Episode 1133 - Janelle Monáe
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuck sticks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast, WTF, and welcome to it.
Marc:If you're new here, thanks for coming.
Marc:I can get you up to speed on stuff.
Marc:I've been doing this over a decade.
Marc:There's like 1,100.
Marc:There's a lot of episodes.
Marc:You can get a lot of the back catalog at Stitcher Premium.
Marc:The most recent 50 are always available.
Marc:The one I did with President Barack Obama is Evergreen.
Marc:That's from 2015.
Marc:And I talked to a lot of different kinds of people, all different kinds, full range of entertainment types and presidents.
Marc:I've been going through a hard time myself.
Marc:If you're just joining us for the first time, it's hard for me to focus on the world, which is horrible with some glimmers of hope, but not enough for my liking.
Marc:But I also have some personal issues that are happening as we speak.
Marc:I don't want to go rehash all of that, but I'll probably jump in.
Marc:I'll probably jump in, but I don't want to be rude.
Marc:How are you guys?
Marc:You all right?
Marc:Before I get lost in my ramblings, today on the show is Janelle Monae.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:You never thought that would happen, did you?
Marc:Did you assume that I would talk to Janelle Monae?
Marc:I didn't.
Marc:She's a Grammy-nominated recording artist with best-selling albums, Ark Android, The Electric Lady, and Dirty Computer.
Marc:She's also in the movies Hidden Figures, Moonlight, and the upcoming thriller Antebellum.
Marc:Also in the TV show Homecoming this season, which I watched.
Marc:I've watched many of these things.
Marc:I've listened to her music.
Marc:But she'll be here, so that's exciting.
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:When was the last time I talked to you?
Marc:What day is today?
Marc:Monday?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Are you okay?
Marc:I mean, are you hanging in?
Marc:I know it's getting... I know some people, they're kind of coming unhinged.
Marc:I'm sure that many of you know people that are coming unhinged.
Marc:It's been a long time.
Marc:A lot of people without work for a long time.
Marc:A lot of insecurity, instability.
Marc:Nowhere to really look to get that sort of reassurance...
Marc:That things are going to be okay with the fucking world, with the country, with civilization.
Marc:Is civilization going to make it?
Marc:Are we going to just digress into some barbaric shit show?
Marc:I don't fucking know.
Marc:All I know is that I don't know if even if you want to leave this country, you're going to be able to because now we're the fucking dummies.
Marc:Now, somehow or another, inside three and a half years or so, this president has brought this country so low that other countries think we're fucking dangerous dummies.
Marc:I'm sure they always thought we were dangerous, but now we're probably not even going to be able to travel because the biggest country with supposedly the most resources and the greatest scientists and whatnot, the great America, is now a viral shit show.
Marc:That people aren't going to want Americans in their countries because we have no national leadership or protocol on the front of the biggest pandemic probably ever.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Look, I don't want to bum you out, but wear your fucking mask.
Marc:Listen to scientists.
Marc:Don't listen to meatheads.
Marc:Don't listen to personal trainers.
Marc:Don't listen to your neighbor.
Marc:I know everybody feels inconvenience.
Marc:It's amazing that American fortitude, Americans ability to sacrifice.
Marc:Three months in and people are just like, fuck it.
Marc:Now, either you don't care about yourself or you don't care about other people or you just think that it's only hitting old people and you don't care about old people.
Marc:You think it's only killing black people.
Marc:You don't care about black people or you think it's not going to hit you because, you know, you eat clean.
Marc:Right.
Marc:How is it going to get you?
Marc:You eat clean.
Marc:Right?
Marc:You're taking your supplements.
Marc:You eat clean.
Marc:It's not going to get you.
Marc:You don't fucking know what's going on with your genetics or why anybody.
Marc:Yeah, there are some things that seem to make it more dangerous to some people than others.
Marc:But, you know, Mr. Clean guy.
Marc:Mr. You know, fuck the world, save yourself guy.
Marc:Mr. Herd immunity dude.
Marc:Mr. Just fucking fuck it, man.
Marc:Fuck, come get me, man.
Marc:Come get me.
Marc:Corona.
Marc:You.
Marc:Put on your fucking mask.
Marc:I mean, let's not mistake who the real weak people are.
Marc:The people that are so put off and so sort of uncomfortable with being told what to do when it serves the interest of the community and themselves.
Marc:They just don't like being told what to do because they're children.
Marc:So now...
Marc:Instead of just crying about it and doing it anyways, the bully children will now bully the people that are taking care of themselves in the community.
Marc:And that goes right up to the top, man.
Marc:Goes right up to the top.
Marc:So look...
Marc:I am trying to deal with a lot of stuff.
Marc:I feel like some anger is coming back.
Marc:I'm not sure where it's going.
Marc:But I talked to you about Monkey, and I think I've figured out what I'm doing with Monkey.
Marc:I'm going to probably... See, I can't even commit to it, but he's distressed.
Marc:I believe he's pretty close to full renal failure.
Marc:Drinking a lot of water.
Marc:Still eating, but sort of half-hiding.
Marc:Doesn't seem comfortable.
Marc:not gaining weight.
Marc:And, you know, how long do we have to wait for this?
Marc:I mean, his sister, when his sister went down, it was like, you know, pretty clear she was howling and losing her mind.
Marc:Monkey seems very spaced out, sometimes whimpering, still out and about, but not really taking the affection much.
Marc:And I think I'm going to take him in tomorrow.
Marc:I think I've made my peace with that.
