Janelle Monáe, singer, actress, activist and model, has released three groundbreaking albums and most recently 'Turntables,' in September of last year, a song that she completed in just a week for Stacey Abrams' documentary 'All in: The Fight for Democracy'.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Monáe said: “I started thinking about all the people on the front line. What could be my gift to them? It was this song to remind them that the tables are turning. We’re seeing that progress is being made, even in the midst of dealing with such traumatic events. We have figured out a way to be the solution. I wanted this to be my gift because revolutionaries need love too. They need inspiration, and they need an anthem. This is my stab at that.”
"As someone who has been in relationships with both men and women - I consider myself to be a free-ass motherf****r"
Monáe has a history of standing up for those who are oppressed. The first single from her album The Electric Lady, "Q.U.E.E.N" was inspired by conversations about the treatment of marginalised peoples, and the title is an acronym for those people: the Q standing for the queer community, U standing for the "untouchables", the first E standing for "emigrants", the latter standing for "excommunicated" and N standing for "negroid". However, in a later interview Monáe said that the original title for the song was "Q.U.E.E.R," a nod to her own sexuality: "Being a queer black woman in America, someone who has been in relationships with both men and women – I consider myself to be a free-ass motherfucker.” This is the kind of freedom and liberty that we all want to channel in our lives, and Monáe is fighting her way towards a world that accepts this.
Not only is she an incredible woman and role model herself, but Monáe has also played other such women in film. In 2016 she made her full-length film debut playing the NASA mathmetician and aerospace engineer Mary Jackson in Hidden Figures, who became NASA's first female African-American engineer, another truly inspiring story.
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