Janelle Monáe at the Memorial Union Terrace
Anyone worried that Atlanta’s Janelle Monáe tamed her sci-fi fusion of soul and musical theatre for her full-length debut The ArchAndroid will be relieved to know that she and her backing band hit the stage of the Memorial Union Terrace Friday dressed like fucking Ewoks. Monáe, whose signature hair-poof made the hood of her cloak stand higher than everyone else’s, spent a good five minutes with her back turned to the massive audience before finally slipping out of her cloak and spinning around to spit a verse from “Dance Or Die.” Meanwhile, her backing band—consisting of a drummer, bassist-keyboardist, and guitarist, tastefully dressed in black v-neck sweaters with white dress shirts and ties—played along to the song’s slanted groove.
Monáe and Co. ripped through two more new jams (“Faster” and “Locked Inside”) that filled in the chasms between Motown-era disco, soul, and the theatrical crooning of Kate Bush before finally hitting familiar territory with the stripped-down “Smile.” “When there are clouds in the sky / You’ll get by if you smile through all fear and sorrow,” wailed Monáe, as her guitarist picked his way through the tune’s meandering progression. “Cold War” and Monáe’s biggest tune to date—the awesome “Tightrope”—spun the crowd into a dance frenzy. But Monáe’s moves were always the sharpest. (Her arsenal included a batshit, one-legged, forward Moonwalk step that she dazzled concertgoers with during “Tightrope.”)
The curiously brief set pulled plenty from both Monáe’s upcoming debut album The ArchAndroid, as well as 2007’s Metropolis, Suite I: The Chase EP. Weaving in and out of the performance were loads of lengthy interludes, slight costume changes, and even masked back-up dancers hitting the stage. Not all of the audience members shared Monáe’s appreciation for suspense and theatrics, including the guy standing next to The A.V. Club that kept yelling, “This isn’t fun, this shit is fucking boring” during a couple of said pauses. The band closed its proper set with the Henry Mancini-infused espionage soul of “Sincerely Jane” before punching out “Neon Gumbo,” “Violet Stars Happy Hunting,” and closing hip-swinger “Many Moons.” During the latter, Monáe jumped into the crowd to get passed around for a couple of minutes before blowing kisses and hustling offstage.
Opening the show was Minneapolis beatbox artist Heatbox and local slam poet (and UW First Wave student) Jasmine Mans, whose poem took head-rattling jabs at rising bisexual hip-hop star Nicki Minaj for hinging on shallowness instead of helping to represent the gay community in hip-hop. “You can’t seem to write a rhyme for your broken daughters / Slaughter, bent over back, ass cracked, bitch slapped,” spat Mans, with arresting conviction. She continued, “Do you know what this media is trying to do to you? / They will porcelain doll the shit out of you / Leave you noose-necked, hanging from Zion,” with enough intensity to eventually have the crowd punctuating her couplets with loud cheers.