Marc:I think I'm going to take him to the vet.
Marc:I know that some people recommend that, you know,
Marc:You have somebody come to the house to put the cat down.
Marc:I guess in my mind, I guess I want to be in a little denial.
Marc:I want to put him in the box, take him to the vet that I know, have the vet tell me it's time.
Marc:I guess that's what I'm looking for because I did that with LaFonda too.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I could have a stranger vet, a strange vet come over and we could do it at the house and he could be comfortable in this house and then I have to give him to them and they take him away.
Marc:And what then?
Marc:What happened?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I think I want to go to the vet and be told that it's time.
Marc:And then hopefully, like I thought I was going to have to do it over the weekend, but I think he's going to make it till tomorrow.
Marc:I think my vet will let me be there to hold him when they do it.
Marc:Now, the reason why I have some sort of weird right in this moment is
Marc:I don't fucking know if it's going to last.
Marc:But right in this moment, I have some sort of acceptance of it.
Marc:Because I realize that this grieving process that's happening with my girlfriend, Lynn, who died on the 16th of May.
Marc:And I didn't know she was dying.
Marc:I knew she was sick, but I didn't know she was that sick.
Marc:And that kind of haunts me.
Marc:And I think that this process with Monkey, you know, sitting there with this cat and realizing how long I've been with him and knowing that, you know, compartmentalizing, trying to realize it's just separate from what happened.
Marc:This doesn't mean the tragedies are stacking up on you.
Marc:Yet they are.
Marc:This isn't a tragedy when a 16-year-old cat, you know, starts to have failing kidneys.
Marc:It's not like, oh, my God, that's crazy.
Marc:No, it's what happens.
Marc:But I don't know.
Marc:I guess I just don't think about that shit.
Marc:I don't think about a lot of things when I get into it.
Marc:When I got these cats, I didn't think like, this is going to suck on the back end here.
Marc:But it does.
Marc:But I sat with him and I cried a bit and I told him, you know, what was up and, you know, and I'm going to miss the cat.
Marc:But on some level, I don't know if it's transference or it's just what it is.
Marc:But I've had this whole process.
Marc:I've been thinking monkey's going to die for months.
Marc:Maybe even a year.
Marc:At least since his sister died.
Marc:So I've kind of gotten myself around, you know, wrap my brain around it.
Marc:I've begun the grieving process.
Marc:I have a certain amount of acceptance.
Marc:I know it's not unusual.
Marc:It's still fucking sad.
Marc:But I spent as much time as fucking humanly possible because I got his time right now.
Marc:Even when Lynn was alive, I would get up in the morning and be like, is Monkey okay?
Marc:Is Monkey okay?
Marc:Well, now Monkey's not okay, but I think I'm finally ready.
Marc:I think he's ready.
Marc:I think we'll enter this together and do it with a certain amount of acceptance.
Marc:But I guess what I'm saying is that I've been able to have the experience of letting go
Marc:with the um the animal and his sickness and his age and it's appropriate and i didn't get that um with lynn but i do feel i i feel happy to have uh
Marc:been able to uh you know be there for the fucking cat and you know aside from that the the other stuff just you know i get up man i don't know where you're at with how you feel about your life you know obviously i'm looking at mine through this grief portal this window
Marc:But I've got enough.
Marc:I get up, man.
Marc:It's like I get up.
Marc:Sometimes I'll run through some suicidal ideations just to make myself comfortable.
Marc:Then I'll get up.
Marc:Sometimes I'll fucking pray a little bit just because I want to humble myself and feel connected to something.
Marc:That's the biggest problem.
Marc:really is that when my heart kind of wants to reach out to something.
Marc:There's just no, and when you don't have a God, there's no place for it to land.
Marc:You're not going to look outside.
Marc:I can sit on my porch and feel a certain amount of peace, but there's not a lot of hope anywhere.
Marc:And I don't know where I find faith, but I find it in a present.
Marc:I'm scared about a lot of things.
Marc:I realize life is fragile.
Marc:I realize that anything can happen.
Marc:That's for fucking sure.
Marc:But I get up.
Marc:And I fucking make my bed.
Marc:I exercise.
Marc:I shower.
Marc:I comb my hair.
Marc:I put on pants.
Marc:And I do a day.
Marc:That's what I do.
Marc:And now I'm alone doing it.
Marc:So there's a nag.
Marc:There's a void.
Marc:There's a kind of like a humming pit that I try to step around.
Marc:that I try not to fall into.
Marc:I'm looking for some way to traverse it.
Marc:But I think you just have to, I think I just have to realize, like, there's the humming pit.
Marc:Do not fall into the humming pit.
Marc:So I don't.
Marc:I eat, I cook things, have some melon.
Marc:Have some melon, will you?
Marc:So, okay, so this is exciting for me because sometimes when I do this show, I get opportunities to talk to people that I wouldn't think that I would talk to.
Marc:And I knew who Janelle Monae was, and I've been impressed with the very little I know of her, which is specifically the movie work.
Marc:And I recently watched Homecoming because I interviewed Chris Cooper, and she's on that too, and she's great.
Marc:But then I saw her do the opening number at the Oscars, and I was blown away.
Marc:I'm like, what the fuck is this amount of talent?
Marc:coming through one person but i didn't know a lot about her so then i got an opportunity to talk to her then i got to dig in so like sometimes when i have a guest i'm like all right let's let me try to wrap my brain around their work so i'm listening to the records the music uh trying to get a little sense of where she comes from and uh it's very exciting she's a an incredibly talented person a gifted actor musician singer uh composer arranger dancer i mean fuck man
Marc:It was just, I was nervous.
