Janelle Monáe is a singer-songwriter-actor-writer with ADHD whose work I think this place should appreciate! Go listen to their stuff! I’m fucking imploring you!!
Sometimes I wonder why we live in an alternate world where Lemon Demon became more popular than them (hint: Starts with rac, ends with ism).
I've got a terrible fixation
Can't get it off my mind
Don't really want to know it better
Want to keep it in the realm of fantasy
You wanted me just for a holiday
Or was it to pad your resume?
What do you give me but unwanted breakthroughs
Strange how certain details subvert everything
-Make the Bus (Janelle Monáe)
hey so to all the people in the comments:
Like I don’t have time to deal with semantics but let me clarify a few things.
In terms of Janelle Monáe being more mainstream than Lemon Demon: Fucking yes, of course. But also...
TARGET AUDIENCE.
There’s a reason why I posted this on cohost and not somewhere else. This is a problem on this specific site.
I meant more well-known on COHOST.
The argument I’m trying to make is that people on cohost like to listen to “weird” music... But not include any Black artists making this experimental stuff in the mix. Maybe you’ll include something Japanese if you’re feeling like you want to pretend you give a fuck. I don’t know.
God, this was the same issue on Tumblr, fucking hell. People seem to think that their nerdiness will absolve them of the fact that the playlists are White as FUCK. And if there’s anything by anyone non-White, it’s always relegated to “Oh, this is cool,” instead of actually giving it the same worship-like attention and in-depth lyric analysis or whatever. It’s pretty fucking blatant here.
Hence the Lemon Demon (who isn’t even that experimental). I’m sorry if that’s not clear. It makes me really frustrated sometimes that people pride themselves on being nerds, listen to the most obscure-fucking-songs of all times, and don’t. Don’t actually bother to put a modicum of the same love, care, and effort into anything by Black artists. Maybe I’m being overdramatic. But fucking hell. We need to have a conversation about this.
And of course: Consuming music doesn’t make you a good/bad person or whatever. But when you like music of a certain type, and don’t include the Black musicians within that genre, who are literally some of the pioneers of this shit (Sun Ra, come on everyone)... It really just. Doesn’t look really good.
I don’t want to burn bridges. At the same time, I want to make my position clear.
I’m going to take a nap, and touch some grass.
