Me Feel. Baby don't make me spell it out for you. All of the feelings that I've got for you. Can't be explained, but I can try for you. Yeah, baby, don't make me spell it out for you. You know, the same questions.

And I can guess it all my intentions. You know, by the way I use my compression, that you got the answers to my confessions. It's like I'm poised, sexual wound up mess. Make me be. That's just the way you make me find. You know, this song is, if I'm reading it right, is all about sexuality. The first line is, baby, don't make me spell it out for you.

Were you getting pretty sick and tired of having to spell it out for people, meaning your own sexuality? Well, I felt like I did. I mean, if people listen to my projects, you know, I have songs that never shied away from talking about sexuality. I think that I am a private person, and I do not, and I still to this day, don't like talking about my personal relationships. But I think this was after the election and just as I was working on this project, I knew that once people saw Dirty Computer, the emotion picture, the short film that I did, and they listened to the album, I knew people would ask questions.

And at that point, it was just like, you know, it felt right. I saw you perform at Madison Square Garden, at the Hulu Theater. When you look out into that audience, what are you looking out into? Who are those people? Who are your people? Who's your audience? So I would say that, you know, I had to remind myself that when I take off my makeup, when I take off my tour outfit, the truth is I am a young black queer woman who grew up to working class parents and a grandmother who served food in the county jail for 25 years.

That is my life. and when I look out I see people that every single day are told that they don't matter and that feels like a direct attack on the people that I love and that I care about there's a sense of responsibility

that I feel in an obligation that I feel like I have Is there a sense of guilt too? Yeah you know I feel like man why are they having to, you know, go through? Hell? Yeah, I feel a sense of guilt because I'm like, man, I have a voice. Like, I'm voice in my frustrations. Some people can't.

They'll be fired from their jobs. You know, they'll be ostracized from their communities. Yeah, it makes me want to do more and give more. We're going to hear the song Django Jane, and before we do, I'd love to know who this song was written for. Django Jane was written for me, for women. It's a response to feeling like your rights as a woman are being trampled on. Running out of space, I'm a damn bandwagging. Remember when they used to say I look too mannish.

Black girl magic, y'all can't stand it, y'all can't ban it. Made out like a bandit. They've been trying hard just to. to make us all vanish. I suggest they put a flag on a whole other planet. Jane Bond, never jang-do. And I jango, never Sambo. Black and white, yet it's always been my camo.

It's looking like y'all gonna need some old ammo. I cut them off, I cut them off, I cut them off like Van Gogh. Now, Pam right for the angle. I got away with murder, no scandal. Cute of our lans and violas. We gave you life. We gave you birth. We gave you God.

We filmed the future. So we've met it worse. We've met once before much more memorable for me than for you. But there was not long before Trump took office a huge gathering at the White House. Mainly not for press. There were some reporters there, but there were a lot of performers, athletes, people in the business world gathered at the White House. The DJ for this, I should say, was Questlove. Yes.

So Lange performed. A lot of people performed. And at one point, you started dancing. I forget who was, you were dancing with somebody for about a half an hour. People gathered around. Yeah. And you came off, I would have been dead. You seemed to be a little bit tired.

Yeah. And I asked you, aren't you exhausted? And you said, I'm not exhausted because I know I ain't going to be invited back here for a very, very long time. Can you describe that night with your memories everywhere? Oh, my goodness. I just remember a lot of celebration, but sadness under that celebration. And just to think like, man, all the hard work that he had done and was going to be unraveled and undone and control Z deleted. I do remember saying that to you.

But what I will say is I want to focus on now. And right now I'm working with an organization. when we all vote to help get awareness out. After studying the 2012 election and this past 2016 election, there was a 7% decrease in the black vote. Imagine if we would have showed up. What could have happened? Janelle, thank you so much.

Janelle Monique. Thank you for having me. Dirty Computer is the title of Janelle Monet's most recent album. You're listening to The New Yorker Radio Hour with more to come. I'm David Remnick, and thanks for joining. joining us on the New Yorker Radio Hour. In the late 80s, I got a job in the Moscow Bureau of the Washington Post, so I had to sit out to learn Russian, and it was really difficult.

And I was pretty damn proud of myself, even acquiring a rudimentary grasp of the language, because unless you grow up with a language, it's hard for at least most of us to learn a new one, unless you're somebody like Luis Miguel Rojas Bersha, who's what we call a hyper polygla. Let me say something in Shawi to my Shari friends. Shawi, Yaruya is a language that your high school probably didn't offer.

It's spoken by about 20,000 people, mostly in the Amazonian rainforest. I'm in love with Shawi. I have lived many experiences with the Shawi. I had problems there. They helped me when I almost died three years ago in an accident. But I'm polyamorous in terms of languages. and Shawi is my wife or husband. Shawee isn't Louis Miguel's first language, either.