Marc:I was nervous.
Marc:You can see her in the new season of Homecoming, which is on Amazon Prime Video.
Marc:Her next film, Antebellum, is coming out August 21st.
Marc:And this is me talking to Janelle Monae.
Guest:Certainly now is the time to talk.
Guest:Yeah, it's not a time to be silent.
Marc:Have you been going out into the world?
Marc:Have you been doing any street activism or mostly just talking from wherever you can, where you are?
Guest:Both, a combination of both.
Marc:What's it like out there on the streets?
Marc:I've not been able to go out there.
Guest:Well, in addition to, you know, dealing with police brutality, dealing with the murdering of my people at the hands of police, we've also been dealing with COVID-19.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which disproportionately affects black and brown people.
Guest:And we have been feeding those who need food during this time.
Guest:You know, we're in the middle of a financial crisis.
Guest:But being here in L.A.
Guest:and watching the National Guard like riding down the street and, you know, I the day they came with these big tanks like we were in Afghanistan or, you know, we were in some war zone.
Guest:It just felt like an alternate universe.
Guest:It was very scary.
Guest:It was intimidating.
Guest:And it just further proved to me that it's super important that we defund the police and put that money and that energy into our health care systems, into our education systems.
Guest:into bettering our communities do you do you find it's and i and i'm like obviously a different person but do you find hope do you have hope in general i have action right like action is my love language yeah i think that it's going to take some real work and conversation had in the white community
Guest:I think that until I see the level of conversations around chattel slavery, around mass incarceration, around systemic racism and the systems that have negatively affected my people, done by the ancestors of white people and how they're going to dismantle that, then I won't be hopeful.
Guest:until I see money put back into our communities around how we can rebuild our communities.
Guest:When we tried to do it in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the police, the KKK, everyone burned it down.
Guest:Until I see money put into our communities, I don't have hope.
Marc:All we have is action.
Guest:Action.
Guest:That's my love language.
Guest:If you want me to be hopeful, I need to see that level of action and participation.
Marc:Yes, I need to see that level of action and participation.
Marc:race.
Marc:But is that time over now?
Marc:Do you find that you have time to be creative?
Marc:Is there a way for you to be creative outside of just specific, you know, activist action?
Guest:I'm focused on being a better citizen.
Guest:And I think art
Guest:can meet citizenship, is a part of humanity, can uplift, can inspire, can encourage, comfort during these times.
Guest:But I think my energy is spent in creative ways of building with my community.
Guest:and how I can use the privilege that I have as an artist, as someone who has conversations with corporations and conversations with those who are more privileged than even myself, how can I advocate for them in those spaces?
Guest:How can I use that leverage, use my...
Guest:proximity to finances to feed my people.
Guest:How can how can we get creative, you know, in ways of organizing?
Guest:Yeah, that's where I'm using my my weight these days.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I have been DJing on a personal level.
Guest:I've been like trying to DJ.
Guest:I've been to stay sane, but I wish that my work wasn't as relevant.
Guest:as it is.
Guest:I mean, I think work that I've done almost a decade ago from my albums, these are songs that I'm still performing.
Guest:These are songs that still ring true to our times.
Guest:And I wish that wasn't the case.
Guest:I wish that we were not, you know, in a space where we have to scream Black Lives Matter, that we have to be excited about, you know, on a federal level, they're not going to
Guest:discriminate against in workspaces, the LGBTQIA plus communities like you.
Guest:This just happened today.
Marc:I know that shouldn't be a victory.
Marc:It should just be what it is.
Marc:Yeah, it should just be.
Guest:Why are we having those conversations?
Guest:And so that that that has taken up a lot of my mental real estate right now and trying to creatively figure out ways to get this administration in this current situation.
Guest:Um, president out of office.
Marc:Uh, yeah, please.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This, this has to change all of what's going on in the police, uh, force, uh, what's going on on the streets, the killing of, of, of black people.
Guest:It's all connected, you know, the position of power right now.
Marc:Now, when you say, you know, you look back at the work you did like a decade ago, you know, in terms of those songs still being relevant.
Marc:I mean, that was so that was always the vision.
Marc:I mean, you knew what was going on then.
Marc:And and you're sad that we haven't moved past that.
Marc:But but doesn't it make you at least satisfied on some level that those songs still are relevant and that they can still mean something to people?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:If they can comfort, if they can be a reminder of how much work we need to do and how far we have not come, then yes, then so be it.
Marc:And when you were like when you were starting out, when you were starting to put together your vision, I mean, who were the artists that most guided the way?
Guest:Stevie Wonder, for sure.
Guest:Prince, for sure.
Marc:And you got to work with him, right?
Marc:A lot.
Guest:Yeah, I've worked with both of them in different ways.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:What did you do with Stevie?
Guest:I have performed on stage with him a few times.
Guest:And he was on my last album.
Guest:He has an interlude called Stevie's Dream on Dirty Computer.
Guest:And with Prince, Prince was on my second album, The Electric Lady.
Guest:And, you know, both of them are mentors and just family.
Marc:When you think about mentors like that, I mean, what was it like you grew up in Kansas City?
Guest:Kansas City, Kansas.
Marc:And I can't even I don't like I don't even know what Kansas is like.
Yeah.
Guest:It's like a lot of things.
Marc:I mean, do you ever go back?
Marc:Do you have people there still?
Guest:I do.
