Janelle Monáe is an American singer, songwriter, and actress born in Kansas City, Kansas in 1985, whose Afrofuturist concept records earned a mentor in Prince. The ArchAndroid (2010) is the sci-fi funk epic; Dirty Computer (2018) earned an Album of the Year Grammy nomination. Find Janelle Monáe vinyl, CDs, and reissues at Wax Trax Records.
Janelle Monáe Robinson was born in Kansas City, Kansas on December 1, 1985. She attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York before relocating to Atlanta in the mid-2000s and forming Wondaland Arts Society. She signed with Bad Boy Records (Sean Combs's label) in 2007 and released the EP Metropolis: The Chase Suite (2007). Her debut full-length The ArchAndroid (2010) and follow-up The Electric Lady (2013) extended the Metropolis concept work - a multi-album sci-fi concept project featuring the android character Cindi Mayweather. Dirty Computer (2018) was nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammys. She is openly pansexual and non-binary (using she/they pronouns). She has pursued parallel acting work including Moonlight (2016), Hidden Figures (2016), Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022), and others.
Janelle Monáe's sound combines R&B, funk, pop, soul, neo-soul, electronic, art pop, and rock with her distinctive vocal delivery, elaborate concept work drawing on Afrofuturism and science fiction traditions, and arrangements drawing on Prince, Stevie Wonder, OutKast, and broader contemporary R&B reference points. Prince was a close collaborator and mentor before his 2016 death.
Wondaland / Bad Boy / Atlantic pressings of the Janelle Monáe catalog have been issued in multiple color variant editions and limited deluxe pressings.
Listeners new to Janelle Monáe typically start with The ArchAndroid (2010) or Dirty Computer (2018).
