Janelle Monáe says she felt “othered” early on in her career
nme.comJanelle Monáe has revealed that she felt “othered” early on in her career because she didn’t know how to make her music “translate”.The Kansas singer, actor and rapper is set to headline the first-ever I Made Rock ‘N’ Roll Festival, which will take place this Saturday (May 18) at the American Legion Mall in Indianapolis, Indiana.
To promote the event, Monáe spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about her career and her musical fluidity.She said when she released the 2007 ‘Metropolis: The Chase Suite’ EP – the first instalment in her “science fiction odyssey” – she had a “smaller” audience that “got her,” but kept wondering how her music would “translate to everybody”.“I did go through a moment during that time where I felt super othered and like I had to cut off certain parts of me because people won’t understand it,” she said. “I think that that’s been proven wrong.
I think that there [are] a lot of people that get the frequency.”Monáe continued: “Music is just about a feeling and people gravitate towards the feeling.
You can say, ‘I’m going to do a jazz album’ or ‘I’m going to do this or that,’ but if the feeling’s not there, I don’t think people will talk about it.
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