Guest:My grandmother had 12 kids and she migrated from Aberdeen, Mississippi to Kansas City, Kansas.
Guest:And my mom was the baby of those kids.
Guest:And
Guest:I have over 50.
Guest:No, I have not over.
Guest:I have exactly 50 five zero first cousins.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Large family.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, we still talk and we're close and I go back like maybe once or twice a year to visit.
Guest:But, yeah, it's not.
Guest:like the Wizard of Oz, for sure.
Guest:No, I know that.
Guest:But yeah, there's a lot of things that are affecting Black people in that community.
Guest:And I hope to continue to work with organizers there and foundations and organizations.
Guest:uh to help to help better to help better kansas you know sure when you were like so how many kids in your family how many siblings do i have yeah i have two yeah sisters younger older i'm the oldest do they work with you
Guest:No, they have completely different lives.
Marc:Oh, that's probably nice.
Guest:Very community.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But community oriented.
Guest:You know, I come from my parents were essential workers and we all come from that.
Guest:So they're they're working in on the community and for the advocating for our community in different ways.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And how did you like how did you get started in finding your your sort of talents?
Marc:I mean, when you were a kid, I mean, how did it start for you that you knew you wanted to to sing or present yourself that way?
Guest:You know, you know, kids know.
Guest:they may not be able to articulate it.
Guest:Yeah, because our vocabulary is constantly developing.
Guest:But kids know who they are, who they're attracted to, what they want to do very early on.
Guest:And I think what keeps
Guest:that dream or that purpose alive is the people around you.
Guest:They can even discourage you or they can inspire you.
Guest:They can be the wind under your wings.
Guest:And I fortunately was born into a family that really was the wind underneath my wings.
Guest:They made me feel like I could do anything when it came to music, when it came to acting.
Guest:They were at every talent showcase.
Guest:They were in the living rooms, you know, egging me on when I had when I wanted to sing a song or had a song in my heart.
Guest:Like when I was busting out singing songs in church and get escorted to the to the children's church.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't get whooped.
Guest:They laughed with me about it, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I think that a lot of who I am, I owe to my family.
Marc:There just seems to be something like you mix a lot of different styles, and it's kind of amazing, the theatrics of it, but psychedelic, funk, soul, and then there's sort of an almost Broadway feeling to things.
Marc:There's the time travel element, alter egos.
Marc:It's just like...
Marc:I like I guess I'm trying to find out when you were a kid.
Marc:I mean, what was the first portal to this world that you were going to invent for yourself?
Marc:Was it did you like musicals?
Marc:I mean, what made you sort of find a doorway into this alternate universe?
Guest:I did.
Guest:I love musicals.
Guest:I mean, I love because I am from Kansas.
Guest:I did watch The Wizard of Oz.
Guest:Julie Garland was such a cinema hero to me because she sang and she acted.
Guest:I also used to read a lot of books.
Guest:I used to read the Goosebumps series and photosynthesis inspired a lot.
Guest:Photosynthesis?
Guest:Yes, the concept of plants.
Marc:Yeah, that feed on the sun.
Guest:That, yes, feed on the sun.
Guest:And I remember writing early on a short story around plants and aliens working together to snatch humans like the plants would be spying on in the living rooms or they were in the living rooms or kitchens or bedrooms.
Guest:They would spy on human life in connection with humans.
Guest:with the aliens and then they took everybody except for me for some odd reason, because I should have been the first to want to go because I love artificial intelligence and I love the concept of the unknown and aliens and all of that.
Guest:And so I think it was just my love of the unknown, you know, watching Alfred Hitchcock with my grandmother when she used to babysit me.
Guest:We used to watch The Twilight Zone a lot.
Guest:I was always in love with science fiction and I
Guest:dreamt of a world, of my world, consisting of being able to explore those themes in science fiction and be able to sing and write original music.
Guest:And that was just something that I loved doing, you know, at an early age.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So it was just like a fun thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It always starts to be fun until the business side of it comes.
Guest:Everything is fun.
Guest:Everything is so...
Guest:beautiful and free and until you know you start getting non-creatives involved.
Marc:Well, like it seems to me that like science fiction would provide like because I'm not a science fiction guy, but I'm definitely a music guy.
Marc:But like the people that I know that enjoy science fiction, it's a very sort of it's a it's a very kind of elaborate escape that there's all these different avenues that you can take to sort of build these to be part of these other worlds of possibilities.
Marc:And a lot of them are pretty hopeful, really.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:I mean, I think what I'm attracted to is possibility and what can be.
Guest:You know, Afrofuturism is, you know, goes hand in hand with sci-fi, but it's seen through the lens, through the black lens.
Marc:Would that be like Afrofuturism?
Marc:Would that be like Sun Ra, George Clinton, Funkadelic?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:All of them, all of that music is like you go outside of what people see you as.
Guest:You create the world that you want people to see you in.
Guest:You create the characters that you want people to associate you with.
Guest:You create the world that you thrive in.
Guest:And that's really what my motivation has been.
Marc:And there's a lot of good comedy in some of that too.
Guest:It is.
Guest:I mean, I think humor is is a good way to deal with, you know, pain and trauma.
Guest:And most times that's what we that's what we use as a coping mechanism.
Marc:Yeah, for sure.
Marc:Now, can you tell me, like, you know, when you started to conceive of the first couple of records, like what was the the the sort of the basis of the the kind of Metropolis concept?
Guest:Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That that particular project.
Guest:And it was the haves because there's a constant battle between the haves and the have nots.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, work, the working class and the rich privileged.
