When Janelle Monáe came out as queer in a Rolling Stone cover story last April, the revelation made headlines around the world. As one of the most prolific multi-hyphenate artists of a generation, her declaration carried immense weight, both for herself and for queer black women and LGBTQ+ people everywhere. The announcement was followed by the release of her most brilliant, vulnerable work to date: Dirty Computer, an album that was at its core about embracing the freedom one finds in self-exploration and discovery. Bold, unabashedly fluid anthems like “Pynk,” “Screwed,” and “Make Me Feel” further solidified Monáe as a leader for “free-ass motherfuckers” (as she delightfully referred to herself when coming out) everywhere, one who challenges social binaries and norms alike with grace and strength.
Always evolving sonically and aesthetically, today, Monáe is entering a new era of her genre-bending career. The constant, though, is her work, which remains centered in advocacy, agency, and empowerment, regardless of what form it takes. With reverence for the responsibility of an artist and activist, Monáe uses every platform she builds to amplify intersectional discourse about race, gender, and sexuality in new ways. She takes action in a way that makes everyone take notice.
Monáe’s ascent as an advocate for the LGBTQ+ community has tracked alongside her own journey towards personal enlightenment and fulfillment of purpose. It has come with an understanding of the paradox of visibility, and a reckoning with the fears and challenges that queer people, specifically queer people of color, face when living authentically. In taking center stage to speak out and perform against aggressive oppression, Monáe’s voice and vision for humanity help to define what it means to advance emancipation for all.
That’s just a sliver of why we chose Monáe to star in them.’s debut cover story, “Janelle Monáe: Living Out Loud.” It would only be right to have one free-ass motherfucker interview another for the occasion, which is why we recruited Lizzo, an inimitable musical force in her own right and an unerring LGBTQ+ ally, to speak with Monáe below. Both women are known for hits that make you dance while reaching for something deeper, and both share a commitment to uplifting marginalized communities, championing self-love and self-care, subverting social expectations, and speaking their truths through their work. In the wide-ranging conversation below, they touch on that common ground and more, speaking to the terrifying, liberating process of challenging the world’s preconceptions about you, what it really means to live freely in our world today, and loving and living out loud.
Lizzo: First of all, shout out to freedom, okay? Because when you first started talking about sexual fluidity in Rolling Stone, you made me feel like I could do whatever I wanna do and feel how I wanna feel. That’s freedom.
I think that there's so much freedom with sexuality in the world right now. And you are a huge part of that wave. Can you tell me about that journey?
Janelle Monáe: It's been a journey. For me, sexuality and sexual identity and fluidity is a journey. It's not a destination. I've discovered so much about myself over the years as I've evolved and grown and spent time with myself and loved ones. That's the exciting thing — always finding out new things about who you are. And that's what I love about life. It takes us on journeys that not even we ourselves sometimes are prepared for. You just adapt to where you are and how you've evolved as a free thinking person.
Absolutely. I was just talking about this the other day, about how fluidity can mean so many things. It's not just what you like in that moment. I've seen fluidity change with age. I've seen people come out in their sexual identity in their forties and fifties. Yet there's so much pressure on young people to choose an identity, when you're a teenager and your hormones are jumping off — it's like, "Choose an identity, choose a sexual orientation." It's like, "How?” When I like everything sometimes, and I like nothing sometimes.
Do you have any words for those who are struggling with their sexuality or coming out? At any age, but especially for young people.
Don't allow yourself to feel any pressure other than the pressure you put on you. And I think there's so much power in not labeling yourself. That said, there's also power in saying "This is how I identify,” and having community with the folks you identify with. Everyone is on a journey of self-discovery, and those of us who may not understand others’ journeys should be more empathetic and tolerant and supportive.
A big thing for me is just being patient with myself, and not allowing myself to make decisions based in fear, or a fear of people not understanding me. And it's hard. You go through experiences where you feel fearful, and you end up being depressed, or having anxiety, and not taking care of you. But that fear should not get in the way of how you love or who you love.
Right. And when you’re in the public eye, there's another layer to that with your sexual identity — added pressure, or another kind of fear. Coming out is such a personal, liberating experience. It's nobody's business. But especially when someone famous comes out — and even if their friends or family already know who they're stickin' and lickin' — it’s like, when everyone knows and it's in your heart, is that even really coming out?
Do you feel like Dirty Computer was a public coming out? Or how did you see that statement you made?
