Decades

In the 10 years since London’s enigmatic Burial released his boundary-breaking sophomore LP Untrue, the face of electronic music has changed dramatically. Not only have new arenas opened up for ambient-leaning producers to bring their experimental soundscapes into the spotlight, but the divisions between such typically at-home forms of listening and more club-oriented sounds have continued to blur. Though his releases seem to come less and less frequently, Burial’s thumbprint still courses through dance music today, whether in his haunting, intimate use of vocal samples, his brisk, tactile beats, or his free wandering into the kind of ethereal abstraction usually reserved for avant-garde composers.Part of what made Burial’s sound on Untrue so inspiring was his willingness to tackle original rhythms, without regard for what scenes he might be breaching. At turns reminiscent of house, garage, dubstep, and hardcore, Untrue is as bracingly pulsing as it is forlorn and relaxed, capturing the sounds of dance music at their most provocative, enveloping, romantic, and pain-ridden all at once. You can hear his influence in the dark nightclub ruminations of Dean Blunt, the grimy bass sculptures of Andy Stott, the ethereal beatmaking of Jamie xx, and even the minimal rhythms of latter-day Radiohead—all of whom have taken his blueprint for emotional, mysterious dance music and carried it valiantly forward into the future. Burial left an undeniable mark on music with Untrue, and with this playlist, we explore the many ways that his vision lives on today.

There’s a tragic feeling of incompleteness to Sharon Jones’ career, and it’s best be summed up with the phrase "discovered too late and gone way too soon." The soul and funk vocalist’s story is a well-told one: a criminally overlooked session powerhouse—who clearly possessed the chops and sheer life-force to be a star when she first turned professional in the ’70s—finally achieves fame in her late-’40s only to have pancreatic cancer claim her life in 2016 at the age of 60. Fortunately for the world, the Grammy-nominated Jones and her band, the Dap-Kings, made the most of her all-too-brief stardom, dropping seven stellar studio albums, including the posthumously released Soul of a Woman, recorded as the singer underwent debilitating chemotherapy treatments.What makes the group so unique is their ability to feel unapologetically old-school, yet without any residue of weepy nostalgia. Anchored not just by Jones’ attention-seizing voice, but the group’s agilely stabbing horns and preternaturally metronomic rhythm section as well, their music pops, sizzles, and jumps with a sweaty, determined modernism. (Especially relevant in this context is their funk-spiked reworking of Janet Jackson’s “What Have You Done for Me Lately?”) It’s a sound that has exerted a huge impact on 21st-century pop, pushing retro-soul into the mainstream while also making the Dap-Kings, as well as their sister outfit the Dap Kings Horn Section, in-demand session musicians in the same vein as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section or the Wrecking Crew.Arguably the first artist to take notice was the late Amy Winehouse, who employed the Dap-Kings when crafting her own fusion of retro and contemporary R&B for 2006’s game-changing Back to Black. The album’s co-producer, Mark Ronson, then used the ensemble’s crack horn section on his massive retro-pop hit “Uptown Funk,” featuring dynamo singer Bruno Mars. More recently, the digitally minded Kesha used those soul-piercing horns on her crushing, feminist anthem “Woman,” from her emotional tour de force Rainbow.But not every session/appearance fits snugly between the poles of R&B and pop—there’s a slew of leftfield examples, too. On her self-titled full-length from 2014, avant-garde singer-songwriter St. Vincent leans heavily on the unswerving pulse of Dap-Kings drummer Homer Steinweiss (who also plays skins for the Dan Auerbach-led Arcs), while her collaborative effort with David Byrne, Love This Giant, weaves their horns into the duo’s art-rock pointillism. Other standouts include The Black Lips, whose garage-punk rave-up Underneath the Rainbow utilizes the services of baritone guitarist Thomas Brenneck and trumpeter David Guy, and country outlaw Sturgill Simpson, who worked with the the Dap-Kings horns on A Sailor’s Guide to Earth and then brought them onstage for his 2017 Grammy performance.On top of featuring cuts from each of the artists already mentioned, our playlists dips into the Dap-Kings many related projects (including The Budos Band and Menahan Street Band), as well as veteran soul and funk singers Charles Bradley, Lee Fields, and Rickey Calloway who, like Jones, found a welcoming home on Daptone, easily retro-soul’s most important record label. Of course, the absence left by Jones’ death will forever be felt; she was, after all, a once-in a-generation talent. But it becomes all too clear when exploring this diverse array of songs that her vision and style will continue to echo throughout modern music for a long time to come.

