The Village Voice say they're "obsessed" with Janelle, and it's easy to see why! "Right now, she has the best live show going by orders of magnitude: a manic, schizophrenic tornado of bewilderment and exhilaration." Read the entire interview with Bad Boy's Janelle Monáe here.

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The Winter 2009 issue of Bleu Magazine, a quarterly lifestyle publication dedicated to urban gay men, recently featured Janelle Monae as an "Artist to Watch" in 2009. "A charismatic singer, songwriter, producer, and performer, Monae's ground-breaking style crosses musical genres in a captivating postmodern merging of soul, funk, and rock 'n' roll." Check out the full article below:

Check out Janelle Monae's feature on EW.com's Pop Watch!

Janelle Monáe makes alien music from the most familiar sounds on earth.
By Jason Newman Photography by Eric Vogel::URB 154


With its bizarre mix of cabaret, soul, funk, opera, pop and hip-hop—and titles like “Cybertronic Purgatory”—generic R&B singer 101 she is not. Even with a scant catalog (so far), Monáe’s music places her squarely in the “musical kitchen sink” category with former URB cover stars OutKkast and Gnarls Barkley. Go back a few decades further and you’ll find another generation of ancestors who followed an interstellar muse—George Clinton and Sun Ra—for whom space is the place where one can escape.

But let's back up a bit. To Atlanta, where after a performance at Justin’s, the restaurant owned by Diddy, an admiring fan approached.

“I had gotten a great reception and I felt somebody grab my arm,” recalls Monáe. “It was [OutKast’s] Big Boi and he was like, ‘I really like what you’re doing and I want you to be a part of what I’m doing right now.’” After standout performances on both the Got Purp? Vol. 2 compilation and Outkast’s Idlewild, she independently released Metropolis: The Chase in August, 2007, a 5-song EP that stretched both musical and lyrical boundaries

Now she's finally ready to release her hugely anticipated new collection, “METROPOLIS: THE CHASE SUITE (SPECIAL EDITION).”

“Ms. Monáe has one of the most enchanting voices of our generation,” says OutKast’s Andre “3000” Benjamin. “She’s a living, singing babydoll. Darling… just darling. Ha.” The visionary Missy Elliott waxes rhapsodic about the new artist’s limitless potential: “Janelle is fire! Puffy, Big Boi… I don’t care if it’s Obama! Whoever got this girl… she is going to blow up!”

The album’s opening line: “I’m an alien from outerspace/I’m a cyber-girl without a face, a heart or a mind.” is the first she offers in this clip from her LA Showcase. Video courtesy of okayplayer

And you're going to be hearing ALOT more from Janelle, having just graced her very first magazine cover, URB's "Girls of Summer" issue.



To read the entire cover story on Janelle by Jason Newman, click here

To go behind the scenes of Janelle's URB cover photo shoot, see Vimby's coverage below.