PINK EYE

   

    Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer was truly an experience. When it had first released, Pynk was the track that I had heard initially. The colorful music video with the bits of comedy snuck in; the soft yet powerful vocals really attracted to me to the rest of the album back in 2018. The very specific type of lyricism that she has is enthralling to say the least. I’m always excited to see how she can twist words and put in adjectives that I haven’t heard of before. When reading Memory Librarian I immediately caught wind of her style. It’s increasingly poetic yet provocative at the same time. Janelle Monae knows how to keep both listeners and readers enticed with every word she places. Now in 2023, after rewatching her “emotion picture” as she calls it, I couldn’t help but find similarities in another science fiction driven body of work. 

    Planet Her by artist Doja Cat, was also a feminist and futuristic album but taken in a different direction. Instead of addressing black issues or inequalities due to sex, gender, and orientation. Doja simply exists as a black woman in space. When she had first introduced fans to the new sound she was creating, she released a single and music video called Kiss me More. This music video reminds me a lot of Janelle Monae’s video for Pynk. The pink sands and futuristic apparatus’ as well as this very huge emphasis on the feminine, both artists’ utilize science fiction as a way to heighten these concepts. Thinking of the other tracks on the album for Planet her as well, some do bare a resemblance in concept to a certain degree. Django Jane, a more rap focused song and Doja Cat’s Need to Know. Both seem to take advantage of a more masculine style of rapping in my opinion. However, this doesn’t detract from the femininity of both songs. Janelle has a visual focus on African aesthetics in her’s while Doja uses afrobeats in some of her songs. So both projects seem to be a different side of the spectrum when it comes to telling stories through music using an Afrofuturistic aesthetic to do so.