Guest:And there was a quote in there that said the the mediator between the hands and the mind is the heart.
Guest:And I said, that's what I want to represent.
Guest:The heart.
Guest:I want to represent the heart.
Guest:I want my music to represent the heart.
Guest:I want my music to represent that bridge that brings people together.
Guest:I want what I represent to be a magnet for those who are seeking self-acceptance, for those who are seeking community, for those who are choosing their freedom over their fears.
Marc:And choosing like their own the freedom of pursuing their own identity, whatever that may be.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:If it's rooted in love, if it's rooted in evolution and teaching of what it means to exist, if it's rooted in those things.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm always I'm always going to be an advocate for it.
Marc:So that, that whole concept, like, cause it's hard for me to, to put it all together, but the Metropolis concept sort of moves through what, two or three records, two or three albums that you did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I started off wanting to do suites, which are kind of like EPs, you know, like 85, six songs.
Guest:And I did, I released that as a five or six song.
Guest:And then I did, uh, the arc Android, which was a double suite, um, suites two and three.
Guest:And, um,
Guest:I forget which suite I'm on now, but we're going to continue it.
Guest:It just depends on where my spirit is.
Guest:We have other exciting things with those projects because people are now looking at them as like, oh, wow, this could be a film or this could be a graphic novel.
Guest:And so we're exploring those avenues now.
Marc:So you have other people that are creative minds that, that are sort of like, why not build this out?
Marc:Let's make a character.
Marc:Let's yeah.
Marc:Have a movie.
Guest:That was always, always the intention.
Guest:I mean, if you come to my shows that, that performance, that it's, it's always, it's not about just releasing, you know, a compilation of music or just songs.
Guest:No, these are worlds.
Guest:This is world building.
Guest:And a lot of, a lot of our heroes from David Bowie, you know, who was,
Guest:It was Ziggy, Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, which was just like one of my favorite albums from him.
Guest:And he was also able to act and he was, you know, he was just an idea, you know, that was always constantly trying to realize itself and to speak.
Guest:And that's what has encouraged me.
Guest:People have come before me and they've done concept albums and they've created worlds.
Guest:And when you go see them live and when you listen to it, you're just like, oh, this is bigger than just an album.
Guest:This is a world.
Guest:And like them, I want to continue to create that.
Marc:It's interesting, though, because I haven't seen you live in concert, and I've watched some of the videos, but even though you choose these performances and these worlds and these concepts, you're a type of performer that there's something raw that always seems to come through.
Marc:I always seem to feel like there's a real human in there and a real humanity to it.
Marc:Just watching the way you took over
Marc:the Oscars that night.
Marc:There was such a presence to it all that the sort of rawness of it, whatever you were doing in that moment, made the entire undertaking look ridiculous to me.
Marc:Like your presence made the Oscars look small.
Guest:Oh, my goodness.
Guest:Don't say that.
Guest:Don't say that because you'll have some people upset with you about that one.
Marc:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:That somehow or another, even though you create these like the alter egos and whatnot, there's something about what you're talking about, that sort of love or that authenticity.
Marc:That you managed to come through.
Marc:And I don't know that I always saw that with Bowie.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:I thought when Bowie got lost in a thing, he was lost in a thing to the point where, you know, at the end of it all, you don't really get a sense that you knew who that guy was at all.
Marc:And that's part of his beautiful mystique.
Marc:But I feel like, you know, you seem to shine through.
Marc:You don't seem to be hiding, really.
Marc:Are you?
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:I mean, I think we all are.
Guest:You know, I think that we go through trauma.
Guest:You know, we go through unpacking that trauma as kids.
Marc:Like what?
Marc:Like what was your particular thing that you had to unpack?
Guest:Well, my dad was in and out of prison, for instance, and he not in prison anymore.
Guest:He was he was also a victim of the system.
Guest:I mean, he had a drug addiction problem.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But instead of getting him rehab, they put him in jail.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's just something that we have to talk about.
Guest:We have to talk about mass incarceration.
Guest:We have to talk about.
Guest:Mental health.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And my dad wrote a book and he is, you know, sober now.
Guest:He's amazing.
Guest:Best friends.
Guest:But growing up, he was in and out of my life.
Guest:And so there would be moments where I would think he was coming to pick me up and he just wouldn't show up.
Guest:It wasn't because he didn't love me.
Guest:But back then, that's what I thought.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Of course.
Guest:I didn't realize that his addiction was was his sickness was making him absent from my life.
Guest:And so that spilled over into different moments of my life.
Guest:Like I remember I used to put on parties.
Guest:We have a throw parties with my friends in high school and we would just make money doing that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was so bad that.
Guest:I would my abandonment issues were so bad that I thought that nobody was going to come to the party.
Guest:So I would hide in the bathroom.
Guest:Yeah, I wouldn't come out until they were like, OK, more people here because I just the feeling of people abandoning me was just so hurtful.
Guest:You never wanted that pain.
Guest:And I think it has also spilled over.
Guest:And I didn't realize this until really like a couple of few years ago that it was spilling over into me as an artist like.
Guest:Let's just say, you know, if there were certain things that I want to talk about in my music, I won't name them now.
Guest:But if I wanted to talk about them, I'd be like, man, oh, if I say this, what if people don't love me anymore?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:What if they leave?
Guest:What if they go away?
Yeah.
Guest:And up until, you know, me really being extra vocal about being queer, I would always talk about it in my music, but I never wanted to talk about it in interviews because I had to have certain conversations with people that I knew love me, but also were homophobic.
