Imagine you are sitting in a warmly lit theater.  The sound of scattered chatter fills the air.  The lights fade; the conductor steps out and taps his baton on the stand.  The orchestra begins to play the overture to this evening’s “emotion picture.” As the Overture commences, the strings swoop in and play a harmonically textured line, while the sound of electric guitar is heard underneath.  A choir chants an ominous and pulsating drone, and a resonant electronic buzzing is heard alongside the strings of the sitar.  

A voice enters, as if via intercom, “Oh one. It’s your time. Lead us all back to one.” This is the “Suite II Overture” of Janelle Monaé’s 2010 debut album, The Archandroid.  Set in the year 2719, the album reveals the tale of an android robot called Cindi Mayweather, who inhabits the turmoil-riddled city of Metropolis.  Cindi is not just any robot; she is a top-of-the-line android, an Alpha Platinum 9000, a new prototype programmed with human-like characteristics. Ms. Mayweather is heralded as a savior for the androids of Metropolis, a depraved place where humans have subjected robots to physical and emotional slavery. 

The Archandroid is a part of Monaé’s seven-part Metropolis series including her 2007 debut EP Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase) and her 2013 album, The Electric Lady.  Inspired by Fritz Lang’s film “Metropolis,” The Archandroid falls within the aesthetic of Afrofuturism, pioneered by artists Sun Ra and George Clinton.  I intend to examine the Afrofuturism aesthetic in order to establish a clear definition of what Afrofuturism is. Secondly I will examine The Archandroid and how it grapples with the goal of overcoming social struggle.  Lastly, I will examine Monaé’s album in relation to Afrofuturism’s vision for the future.

American writer and cultural critic Mark Dery coined the term Afrofuturism, stating that, 

“Speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of twentieth-century technoculture---and, more generally African-American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future---might, for want of a better term, be called “Afrofuturism.” (Dery, 180). 

However, long before this term was used, African-American artists were exploring African cosmologies and African-American themes in connection with the future.  Of key importance within Dery’s description is the word, “speculative,” modifying the word, “fiction.” The artwork he is referencing has a certain predictive power towards solving African-American concerns. 

Sun Ra and George Clinton were both prolific artists who used this predictive aesthetic and influenced Monaé’s creative work.   Author and music critic Amiri Baraka describes Sun Ra’s music, stating “The Weirdness, Outness, Way Outness, Otherness was immediate. Some space metaphysical philosophical surrealistic bop funk. Some blue pyramid home nigger southern different color meaning hip shit” (Baraka, 253). This statement is an indicator of the genre considerations at play in the music of Afrofuturism.  Ra blended the aesthetics of multiple genres into his sound, mirroring his philosophical aim of expanding black consciousness.  In his album “Space is the Place,” he advocates for a higher consciousness by stating, “space is the place to be.”  He offers outer space as a future to African Americans rather than a more accepted view of the afterlife, the “heaven” within European Christian cosmology.  On the track “Space Chant,” from his 1976 album The Soul Vibrations of Man,  Ra employs antiphonal vocals, stating, “everybody talking bout heaven ain’t going there,” borrowing from the Negro spiritual, “Walk Over God’s Heaven.”  This melody is interspersed with discussion of Mars, Jupiter, Pluto, and all the planets in our solar system, and points to the absurdity of the lyrics of the Negro spiritual and consequently the European cosmology of an afterlife in heaven. He emphasizes with his singers, “Planet Earth is the third heaven/You’re on heaven right now.” Ra wants African-Americans to fight for what is potential in the here and now rather than, “Dreaming of a hope riding the wings of angels,” as Monaé sings in her song, “Sincerely Jane,” from her Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase).  

