Posts Tagged ‘Janelle Monae
Roundhouse. London, England.
About your host, ladies and gents, @sethmeyers21. Seth, thanks for standing in for me at the #ESPYs
Jane has a Coke and a Smile
So it should be no surprise that after one of my nightly shifts of scouring the net for Jane’s content, that I found this. This boy has a gift from God that is undeniable.
Many of you do not know this, but Jon Genius was one of the first to work with The Wondaland Arts Society in establishing the video production and editing arm of the Mystery School. It was only fitting that we link back up with Mr. Flight Patterns himself to have him document the release of this epic album by Janelle Monáe. Yeah, I produced it, but that only amounted to getting him some Five Guys and picking the music.
This event was amazing! Special thanks to Eli, Jack, Micah, Jabari, Chris, and Jamie for driving all the way up to NY to help us out. Popcorn, candy, balloons, Tightrope competitions, etc…it was an amazing night!
If you don’t have the Arch Android yet, buy two copies and we’ll call it even.
Enjoy!
Let me tell you what a day it W.A.S.
Nah, watch this and I’ll tell you later…
Sincerely, Jane (a cappella)
These lovely little choir covers are showing up everywhere! I love it! Keep ‘em coming. Less than 4 full days!!!!
Emphasis on PARTY. Come ready, not cute, but ready.
Don’t say I didn’t tell you.
Janelle Monáe boasts so much shape-shifting talent that she had to invent an android persona just to begin to accommodate it. If you’d grown up a charismatic African American girl trapped in Kansas City with a drug-addicted father, wouldn’t you?
The second and third parts of a suite inspired by the 1927 German sci-fi film Metropolis, Monáe’s debut album assumes disparate genres as the Atlanta-based supernova swaps vocal identities: She’s airy on the Renaissance faire ballad “You’re the (5782) 1″; trippin’ on the Hendrix tribute “Mushrooms & Roses”; and flat-out screaming for her metallic life on “Come Alive.” Cameos include Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes and OutKast’s Big Boi, while Monáe prog-rocks something fierce, recalling early Queen and Genesis, even as the arrangements reference Shirley Bassey, the Specials, and Star Wars. Some songs fade out just as they’re transforming into something else; others split into several movements, and poetic lyrics psychedelicize hefty topics like war and slavery. Even at 18 tracks, The ArchAndroid feels condensed.
What does it all mean? It feels like freedom. Monáe can really sing; she could follow in Beyoncé’s designer pumps if she wanted, but she’s clearing a new path for black female entertainers. She’s venturing so far away from soul that she’s come back around to it. By finding spirituality in the machine she’s imagined for herself, Monáe rewires the one that society has dumped on her.
this.album.is.jammin
This is the kind of music that makes you want to get married, just so that you can play these songs at the wedding reception. This is the kind of album that makes you want to buy a new system for your car or some Bose/Beats headphones, just so that you can have the music as close to your brain as possible. This is the kind of album that makes you move all of your furniture out of the house and put a swimsuit on. It is open your doors and windows, lay a slip in slide on your front lawn, tell the Mass Choir they can take Sunday off because we are playing “The ArchAndroid” kind of music.
It just feels so damn good. You hear me? This music will make you take off ALL of your clothes. (trust me) It will make you feel like squirting water guns, putting whoopee cushions in chairs, reading books, writing books, making new colors, and painting new numbers. It will make you want to have Toga parties and trim your hedges into the shapes of dinosaurs. It will make you bake cakes and blow bubbles, it will make you feel like having food fights. It will help you find your peace.
You’ll hear it soon! I wish I could be with everyone the first time they hear it cover to cover. This is the kind of album that will have you stand on your desk and hop cubicle to cubicle. It will make you start exercising again, just to have uninterrupted time to listen. It will transform you. It will make you believe…in yourself.
The ArchAndroid will be the soundtrack to your involvement, your ambition, and your freedom.
The ArchAndroidSuites II & III
1. Suite II Overture
2. Dance Or Die (featuring Saul Williams)
3. Faster
4. Locked Inside
5. Sir Greendown
6. Cold War
7. Tightrope (featuring Big Boi)
8. Neon Gumbo
9. Oh, Maker
10. Come Alive (The War of The Roses)
11. Mushrooms & Roses
12. Suite III Overture
13. Neon Valley Street
14. Make The Bus (featuring Of Montreal)
15. Wondaland
16. 57821 (featuring Deep Cotton)
17. Say You’ll Go
18. BabopbyeYa
So the little(st) homie Ladia Yates hit me up early yesterday and asked me if she should make a tutorial on how to do the Tightrope. I said, “Absolutely!” Being the youtube sensation that she is and always having her bite sized camera in her bite sized hands, she put together this tutorial for all of you that have been rewinding the Tightrope video for the last 2 weeks.
Watch and learn!!
The ArchAndroid Crown: Designed by Zoman Ignatius, the half-elf, half-human mystic, reportedly 500 years ago. According to legend, the crown has several magic properties, as well as innovative technologies that can be employed only by The ArchAndroid. Zoman was a consummate inventor, artist and sculptor, a cross between Tesla and Da Vinci, and as such, he designed the crown to be a work of beauty that would embody the very spirit of Metropolis. According to legend, the crown features prominent Metropolis buildings and towers that will light up radiantly when the one and only true ArchAndroid wears the crown. According to the Daily Horos, this opulent headdress was stolen from the vaults in the Black House, reportedly by 1954, in October of 2715. Several members of 1954 were hunted down and executed for this crime. But the crown was never found. Many claim it has been secreted away to the Wonderground. There is word that in the year 2010, several 1954 operatives have crafted a replica of this historic headdress to be worn by Janelle Monáe in anticipation for her album The ArchAndroid…no word on whether or not this replica has magic properties… The Living Cyktionary, 9th Edition