Guest:And and friends and family, friends and family, you know, they love me.
Guest:But to look at me in that way, I was like, man, they might not love me the same.
Guest:And so I had to really have these deep conversations before I put out dirty computer, before I really started to to to be more vocal about my sexuality, because I just I had I had this fear of abandonment.
Guest:So.
Guest:I know that I wasn't alone in that.
Guest:And that's what pushed me to go even harder in who I was, because I was like, there are a lot of other, you know, Baptists raised.
Guest:people in small towns and communities who are fearful.
Guest:And there are also people who can't talk about who they are because they could be ostracized or financially cut off or killed, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, we're still dealing with these things.
Guest:And
Guest:I know firsthand what it feels like to to to be misunderstood or to have to have that fear of if I wake up tomorrow after saying this, you know, is everything gone?
Marc:Were you able to, so when you started to have this struggle within yourself, were you able to sort of facilitate those conversations with your family and your friends before you sort of became more public about it?
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:And how did they go generally?
Guest:I mean, my mom and like people really close to me, you know, knew and they were fine.
Guest:But you still have you still I still had to have conversations with them because when you when you come in, because it's coming in to me, I am I'm not coming out.
Guest:I don't believe in the concept of coming out.
Guest:You know, I believe in, you know, coming in.
Marc:Which means being included as opposed to... How do you differentiate coming out and coming in?
Guest:Well, coming in for black and brown people is like, you know, we're inviting you in.
Guest:I'm inviting you into my space.
Guest:I'm not trying to...
Guest:come into your world and fit in.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Got it.
Guest:And I felt like and I still feel like you constantly have to teach people, you know, about the means to for them to come in to who you are.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:but there are some people who, you know, in my, in, in, in my family that, you know, they, they disapprove of, of me, um, loving myself and embracing everything about myself.
Guest:And, and I just tell them, you know, if you don't, you don't, uh, and this always gets, if you don't, uh, if you don't want to, you know,
Guest:love me for being queer or accept me for being queer, then don't take my gay queer money.
Guest:Don't ask me for no money.
Guest:How about that?
Guest:And then they're like, oh, okay, well, now we accept, we get it.
Marc:We like queer money.
Guest:Right, because you know, listen, when people think that you are, just because you're close to somebody who has a lot of money, you now have a lot of money.
Guest:They always think art.
Guest:They feel like, artists know like,
Guest:that there's going to be that moment where people start thinking that they are just super, super, super, super rich.
Marc:Sure, of course, because they're related to you.
Marc:So, like, when you, do you think, like, then, well, that's sort of interesting, that fear of abandonment that runs so deep in emotional negligence with parents, you know, that do you think that some of the drive of your creativity was then to, in sort of an attempt at sort of self-parenting,
Marc:You created these other worlds and these other places where you could be safe.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes, absolutely.
Guest:A lot of my art was born out of protection.
Marc:And so like the escapism of science fiction and musicals and anything that looked fantastic was probably such a relief for your heart.
Marc:You know, to be involved in that.
Marc:And before you understood the feelings maybe about your queerness or whatever else was going on, you could embrace your otherness because you had this special world because science fiction is its own special thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think you're right about that.
Guest:Yeah, I think you're right.
Guest:And in my world, androids represented black people.
Guest:Androids represented members of the LGBTQIA plus communities.
Guest:The untouchables represented anybody who went against the status quo and were, you know, were in marginalized groups and their voices were silenced.
Guest:So that's what I use the android as a as a parallel.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it makes sense.
Marc:But also, like, it's interesting that you can have these these suites and these concepts that you embrace and these different textures musically.
Marc:But you can also, you know, kick out a pretty solid hit when you want to.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I I always look at when people say hits and charts and things like that for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's always like.
Guest:A hit is when it hits home first.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Meaning when it when it with you who I am and where I am at that time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And also people can relate to it.
Guest:A large amount of people are relating to it.
Guest:Then that's beautiful.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's and you know, and nobody sounds like you.
Marc:No one's doing the type of musical integration that you're doing.
Marc:Like because when I was listening to some of it the other day.
Marc:It was kind of interesting to me because I couldn't really fit it into like I couldn't tell you what type of music it was necessarily.
Marc:It was just your shit, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, obviously, you know, there's nothing new under the sun.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:How we how you combine it.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:How you combine it.
Guest:The elements that you use, you know, the way you say something makes makes it makes it all yours.
Marc:So when did the like, do you like because I was thinking about David Bowie and and some of the stuff that you do.
Marc:Did you come to acting pretty naturally?
Marc:I mean, where did that come from?
Guest:I think being embodying certain characters in me made me feel comfortable.
Marc:Which ones?
Marc:Which characters?
Guest:I have lots of them.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Just to get through life?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I think we all have them.
Guest:I think we all are, depending on the day.
Marc:We don't all name them, but we have them.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And we have them.
Guest:And you know when they're coming out, certain people trigger those characters.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We just think we have them.
Guest:But growing up, you know, being in musicals, being an international thespian where I would go and monologue to monologue competitions.
Guest:You did?
Marc:How old were you when you were doing that?
Guest:This was all through high school, through high school.
Marc:So you were doing theater in high school?
Guest:Oh, doing yes.
Guest:High school.
Guest:And then prior to that, I had a I was in talent showcases.
Guest:Then I did acapella choir and then I would do after school Shakespearean programs.
Guest:And I was a writer also for the Young Playwrights Roundtable at the Coterie Theater in Kansas City, Missouri.