The Archandroid aims thematically to re-establish unity and love within a dystopian society.  The protagonist Cindi Mayweather, although an android, has fallen in love with a human, Sir Anthony Greendown.  The listener hears bits and pieces of this star-crossed love story play out across the 18-track album, and in “Faster,” where Monaé sings, “faster I should run from your arms/You kryptonite my life every night.”  Monaé blends elements of gospel, soul, and funk in her work in such a seamless way that it is easy to say that she defies genre gravity as she lifts off into space.  Monaé’s Afrofuturist predecessor George Clinton’s 1976 release of Mothership Connection employed the use of outer space as a theoretical and philosophical framework to overcome social struggle.  For Clinton, imagining what the future sounded like for African-American people entailed going into outer space. In The Archandroid we hear fragments of this interstellar legacy through use of electronically produced sounds.  From the symphonic “Suite II Overture” to the psychedelic “Mushrooms and Roses,” the sonic elements encapsulate the feeling of being in outer space.

The Archandroid establishes a dystopian landscape that mirrors social justice concerns.  The third track on the album, “Locked Inside,” embodies the challenges facing the city of Metropolis, and also emphasizes the need for love and self-acceptance.  Monaé sings, “I’m locked inside/A land called foolish pride/Where the man is always right.”  The “man,” is representative of the oppressive systemic forces that keep the android Cindi Mayweather from her love.  Monaé emphasizes her need for love when she sings “Oh how I need you baby/keep me from going crazy,” suggesting that love is a sanity-restoring force within a corrupt political system.  When Monaé references “the man,” she states that he is “always right.”  The man “hates to talk but loves to fight.”  This represents an authoritarian government with rigid dictates but no input from the people. The man “loans us lots of hate.”  This is a reference to the oppression of the economic system.  Monaé uses her lyrics to question the plight of the underserved, when she sings, “Her children cry/No food to eat and they’re ‘fraid as flies/The color black means it’s time to die/and nobody questions why.” Here she depicts the conditions of people living in poverty.  She expresses the feeling of futility with life and the rituals used in funerals, stating that people are made to live in abject conditions, and live their entire lives without critically examining why life is the way it is.  Monaé feels the reason for this is that, in the words of her song, “They’re too scared to stop the man.”  Amiri Baraka, writing under the name Leroi Jones in a 1964 issue of Negro Digest, states that there is a war going on in the United States between blacks and whites.  He goes on to characterize this war by discussing race riots between whites and blacks of similar economic status.  He states, “In purely idealistic terms the real tragedy is that these two groups could not find goals that were mutually attainable in some kind of egalitarian ‘revolution’ that would simply overthrow their mutual oppressors…such a revolution was possible at the end of the Civil War” (Jones, 10). Baraka’s words amidst the height of the Civil Rights Era speak to the need for unity amongst poor and working class people of all races.

If one of the goals of Afrofuturism is to overcome social struggle, then we can find evidence for this within the music of the artists as well as in the artists’ own successes in navigating economic life.  Were past and present Afrofuturist artists able to attain a greater material existence for themselves in addition to inspiring the masses to reach towards a greater existence? It is interesting to compare Monaé and Clinton in this regard. The sounds of George Clinton’s otherworldly funk were so popular in the late 1970’s that Clinton’s bands put seven albums in the Billboard Magazine Pop Top 30 and seven singles in the R&B Top 10 in the three years after the release of Mothership Connection (Toure). The popularity of the music did lead Clinton to attain monetary success. However, Clinton soon filed for bankruptcy in the 1980’s due to mismanagement by his accountants (Toure).  He later resorted to filming a TV commercial for Burger King.  Janelle Monaé on the other hand has seen moderate economic success, not attaining hits to the scale of Clinton at his peak, but nevertheless having Billboard-charting albums. Most impressive is Monaé’s business acumen; she has gone from being a member of Wondaland, an independent artists collective, to being signed to P.Diddy’s Bad Boy Record Label (Hitquarters).  Currently Monaé is signed with producer L.A. Reid, and has her own imprint entitled Wondaland Records, where she has released new music alongside other acts she signed, including Deep Cotton, St. Beauty, and rapper Jidenna. Through creating her own music and fostering that of others, Monaé has been able to prove that the power to change lies not just with the audience, but with the creative artist as well.  Monaé, in her 2013 track “Queen,” raps, “My crown too heavy like the Queen Nefertiti/Give me back my pyramid/I’m trying to free Kansas city.” Born as “Janelle Robinson” in Kansas to working-class parents, Monaé now lives in Los Angeles and tours internationally. It seems that both in her oeuvre and in her personal life, Monaé is striving to embody an older African ideal of royalty and greatness.   This desire can be seen via the album cover for The Archandroid.  Monaé has been photographed looking directly at the camera, a golden crown atop her head.  The crown comprises an intricately designed city skyline, with gleaming towers of gold, blue, and bronze hues branching upwards atop Monaé’s head.  This is Cindi Mayweather, and the city sitting atop the crown is a miniature Metropolis. The album cover is striking and bears a distinct resemblance to portraits of ancient Egyptian queens. Janelle Monaé distinctly blends impressions of the future with memory of the ancient past.

