Her new album, The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III of IV) is an amalgam of soul/funk/rock with an ambitious late 60s or 70s concept album approach. That whole concept album thing is not, frankly, something that usually excites me all that much, but the music here. . . The music is mostly very good. I hear Stevie Wonder and David Bowie (both of whom she has also mentioned in interviews). I hear 60s movie soundtracks. It's not surprising she doesn't like to have to pin her music down to one particular genre label.

Anyway, this is the sort of thing a lot of you should be interested in, I think. (Wait, are there still a lot of you here even?)

Although the lack of response to that "Tightrope" video I linked to previously isn't too encouraging.

Maybe these audio clips will generate more interest. (The whole album has leaked as well, but I'm not going to link to that. It's not hard to find though. Yeah, that's how I've heard the album already, but I expect to be ordering a legitimate copy soon.)

"I couldn’t ask for a better life," she says. "There are things I’d love to be doing: skydiving all day, traveling to space, planet-hopping—that’d be awesome. But for right now, this is the beginning of my career; it’s important that we’re out there showing that not all black people are monolithic. There should be more diversity in terms of women who are putting out music, so that the next generation will feel more hopeful and free, not trying to follow the same blueprint, which is a bore. If something is not progressing, it’s dying."

http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/music/85599/janelle-monae-interview#ixzz0niY1kfF2

The Letterman performance seems pretty strong. Maybe trying just a little too hard? Could do with fewer James Brown-isms, but overall both she and the band sounded good. She is supposed to be a fantastic live performer.

I really do think the popular music landscape is shifting a little and if Sean Combs is backing someone like this, he probably he has a sense that the winds of change are blowing through popular music.

(Letterman, on the other hand, annoys me as he usually does.)

But then she's also a terrific songwriter/composer.

(Lol if you look at the top ten albums according to Metacritic, it shows how absurd the whole endeavor is.)

Here is a quote from Janelle.

"I'm from Kansas, like Dorothy from The Wizard Of Oz, and the album has the same sense of wonder as that movie, but with a science-fiction love story added on. It's hard to describe my music-it has elements of Walt Disney, Salvador Dali, Stevie Wonder, and Ziggy Stardust. People with synthesia might really like it."

Salvador Dali?