"The mediator between the brain and hands must be the heart" - Metropolis (1927)

Those familiar with French history may have come across the name Julie “La Maupin” d’Aubigny and the stories that are told about her life. A French icon and legend, La Maupin (her opera name) was a famed bisexual swordswoman and singer who lived in the 17th century and dressed in male clothing. She refused to be forced into marriage and wandered across France with a string of lovers (her most famous being a woman whose parents forced her to be a nun at a convent that La Maupin burned down and helped her escape from) and made money through singing and dueling demonstrations. It can be easy to look at women’s history and assume that the lives of the women who lived before us were solely defined by different forms of oppression and loss. Yet, when closely examined, it’s clear that women have always found ways to rebel against the systems that hurt them, whether it be in direct action or more subtle ways. This was reflected in La Maupin as she was unabashed, rebellious, and lived on her own joyous terms, refusing to accept the traditional role that society gave her, much like Janelle Monáe.

Born in Kansas City to a working-class family, Monáe knew that she wanted to pursue singing from a very young age. After moving to New York and studying at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, she dropped out and moved to Atlanta where she helped create the Wondaland label and made music that would become part of her Metropolis series. Without context, this portion of Monáe’s work can seem confusing, yet her brilliance is revealed once it’s understood what she is referring to.

Monáe’s main inspiration for her first three albums is the German Expressionist film Metropolis (1927) which tells a story about a futuristic city built on the backs of exploited laborers and a female android that spurs them on to revolution. Though in the film it is quite clear that the android is a nefarious doppelganger who manipulates the workers into dissenting, Monáe takes this narrative and changes the perspective in her music. Not only does she make it clear that she is speaking from the viewpoint of a black woman, but she also imagines what it would look like if she were the female android sent to liberate the exploited androids in Metropolis. Using themes commonly found in afro-futurism, Monáe takes science fiction (a genre which often imagines the future as patently white and depoliticized) and comments on society today as a futuristic other. She’s stated as much in interviews, “I love speaking about the android because they are the new other.”

