If you’ve been longing for something new from Prince don’t bother waiting for the lawyers and his estate to resolve who owns the rights to what’s in that vault, just rip into Janelle Monae’s Make Me Feel. Everything about this track and the slinky sexed up strut of its video is pure Prince, so it wasn’t a surprise to find out that he was working with Monae on her new material before he passed away, as she explained to the BBC’s Annie Mac:
“Prince actually was working on the album with me before he passed on to another frequency, and helped me come up with sounds. And I really miss him, you know, it’s hard for me to talk about him. But I do miss him, and his spirit will never leave me.”
Even the album title Dirty Computer (due April 27) sounds like something Prince cooked up. Though in this case apparently not. Monae says she considered using the title for 2010’s The ArchAndroid which gave birth to this magnificent beast:
But she felt the Dirty Computer title was inappropriate for that record. So why did it feel right this time around?
“I actually had this concept before my first album and it scared me because a lot of the things that I knew that I needed to say were very deep, very personal, from the heart. You know, this is an extremely vulnerable album and it took me a while to make it because I’m a self editor.”
So Dirty Computer is a deeply personal album? Makes you wonder what’s on her hard drive.
There’s no lack of drive behind the album’s first two tasters – the hip hop slam of Django Jane that just kicked every misogynist in the solar plexus:
“We gave you life, we gave you birth We gave you God, we gave you Earth We fem the future, don’t make it worse You want the world? Well, what’s it worth?”
And the smouldering, muted funk of Make Me Feel that leaves no one guessing her intentions:
“It’s like I’m powerful with a little bit of tender
An emotional, sexual bender
Mess me up, yeah, but no one does it better
There’s nothing better.”
Get ready for a blast of Django Jane unchained.
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