Well, one, whenever I'm making music, I start with where I honestly am and what I honestly have to say. I work inward, and then I focus outward, on how it can impact people and be helpful to others. But it starts with me.
I knew the title of this album since before The ArchAndroid, so I’ve been sitting with it for some time. There were just conversations that I had to have with myself and my family about my sexuality and the impact that speaking honestly and truthfully about it through my art would have. I grew up in the Midwest; you did, too. You spent time in Minneapolis. I spent time in Kansas. I grew up there, in a very small town, and I went to a Baptist church; to be anything other than heterosexual is a sin in that community, and growing up, I was always told I'd go to hell if I was. There was a part of me that had to deal with what that meant.
After I had those conversations with myself and I saw a therapist, I had to be able to talk about what it meant to identify as bisexual. What does that mean? How would discovering that impact the relationship I was in at the time? How do I talk about it with my family? How do I go back to my church? The bottom line is I had to have conversations with myself and the folks that love and care about me, and realize they may not understand what it means for me to be a person who identifies as queer in this world. I’ll also add that it wasn't like I wanted to even make it a declaration. I knew that by being truthful through my art, people were gonna have questions, and I had to figure out a way to talk about it. And in having those talks with myself, I realized it was bigger than just me. There are millions of other folks who are looking for a community. And I just learned into that. I leaned into the idea that if my own church won't accept me, I'm gonna create my own church.
Hallelujah. How do you feel about the state of queer acceptance in 2019?
How do I feel about it? I mean, to be young, queer, and black in America means that you can be misunderstood. You can be hated. It also means that you can be celebrated and loved. And I think there's a lot at stake when you’re living out loud in that way. One thing I’ve realized even more was that when you walk in your truth, you can inspire and encourage people to walk in theirs’. I don't know if you got the opportunity to see, but I watched this episode of Queer Eye the other day, and there was this woman, Jess. A young girl from Kansas who really touched me. And I think she touched a lot of people. It was a special episode because I could relate to her — I knew what it meant to be that young and living in the Bible Belt. And she wanted so badly to be this strong, black, queer woman, and she said that I had influenced everything from the way she was dressed to the way she was seen. I just said to myself, "Man, the fact that my album has reached another young black woman like her, and it's helped her in her life, it makes me feel like I'm walking in my purpose and it's really what I'm supposed to be doing." And I can't give up.
I think people are looking for that validation. When they're trying to talk to their parents and their parents don't see that representation out in the real world and people being accepted like that — it's foreign to them, and I think that by being the example, we make it a little easier for kids to be able to talk to their loved ones about it.
Well, listen, sis. People were lit to know that you were queer as fuck. It was exciting. [laughs]
[laughs] I was terrified.
You were scared? What did you think was gonna happen?
I thought people were gonna say, "Oh, she's doing this as a publicity stunt." I thought I wasn't gonna be able to go back home and be at all the barbecues. I had anxiety. And a lot of it was just untrue. It was my fear of what people were gonna say. And I'm thankful that I didn't allow that fear to get in the way of my freedom.
That’s the fear of being part of any marginalized group. That fear — of being black and queer and a woman and young — that fear of erasure is really real. And being a public figure, coming forward with your identity and allowing people to be emboldened by that and inspired by that — back in the day, women like you were erased.
I talk about Sister Rosetta Tharpe all the time. She was black and queer and big, and invented rock and roll. And where is she? Where are her monuments? And by setting the example, you can help us change that, and counter that kind of erasure.
Are there any black queer women and artists that you wanna shout out? I feel like we need to get the flowers to these women.
Yeah! I love Lena Waithe. Having her representing on the film side and as a producer, a writer, and the fact that she's thriving and so successful, it’s encouraging. Lorraine Hansberry. Bell Hooks. Meshell Ndegeocello. Who else? I just hope we can get to a point where black women who don’t identify as strictly heterosexual are normalized.
Yes. And making it more intersectional as well, and including trans women in that narrative. I love Janet Mock. I am obsessed with her.
Yeah, me too! She is an incredible woman. And I love MJ Rodriguez. I love Indya Moore. I love Laverne Cox. Those women are amazing, and they are, every single day, normalizing what it means to be a trans woman, and speaking their truth and walking in it.
Amen. It’s all about representing. I just wanna pass out flowers and receive flowers, that’s all I wanna do. I think representation is so important. I wanna see drag queens at the Oscars. I wanna see a drag queen host the Oscars. Can that happen?
