The Voices That Shaped Gay America

A Review of the Lives of Individuals Who Shaped LGBTQIA+ Life in the United States

Queer Is in Her Coding: Janelle Monáe

Kansas City Days

Janelle Monáe Robinson was born on December 1, 1985, in Kansas City Missouri, to her mother
Janet and father Michael, who split when Janelle was a toddler. Janelle recalls her childhood as nostalgic
yet painful. Her mother was a maid and janitor, and her father struggled with a drug addiction. Growing
up, she began interacting with music in local churches and Gospel groups, mainly singing in choruses.
Very soon, she dreamed of becoming a musical performer. Her primary influence was Lauryn Hill, whose
songs she would perform at local annual Juneteenth talent contests. By this time, she was also involved in
musical theater, starring in and even writing her own musicals. In adulthood, Janelle would describe her
childhood as important in shaping her creativity, saying: “There was a lot of confusion and nonsense
where I grew up, so I reacted by creating my own little world…where music fell from the sky and anything
could happen.”

A Rising Star in Atlanta

After high school, Janelle received a scholarship to study at the American Musical and Drama
Academy in New York City. Janelle dropped out of the academy after realizing it was not the correct
milieu to fulfill her artistic needs. She moved to Atlanta to hopefully find some footing in the abundant
R&B and rap scene in the city. Dedicated to her dream, Janelle moved into a boarding house with five
roommates and took up a job at Office Depot while still developing her music. She wrote, recorded, and
produced her first EP The Audition during this time, which she sold out of the trunk of her car. Luckily, a
miracle would come in the form of the attendance of Big Boi, a member of the hit R&B duo Out-Kast, at
one of her local shows in 2005. Mesmerized by Janelle’s electric charm and interesting creative perspective,
Big Boi recommended Monáe to famed rap and R&B producer Sean “Diddy” Cummings. Janelle had
finally gotten her shot to create the enchanting musical world she had been dreaming of
A Musical Monáe

With a record deal in place, Janelle was ready to create a work that would combine musical artistry
with storytelling and world-building. In 2007, she would release Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase). This
would be a concept album telling the story of Cindi Mayweather, an android from the year 2719 who fell
in love with a human man and struggles with the oppression of the futuristic dystopian society in which
she lives. During this album cycle and tour, Janelle would begin to define her signature futuristic, robotic
imagery. She also revealed her propensity to play with gender expression. Although singing about the life
and feelings of a robotic woman, Janelle would often adorn characteristically male clothing like a black-tie
tuxedo and top hat.

In her more recent albums Archandroid, Electric Lady, and Dirty Computer, Monáe would continue to
tell stories of black women (human and automated) living in futuristic societies, facing historic racial
problems in newfound settings, systems, and circumstances. Thus, Janelle was named a pioneer in the
literary and storytelling genre of Afro-futurism, which emphasizes an artistic or thematic focus on Black
lives and emotions in the distant future.

The Impact One Android Can Make

As an artist who plays with the concepts of gender and sexuality, Monáe was often pressed by media
and fans to reveal more about her identity and relationships. However, as a musician and celebrity, Janelle
has chosen to stay private in such matters, divulging information about her personal life at her own pace.
In 2018, Monáe came out as pansexual, a sexuality that encompasses attraction to all identities, and in
2022, she came out as non-binary, choosing to not label herself as either female or male. Those identities
truly match Janelle’s eclectic fashion sense, music, and approach to life, choosing to include, stylize, or
parody almost every part of the human gender and sexual experience.
 Furthermore, Monáe is an outstanding, GLAAD-nominated advocate for the LGBTQIA+
community and a beloved gay icon. As a black woman of queer and transgender experience, Janelle
Monáe is especially representative of the concept of intersectionality: a realization and defense of each
part of one’s identity and how they interact with one another. Whether queer, transgender, a person of
color, or cybernetic, Janelle Monáe would be the first to say to embrace it. Janelle blessed Gay America
not only with timeless musical classics but also with the paradigm of finding worth within oneself and
looking at your entire identity as greater than the sum of its parts. Although Janelle Monáe’s creative
vision looks to the far future, her celebrity as a gay icon stems from her encouragement of embracing
oneself the the here and now.