Janelle Monáe visits Sesame Street next week, but you can watch it right now

For 45 years, Sesame Street has been teaching kids about counting and caring, often incorporating musical guests beloved by those kids’ parents: Andrew Bird, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, and Feist have all done a song or two over the decades. More than just a way to keep children’s television bearable for sleep-deprived adults (see Cookie Monster’s parody of Icona Pop from last summer), music director Bill Sherman said that “by using current pop artists on the show, it opens kids up to all those sounds. And it opens up those artists to a generation they may not have gotten to.”