There is a tableau by the artist Gauguin in the year 1898 depicting a group of Tahitian women. In the upper left corner of the tableau the artist inscribed the French words, “D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous.” The English translation is, “Where do we come from? / What are we? / Where are we going?” The Afrofuturist aesthetic works with these same questions in mind.  In The Archandroid’s “Say You’ll Go,” Janelle Monaé sings, “Love is such a novelty/ A rarely painted masterpiece / A place few people go or ever know / Say you’ll go to Nirvana / will you leave Samsara.”  She evokes the Hindu spiritual tradition of a belief in reincarnation.  Her words suggest that love is powerful, everlasting and eternal, and that following one’s desire to love can help break the repetitive cycle of Samsara, or wandering the world through endless reincarnation. Here though, Samsara can stand in for the cycles of oppression of African-Americans, from the forced labor slavery system, to the Civil Rights Era, to the current Black Lives Matter movement. In Gauguin’s tableau, several women are depicted reposing within a shadow-filled landscape, blending into the darkness. In the center panel, however, there is one woman standing tall, painted a bit brighter than her surroundings, with both hands outstretched to the heavens, gesturing upward. This painted figure epitomizes what Monaé is doing in her artistic work. She reveals the darkness around us, but gestures up towards the sky and asks us, "What if we lived in this world?" If the struggles of African-Americans can be compared to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Monaé offers a new conclusion.  In Monaé’s world, the escaped prisoner returns to the cave with a lighter and some wood, starts her own fire, and starts messing with the images projected on the cave wall. She creates her own dissonant projections of hope and light, and hopes that the other prisoners in the cave see it and can muster the strength to free themselves from illusion and domination.  Janelle Monaé vividly inhabits the role of a modern-day prophetess. In the final track of The ArchAndroid, “Babopbyeya,” she screams, “I see beyond tomorrow/ this life of strife and sorrow/ my freedom calls and I must go.” By freeing herself from bondage, Monaé emboldens listeners to break free from their own chains as well.

Works Cited

Baraka, Amiri. "Sun Ra." African American Review 29.2 (1995): 253-5. Web.

Dery, Mark. Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture. Durham: Duke UP, 1994. Print.

"Interview With Daniel 'Skid' Mitchell." HitQuarters. N.p., 25 Oct. 2010. Web. 10 May 2016.

Jones, LeRoi. "What Does Nonviolence Mean?" Negro Digest (1964): n. pag. Proquest.com. Web. 125 May 2016.

Monaé, Janelle. The Archandroid. Bad Boy Records, 2010. CD.

Monaé, Janelle. Metropolis the Chase Suite. Bad Boy Records, 2008. MP3.

Monaé, Janelle, Prince, Erykah Badu, Solange, Miguel, and Esperanza Spalding. The Electric Lady. N.d. MP3.

Ra, Sun. Space Is the Place. Impulse!, 1998. CD.

Ra, Sun. The Soul Vibrations of Man. 1977. MP3.

Toure. "Clinton's Health Plan: More Funk 4 U." Rolling Stone 669 (1993): 11. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 9 May 2016.