Marc:Was that a small theater, community theater kind of thing or?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you they would they would let like like 12 students write these short stories.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:And if your short stories were good enough, then the local actors would perform them.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And so I grew up singing and acting pretty much all my life.
Marc:You remember what your first stories were?
Guest:I you know what?
Guest:I don't.
Guest:I need to think that because I got kicked out of the program because my mom and I were sharing I was sharing a car with my mom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my mother, you know, was an essential worker and she would sometimes have to stay late to clean.
Guest:And so.
Guest:If she was late picking me up from school, that meant I was late getting to the after school program.
Guest:And so I was late too many times and they kicked me out.
Guest:So I think I just pushed that part of my life outside of my spirit and my body.
Guest:It was traumatizing because I love that program.
Marc:Oh, that's too bad.
Marc:And so you can be focused more on the music after that.
Guest:No, I went on to perform an art school in New York.
Guest:I went to the American Musical and Dramatics Academy, fresh out of high school.
Guest:And I went there and I studied musical theater.
Guest:I studied acting.
Guest:I studied sight singing, all of the things because I wanted to do musical theater.
Guest:But then I said, I think it's cooler and it's better to do it on my own terms so that I'm not sounding like everybody.
Guest:I love these techniques and learning how to use my voice.
Guest:So I took from it what I needed to apply on my albums and in my life.
Guest:But I did not want to sound like everybody.
Guest:And I didn't like the roles that were offered on Broadway.
Wow.
Marc:So, you know, well, that it was good that you knew that early on and that you were at least.
Marc:So how did then like once you knew that, once you knew you wanted to go into being a recording artist, how does that start?
Guest:I moved to Atlanta.
Guest:I mean, I wanted to be around other black creatives.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:to be around other Black musicians, actors.
Guest:And then my best friend was going to school at Clark Atlanta University.
Guest:And I ended up moving to that college campus where Morehouse and Spelman and Clark exist.
Guest:And I started meeting other artists, other Black creatives who were searching, who were coming from different walks of life and had something they wanted to say.
Guest:And I started being a part of an organization, not organization, an arts collective.
Guest:We formed this arts collective called Wonderland.
Guest:And in Wonderland, you know, you have actors, you have musicians, you have screenwriters, you have poets, you have you have so many different types of visual artists.
Guest:And we just were like, we want to create a different blueprint.
Guest:We want to start an arts collective that, you know, does these art stunts through music, through visual art.
Guest:And yeah, we want people to look to us in the same way that we look to Paisley Park.
Guest:We were excited about this new era, you know, of artists coming together.
Marc:And you did it.
Guest:We are doing it still, you know.
Marc:Some of the original people from Atlanta are still with you?
Guest:Yes, absolutely.
Marc:And like so when you started it, you had people from all different realms, from from music, from visual arts, from like what?
Marc:What else?
Marc:Dance, everything.
Guest:Dance, everything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Public speakers.
Guest:Public speakers.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Actors.
Guest:Everything, everything you can think of.
Marc:And then how did that evolve?
Marc:Because that's that's your label now, isn't it?
Guest:Yeah, so the art society is like the tree, like the big macro idea.
Guest:And then we have Wonderland Records.
Guest:We also have Wonderland Pictures.
Guest:So I have a production company where we are producing films and television shows.
Guest:Do you like acting?
Guest:Do I like it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I love acting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I love acting.
Guest:taking on characters
Guest:that are different from myself and also that are in me that i'm ready to get out right right right yeah yeah being a part of films like moonlight and hidden figures that honor people in our communities yeah voices we hadn't seen amplified on screen before yeah uh history that teaches the rest of america about you know um who we are as a people yeah reminding folks that we're not monolithic
Guest:that we from NASA to the ghettos to, you know, arts collectives to the strip clubs.
Guest:We are multifaceted.
Guest:We are brilliant.
Guest:And there's so much nuance in us.
Guest:And that's what I like doing.
Guest:I like bringing those characters to screen.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:And what's what is what's Antebellum about?
Guest:Antebellum is a psychological thriller.
Guest:I filmed that in New Orleans and I play an author, Veronica Henley.
Guest:And I don't want to spoil things, but, you know, I think that this film is right on time.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:In terms of where we are politically, in terms of where we are when we're dealing with, you know, dealing with race.
Guest:But it's, you know, it's a psychological mind bender.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I watched your season of Homecoming.
Marc:I watched all of it.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's a very frightening possibility, that particular problem of all of a sudden not knowing who you are, what you've done.
Marc:I thought you handled that very well.
Marc:Were you able to sort of really feel what that would feel like?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I had to do a lot of research.
Guest:I had to imagine.
Guest:Really?
Marc:What kind of research?
Guest:Watching movies.
Guest:I watched some of my favorite films like Memento, where he's dealing with memory loss.
Guest:I watched The Bourne Identity.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I watched this film from Nicole Kidman called Before I Go to Sleep, where she wakes up every morning and doesn't know who she is or who her husband is.
Guest:So and then also doing research on short term, long term memory loss, amnesia, all of that.
Guest:Because, you know, it does happen.
Guest:And I didn't want to play the character one note.
Guest:I didn't want her to be like disoriented the entire show, the entire season.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because what I'm finding is when you can't remember something, it's frustrating for you.
Guest:You know, the person you're like, you're mad at yourself.
Guest:And trying to hide that frustration and also get answers from people that you don't know if you can trust because you don't know who did this to you.
Guest:My character wakes up in the middle of the boat.