It's not his second or his third. He doesn't even know how many he speaks. 20-something? I speak some 13, 14 languages fluently. And the others, there are some that I know the grandma, that I can have some basic conversations. Judith says I have 20. Right?

Well, if the fact checker ran this past, you don't look at me. Mandarin, Farsi, Portuguese, Esperanto, ancient Greek, biblical Hebrew, the list goes on. Judith Thurman wrote about him in the New Yorker because she's fascinated by these hyper polyglots, people who seem to have no limit to how many languages they can absorb. And when Luis Miguel made his first trip to New York recently, Judas took him out to Queens, where he could practice at least a few of his favorites. This is my advice, but it's very personal, it's just an opinion. If you want to learn a language from a school, that doesn't happen.

You have to learn a language on the street. Talk to people. But not everybody has your guts. I think that it's true. You have to be very extroverted. You have to have a sense of shamelessness, you know, just to go and talk to people on the street. And I think there's an inhibition, shine, this inhibition, timidity, especially when you don't speak the language that which you don't have.

You are sort of remarkably free. But you have to get rid of that inhibition if you want to speak a language. Because languages emerge in interaction. Language is something very personal. And when you just approach someone and ask, hey, do you speak this language? Would you like to teach me some words? It's weird.

That happened to us actually in Malta. They couldn't figure out, what we were doing together and what we were there for, and we wanted them to talk to us. People thought that we were more than just two friends wandering around Malta, learning Maltese. One of them said, please stop flirting and go to the point. Well, this is the point.

Chon Choucats are there. I'm looking for a tea I'm looking for a tea I love that comes from Taiwan from the Ali mountains my Ali Shanti got lost because my back is still missing maybe that's why my back got lost there was a crazy Taiwanese that stole my back

because it was full of Ali Cha and you learned Chinese in adolesse as a teenager Yeah, I was 13, 14 when I started learning Chinese out of a challenge because my dad said that I was spending, I was wasting too much time learning French because he wanted me to be a businessman. So he said, China will be the economic power in the future, so you have to learn Chinese. Said, okay, let's go together, I said. After two months, he failed and surrendered.

and I continued. And I fell in love Chinese. I'm getting hungry, so... You go upstairs here? Can you read Tibetan? Payul. Yeah, Payul restaurant. Are they Tibetan?

Yeah. Okay, then we will explore the Tibetan numerals, which are really interesting. What's interesting in Britain? Well, we'll see that. Okay. So you want the beef tongue, plain lottery? Mr. Lappi and Diedemu and Diedemu chicken more, right? Yes.

Spice is okay, right? Spice is okay. In Tibetan, so we ask you for a little favor. He's a linguist. Would you tell him the numbers in Tibetan? The numbers. How do you say one in Tibetan? Chik.

Chik. Two. Two. Knee. Three. Three. Sum. Sum.

4, ah si, 5, nha, 6, 6, 2, 7, 2, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, chou, the beautiful thing is that you see in Tibetan if you compare the numbers with Chinese number, they're almost the same it's like in Japanese like ancient Chinese Ichinese san Sa Ichini san si tchini sum si you know almost the same in the Tibet you know there's a lot of Chinese you know because of that I can understand also I've been in India so I lived there for three years so are you Chinese I am from the world You never know a language.

Languages are ideals, unattainable ideals. Every time, even if I'm in a Spanish-speaking Barrio, there are people speaking ways I haven't heard before. Every time I go back to Peru, I know I'm Peruvian, I have friends there, My Spanish has changed a bit. I don't have the brand new slang. I speak like 10 years ago. I feel like a foreigner everywhere,

and I think that's a bit of an advantage if you want to learn a language, to have a bit of distance. Peruanos, Los Paisanos, importadores of products typical Ecuadorian, Mexican, Peruanos, Colombian, Central American. And the flag of my country is also there.

Twice, even. Can we go and have a lot of my country? look that there's no air conditioning. I'm looking for something I used to drink when I was oh yes Inca Cola. Inca Cola is the the Peruvian soft drink most foreigners they like it they say it tastes like chewing gum and I would say it does not in incacola elada Pequehna? Yeah.

Yes, if you have? Ah, I want one. This is the the ... Oh, sorry, I'm speaking Spanish. You see, I forget. How is?

Luis Miguel Rojas Bercia, a linguist who speaks a couple of dozen languages in Queens with staff writer Judith Thurman. I'm David Remnick, and that's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for listening. Next week, please join us for Andy Borough

and Harry Shearer in character as Derek Smalls of Spinal Tap, a match made in heaven. See you then. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Abe Carrillo, Riannon, Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, Kalalia, David Krasnow, Louis Mitchell, Sarah Nix, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Emily Mann, Richard Yey, and Jessica Henderson.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.