Listen, if it was on my watch, I would make sure it happens. I think the entertainment industry has not caught up. We're making some waves, but we can do better. And again, it’s about normalizing and telling more stories, and inviting more LGBTQIA+ folks into the conversation on the front end, and giving us a seat at the table early on. Because we can’t afford to see things in a binary way. That’s not how the world works.
No! It’s a spectrum, and everyone needs to realize and respect it. Respect the spectrum!
You also work with Time’s Up, and I think that’s really important. We gotta protect women’s rights. What work are you doing moving forward to help LGBTQ people gain a foothold in the film industry and media? And how has Time’s Up helped open up some doors?
I'm honored to be a part of Time’s Up and support women. And that's inclusive of all women. As a black woman, however, that's what I know and that's the lens that I'm looking at things through. Whether it be behind the scenes, producing and engineering, to writing or being in front of the camera, there's a lot more work that needs to be done.
I've also started my own organization, Fem the Future, which is a grassroots organization that provides opportunities across the entertainment and the arts, through mentorship and education, for those who identify as women. Through our work, we try to highlight and empower women behind the mic, behind the camera, the stage, the screen, the boardroom. Everywhere. And I founded Fem the Future because I was looking to collaborate with more women on the engineering side and production side and songwriting side, and it was so difficult to find women in these roles. It was frustrating. And I understood why. I said, "Oh, okay. We gotta make more noise." And so I decided to do something about it.
That's amazing. I think women are phased out of creative industries by the quote-unquote “boy’s club” way early on. It’s more than just getting them the job — it's giving them the training, making them feel comfortable enough to make mistakes and lean into something and have a girl’s club. So they can get all the experience they need to be at the top of the game.
Let me tell you. It's not that we're not there, we're just not given the opportunity. We can compete at a high level. It's what you said, it's about us pulling for each other. And it's about men, also, who are in the experience of power actively seeking out more women. As artists, we get the opportunity to have this platform and shine light. And that’s the blessing.
Yes. I want to segue into you as an artist, and the music you’ve created and brought into the world. People who know you know that you're in control of the Janelle Monáe story, and your saga, and how the saga unfolds. Can you walk me through your character arc from The ArchAndroid all the way to Dirty Computer, and all of the things you've learned about yourself through your music?
That's a great question. I like to think that I know everything that a project is gonna do and be when I go into it — “I'm gonna go in and write this song, and it's gonna mean this.” But you know like I know, once you put something out and you sit with it, you find out new things that you weren’t even paying attention to. People will come up to you and say, "This is what this means to me." And you're like, "Wow, I had no clue that that's what I was saying, and that you would feel that way after you heard it." The beauty of art is that it reveals itself over time, even to the artists who create it.
I think I do have strong visions; I always have strong visions. With ArchAndroid, I knew what I wanted the content to be, and I used the tools that I knew how to use at that time to create it. In my projects, I always challenge myself to grow and learn my voice and how to stretch beyond what I can comfortably do. So I started to engineer myself more, which meant I got to spend more time with me. I produced as well. And I'm a writer, and a storyteller. So as I grow and as I'm taking in information and growing at this exponential rate, I try my best to create music and albums that support that, that allow me to completely be all of me.
With Dirty Computer, I made a bigger declaration to myself — that I'm not putting out an album if I can't be all of me. You're gonna take the blackness, you're gonna take the fact that I love science fiction. You're gonna take the fact that I am a free ass motherfucker. You're gonna take that all in and because that is what you're gonna get.
Yes. Take it or leave it. Making music — is that therapeutic for you, working through all of that?
Well, yeah. It is hard. It takes discipline to finish an album, to really sit down and say, "Okay, I need to show up." You gotta show up mentally. You can't just show up when every day is beautiful and you have the perfect candle and flowers there and it's smelling good. You gotta work through it. Even when I didn't feel like writing, I wrote, because it was important to challenge myself, to stretch my muscles and finish.
I didn't feel like I had all the time in the world to write Dirty Computer. When you think about the state of this country, when you think about who's in office, when you think about having a Vice President who believes in conversion therapy, and you think about how 77 percent of LGBTQ teenagers surveyed in 2018 report feeling depressed or down over the past week — I didn’t think that this album could wait.
I read from the Trevor Project that suicide is the second leading cause of death among young people aged 10 to 24. And that LGB youth contemplate suicide at at least three times the rate of a heterosexual youth. When you think about our trans brothers and sisters, our trans sisters being murdered, and when you just look at the state of the world, and when I'm working on an album like Dirty Computer that is centered around uplifting marginalized groups and those who feel isolated and outcast from our society, this album couldn’t wait. I had to get really focused.