Guest:She has no idea who she who she is or what happened to her.
Guest:And she's going on, you know, this.
Marc:uh this this hunt for self this search for self-identity yeah and and she's frustrated but she also has to get answers she doesn't know who to trust you know it's yeah it's it's uh it's tough and there's a horrible vulnerability to that oh man i couldn't even imagine because you you know you naturally want to be protect yourself but you have no fucking idea who to trust or what happened to your brain and you just have to move through the world like that
Guest:Yeah, you don't.
Guest:It's frightening.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think, you know, this show, one of the reasons I signed on was what it what it what it said about how we treat our vets.
Guest:I play a vet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Walter Cruz, who's who's played by the incomparable Stefan James.
Guest:He also is a vet and he's great with trauma.
Guest:And it had a lot to say about how we treat our vets when they come from war.
Guest:What kind of resources are we putting into mental health?
Guest:What type of education
Guest:You know, are we giving to around what it means to show up for our for our vets when they're having PTSD episodes?
Guest:This also talks about what it means to be a citizen over, you know, a capitalist in capitalism, what it means to show up for your people.
Guest:and want the health and the well-being over capitalism.
Guest:And it has a lot to say about corporations and how lots of them, you know, have
Guest:And even we're seeing now they put capitalism over integrity, over truth.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:Are you kidding me?
Marc:It's like they're they're they're opening up states with the disease rampaging, you know, just because people are they're playing off on people's.
Marc:We're bored.
Marc:We're tired of it.
Marc:We want to believe it's gone.
Marc:And this is an amazing example of what we're dealing with, with not only the police brutality protests, but with COVID-19 that, you know, the people have had enough of this shit.
Marc:I mean, and obviously, you know, I'm not a person of color, so I'm not speaking from that place.
Marc:But just with, you know, people like with corporate interests and the interests of capitalism, you know,
Marc:You're basically saying that they don't they don't care enough about people that if they die, as long as the system sustains.
Marc:Like right now, I don't know how you feel.
Marc:But in the face of all this, I have no idea what's going to happen at all anymore.
Marc:Do you?
Guest:You know what?
Guest:You got to think about chattel slavery.
Guest:OK, that that that was born out of capitalism.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You think about where we are now with COVID-19 and COVID-19 is killing black people disproportionately.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And black people, black and brown people are our essential workers.
Guest:Like telling us to go back to work, telling people in my family to go back to work and my community to go back to work is putting them at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19 and dying from our health care systems because of systemic racism.
Guest:We don't have our health care is not the same as as white folks and those who are privileged in this company, in this in this country.
Guest:And all of this is connected.
Guest:And and for me, you know, I know that you're saying, like, I can't speak, you know, for black folks.
Guest:No, you can't.
Guest:But you can have conversations with other white people.
Guest:You can have conversations about the why.
Guest:Why are we saying black lives matter as though black people are objects?
Guest:Right.
Guest:and not humans and subjects to be studying.
Guest:We are brilliant, but why are we, you in your living rooms or, you know, or why are you afraid and not specifically speaking to you, but why are white people afraid to have those conversations?
Guest:And my ask is that white people have these conversations because white people are the people who can only fix this.
Guest:The systemic racism, this is a conversation that white people have to have about their privilege in this country.
Guest:This is a conversation that you have to have about your ancestors who started, who started
Guest:the import importing of our people into this country to work and to do the labor that you do nothing right nothing period that why did police why did the police start it started from slavery when they were catching other slaves
Guest:helping, working with slave owners.
Guest:So those conversations and that reading that needs to be, that needs to be had, that's work that white people are going to have to do.
Guest:And, you know, we're going to keep speaking out.
Guest:We're going to keep protesting.
Guest:We're going to keep doing what we have been doing.
Guest:We are going to continue to show up for our people.
Guest:But this is not going to end unless white people really dismantle the system of white supremacy.
Guest:This is not going to end until you dismantle systemic racism, dismantle everything that's happening in the police forces, and until we really defund police.
Guest:You know, defund them and use that money.
Guest:It needs to reinvest in health care, to reinvest in education.
Marc:Reintegration into society.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Because, see, we tried to do this in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Guest:Black people tried to pull themselves up from their bootstraps, the boots that we didn't come into this country having.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was burned down.
Guest:The KKK, the police burned, bombed and burned down
Guest:what we built.
Guest:And until you start pouring into our communities, the talk is cheap.
Marc:Well, I'll do what I can from where I am.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:You're welcome.
Marc:And I appreciate you talking to me.
Marc:And I'm a big fan of your talent.
Marc:I think you're amazing.
Marc:And just stay safe and keep doing what you do.
Guest:I appreciate you.
Guest:It was a pleasure to talk to you and to be able to express how I'm feeling these days and to hear from you.
Guest:And I look forward to your, you know, to deeper allyship from you.
Marc:OK, you got it.
Guest:Thank you, Janelle.
Marc:Take care.
Guest:All right.
Marc:That was the amazing Janelle Monae.
Marc:It was nice talking to her.
Marc:I think you can notice.
Marc:Could you notice that I was a little nervous?
Marc:You can see her in the newest season of Homecoming on Amazon Prime Video.
Marc:Her next film, Antebellum, comes out on August 22nd.
Marc:Of course, all her records.
Marc:Arcandroid, The Electric Lady, Dirty Computer.
Marc:Amazing.
Marc:Okay, so now let me play some guitar.
Marc:How about some angry blues?
Marc:Can we do that?
Marc:Let's do that.
Marc:Boomer lives!