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Janelle Monáe: Dirty Computer review – from dystopian android to R&B party girl

A pitch for the pop mainstream sees the Prince collaborator ditch the tech for a sexy, personal angle

The title of Janelle Monáe’s third full-length outing – a frontrunner for album of the year – suggests compromised hardware, the gunk in the machine. And really, a tech fetish would have come as little surprise for Monáe’s return to music. Machines have long been her thing.

Well before her performances in the films Moonlight and Hidden Figures, and before her features on records by Grimes and fun., the singer-turned-actor came to renown with her own stylish, sci-fi concept album. Set in a futuristic dystopia, The ArchAndroid (2010) starred a saviour robot, Cindi Mayweather, and disdained easy categorisations, combining R&B, pop and rock with Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and southern states sass.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2HB318s
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