Janelle Monáe biography

Janelle Monáe (born December 1, 1985, Kansas City, Kansas, U.S.) is an American singer and actor best known for the albums The ArchAndroid (2010), The Electric Lady (2013), and Dirty Computer (2018) as well as for roles in the 2016 films Moonlight and Hidden Figures.
Early life and career
Monáe was born Janelle Monáe Robinson to a large extended family of devout Baptists. She was raised in a working-class neighborhood in Kansas City surrounded by some 50 first cousins. Her mother, Janet Robinson, worked as a caterer and a custodian, and her father, Michael Robinson Summers, was a sanitation worker. Throughout Monáe’s childhood, Summers struggled with an addiction to cocaine and was in and out of prison They had a difficult relationship until he became sober in the mid-2000s Her mother, meanwhile, separated from Summers before Monáe’s first birthday, and she later remarried and had a daughter, Kimmy
Monáe’s family has said the musician was born to be a star. She won talent shows by covering Lauryn Hill’s 1998 song “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” and participated in high-school theater productions After graduating, Monáe moved to New York City to attend the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. After a year, however, she dropped out and moved to Atlanta to live with cousins. There Monáe sold homemade CDs of her music on college campuses while working at Office Depot to support herself
Metropolis
While performing at an open-mic night, Monáe caught the attention of rapper and producer Big Boi of the Atlanta-based hip-hop group Outkast. He arranged for her to appear on the Big Boi-produced compilation album Got Purp? Vol. II (2005) and on Outkast’s 2006 album Idlewild. Big Boi also introduced Monáe to Sean Combs. Monáe released the EP Metropolis: The Chase Suite in 2007 under her own label Wondaland and the following year signed to Combs’s Bad Boy Records, which then rereleased the EP. Metropolis introduced Monáe’s alter ego, Cindi Mayweather, whom she described as an android transported from the 28th century
The ArchAndroid
In 2010 Monáe released her debut album, The ArchAndroid, which continued the story of Cindi Mayweather in two suites. Reviewers praised the album for its genre-bending music that blended classical orchestrations with a funk and R&B foundation. It was included on multiple lists of the best albums of 2010 and received a Grammy nomination for best contemporary R&B album
The Electric Lady
The Electric Lady, the follow-up album to The ArchAndroid, was released in 2013. The album provided the fourth and fifth installments in the Cindi Mayweather story. The album featured appearances by Prince, Erykah Badu, and Solange. Reviewers singled out the tracks “Q.U.E.E.N.,” “Givin’ ’Em What They Love,” and the Bo Diddley-inspired piece “Dance Apocalyptic” as testaments to Monáe’s ambitious approach to recording. In a review for The Guardian, music critic Alexis Petridis highlighted the “distinct gay subtext to [the album’s] proceedings.” Petridis continued, “It seems faintly ridiculous typing this, given that it’s 2013 and not 1952, but the very fact that a mainstream R&B artist has released an album open to that interpretation feels an impressively bold move