And I also didn't wanna filter myself. I wanted to say it how I felt it. If I was upset, if I was feeling sexually liberated, if I was feeling afraid and vulnerable, whatever feelings I had, I laid it all out on the table. Once I finished, that was how I measured success. That's how I measured if I was gonna be proud of this work — did I show up? Did I show up?
Wow. When you talk about the world like that, and you lay all of those devastating facts ... It's not even facts. It’s what's happening to real people.
It can make self-care feel like a luxury, when people are being so aggressively oppressed — not just in their own neighborhoods, but throughout the country, by our administration. And because my messaging is self-care, because my messaging is self-love, it makes me want to reappropriate the term “self-care” into something that could save your life. It’s an idea that’s becoming trendy right now, but it’s much more than that. It’s like, “How do I take care of myself in this world that's not designed to take care of me?”
Artists like us, who do have a message in our music and connect with people on that level, have a responsibility to make self-care less about a fluffy day at the spa and help people in our community understand how important it is. How did you find self-care while you were dealing with talking about your sexuality to your friends and family in your community, and also while making Dirty Computer? And how can we repurpose that and help younger people learn that that term is more than just a trend?
I think one of the greatest gifts that I've been given as my therapy is music, is art. It's a gift that I honestly wish everybody could have and receive. And I think mental health is an issue in all communities, but particularly suicide rates, like I mentioned before, in the LGBTQIA+ and black communities. My community was not pushed to go spend their check on a therapist. It was, spend your check on some new Polo shirts and some Jordans. We weren’t taking our money growing up as teens and going to therapy. And I think a lot of us could benefit from that. But I do know that not a lot of people can afford it. And what I hope is that we can put more money into the mental health system around the world for young folks.
I love the Trevor Project. I love a place in New York called The Center. There are lots of places that offer help and therapy for those who have been pushed out of their homes. But I think what I've been able to do through albums like The ArchAndroid or The Electric Lady or Dirty Computer is to be able to talk about where I am at that time, and to release it and speak it out loud. And that has helped me immensely.
And also, I think it's important for us to be particular about the people we're hanging out with, too. I love the fact that I can be who I am at Wondaland with people who are inviting and patient with me as I walk through my process. And I think that it's our friends and our loved ones that we speak to and communicate with every day who can add to releasing pressure — the pressure and weight that we feel as we're trying to navigate life and walk through life, and embrace the things that make us unique.
You know what I noticed? The more I started loving myself, and the more I started self-caring, the people around me changed and became more conducive to that. The people who were toxic and weren't conducive to a self-loving nature just were segued out by God, by the universe, by my energy just repelling them. And I wish it didn't have to be that way, I wish it was the other way around. I wish that the people around us could help us find self-care and self-love. But that's unfortunately not the world that we were given.
We have to create our own worlds. And I think that mentorship is so important. Like you were saying, therapy's expensive. But mentorship can be free. And that's something that we can start with. Especially in lower income communities, the black community. But for now, we just have you. [laughs] We have music. People are looking to Dirty Computer and artists like you as mentors, long distance mentors. And I think it's really special that you hold that place in people's hearts and that it's reaching a culture. You can watch Queer Eye and see your influence. I'm just so happy to breathe the same air as you.
Oh, please. I’m happy to breathe the same air as you. You also are a free ass motherfucker to me in the way that you approach how you perform, how you love yourself publicly, how you embrace your body. And you're just gorgeous. On stage, offstage, the fact that you play an instrument, the fact that you're writing, the fact that you have ideas as a black woman — you are redefining what it means to be young, black, wild, and free in this country. And you are someone I actively look to whenever I feel like second guessing if I should take risks or not. Because I see the risks that you're taking and the love and appreciation that you show for yourself makes me lean further into loving and respecting myself, and being patient with myself, and not allowing myself to live by anybody's standards.
We are the standard. Thank you, sis. And you know what? Just keep rockin' in the free world, keep showin' 'em what it is. In every industry.
I will. You too. Let’s do it together. Collaboration. Come back over so we can keep on going. I cannot wait for your album. It's time. You've got to put a dent in the culture and in the planet. Rightfully so.
Let’s go. Let’s go!
Photographer: Justin French
Stylist: Solange Franklin
Hair Stylist: Nikki Nelms
Makeup Artist: Jessica Smalles
Set Designer: Kate Stein
Manicurist: Anjaneth Aguirre
Video: Julia Pitch
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