They’ve Come To Destroy Me

Janelle Monáe “Violet Stars Happy Hunting!” – Janelle Monáe’s playful, hyperactive version of modern R&B would be strange and exciting enough if her lyrics were ordinary, but the batshit sci-fi mythology that unfolds throughout her first EP puts her in a whole other realm of pop eccentricity. Monáe is utterly unafraid to seem ridiculous, which is a deeply underrated quality in pop music, and her total commitment to her own weirdness allows her to pull off an extraordinarily kitschy concept record that dares the listener to become emotionally invested in a storyline about an android “cybersoul” star who falls in love with a man, and is hounded by “bounty hunters, robokillers, the droid control, and the Wolfmasters” for breaking “THE RULES.” “Violet Stars Happy Hunting!” bears some resemblance to some of Andre 3000’s post-Stankonia music, and seems to deliberately ape/parody the “lend me some sugar, I am your neighbor!” section of “Hey Ya!” when her male guest takes over on the breakdown before the final round of choruses. (Click here to buy it from Janelle Monáe.)

Imagine for a moment that you are Superman. Your sense of hearing is so powerful and precise that you can hear everything in the world at once, or effortlessly focus on just one sound anywhere on the planet with perfect clarity. Think about how many people are listening to In Rainbows simultaneously over the course of this day, and how at any moment, someone is certainly listening to one of the ten tracks. Imagine honing in only the speakers scattered around the globe playing the record in perfect unison, and then shifting your attention to the sound of it overlapping, clashing, and falling in and out of phase on other stereos, headphones, and computers. Its arpeggiated melodies turning into tangles and then into knots; a record with so much negative space piling up on itself until it is nothing but thick, undifferentiated noise.