Remember that face. Her name is Janelle Monaé, and she is hot fiyah! Sad as it is to say, she's been around for a while (since 2006 if I recall correctly), but I just heard a song of hers (titled "Many Moons") last weekend. Let me just say this: I've been listening to it on repeat since I first heard it (hat tip to Toni for putting me on!). It's like Afro-punk futuristic electropera trippy what the eff; think Andre 3000 and Fall Out Boy shrooming balls.
The song's so good; I practically wore out a set of headphones replaying her EP, entitled "Metropolis: The Chase Suite". The album's sofa king good, I bought it. With money. No BitTorrenting this one folks, Monaé deserves your cold hard cash. Don't take my word for it though, check out the vid for "Many Moons" below:
Now, some artists make music videos; others make short films and/or productions using their music as the soundtrack. "Thriller" immediately comes to mind as an example of the latter; in a sense, so does "Smack My Bitch Up". "Many Moons" is a video that transcends the usual gimmick of marketing the audio with moving pictures, and actually creates a vivid and surreal visual fabric stitched together by the music itself. It's quite arguable that the vid is better than the song. Props to Monaé for sticking to her off-kilter style - which, in a music industry saturated with the type of catchy, sugarcoated, yet fleetingly empty-calorie instapop aural sex that we've come to call "top 40 hits", is no small feat.
Look out for young Janelle; she's about to take over in a big effing way. One caveat: she is signed to Bad Boy. Here's to hoping Diddy treats her more like Biggie and less like Da Band. Hell, I'll even take Danity Kane-style artist development at this point...