Punks various origin stories have been documented ad infinitum, and through them, the movements myriad influences have been enshrined in a familiar proto-punk canon. It includes everything from the snotty 60s garage-rock bands compiled on Lenny Kayes Nuggets compilation to the metallic Motor City soul of the MC5 to the sleazy glam of the New York Dolls to the proletariat pub rock of Dr. Feelgood. But while theres no denying the impact these groups had on punks inaugural class-of-76, to 2018 ears, a lot of them can sound, well, a little tame. Sure, a Nuggets standard like The Standells "Dirty Water" oozes bratty attitude, but its really no more threatening than the average golden oldie. And while the brash swagger of the New York Dolls still resounds, they essentially sound like a more irreverent Rolling Stones.But in this playlist, we highlight the pre-punk songs that, to this day, sound every bit as violent and visceral as what followed. Certainly, theres some expected names: Iggy and the Stooges 1972 thrasher "I Got a Right" actually blows past punk completely to invent hardcore a good six years early. And the nastiest of Nuggets, like The Music Machines "Talk Talk," still hit like a leather-gloved fist to the face. But there also are a number of classic-rock icons here who, in their most unhinged and primordial states, rival anything punk coughed up——listen to John Lennon shred his throat into a bloody pulp on "Well Well Well," or Deep Purple fuse 50s hot-rod rock and 70s metal on "Speed King." Punk may have preached "no future," but these songs still blaze like theres no past.

While the internet has hurtled us light-speed into the future, its most pervasive effect (as noted by writer Simon Reynolds in his 2011 book Retromania) has been to make the past instantly accessible, reviving cultural artifacts and iconography long ago erased from our collective memory and stripping them of their context. The late-2000s indie-pop permutation known as chillwave was the sound of that process happening in real time. It was a virtual mood board of borrowed nostalgia for a half-remembered ‘80s, with old-school rap beats, electro synth bleeps, plush yacht-rock, Baeleric house, and 4AD dream-pop all blurring together like repurposed images in a rapidly scrolling Tumblr feed, and mutating and fading like the resolution on an overused VHS tape.Of course, like all genre buzzwords, nobody wanted to own it at the time, and both its key progenitors (Ariel Pink, Animal Collective) and early ambassadors (Toro y Moi, Washed Out) have since moved on to pursue more grandiose visions or pop-accessible paths. But like many easy-to-dismiss fads, chillwave’s sound has lingered to become a permanent component in the contemporary indie toolkit. Its DNA is present in the music of modern-day mavericks like Blood Orange and Tame Impala, and it’s had a soluble effect on the sound of latter-day Flaming Lips and Destroyer; even Nick Cave’s 2016 track “Rings of Saturn” bears its unlikely influence. A decade on from its emergence, chillwave very much remains the future sound of our ever-present past.

“Break On Through (To the Other Side)” is both a feral howl of desire and dislocation and a sleek, supple creature that darts and pounces in a manner at once sinuous and sinewy. The Doors’ 1967 debut single, urging a shattering of society’s constrictions, served notice that there was something new happening, the likes of which no one had seen before. Its simultaneously explosive and seductive power embedded it irreversibly not only in the mood of the moment but also in the very fabric of American culture forever after. We recently reached out to Doors guitarist Robby Kreiger about the songs origins and heres what he told us:“We were working up “Break on Through” in rehearsal. John came up with this bossa nova beat. I didnt think it would work, but he said it would, and he was right. I had the idea to use the type of riff that Paul Butterfield used on Shake your Moneymaker. I wouldn’t say I stole it, just borrowed it. With Ray’s vox organ, it was sounding good! The lyrics were some of Jim’s best. As we played it at more and more gigs it got better and better. The only regret i had was that we let them cut out the word high from ‘she gets high’ on the single version. I guess that was too controversial for the AM radio, but we made up for that on the Ed Sullivan show (by singing), ‘get much higher.’ LOL”While its origins are relatively modest, its impact is far-reaching. Below, we’ll look at how the song changed The Doors and rock ‘n’ roll forever.Arrival of the Rock Gods"Break On Through" was The Doors introduction to the world—their first single as well as the first track on their debut album. It was the opening salvo of a four-man rock n roll revolution that would fill the collective cultural consciousness with a heady brew of sex, poetry, anger, beauty, and indelible tunes. The songs urgent entry into the publics ears marked the auspicious arrival of a group that would remain real-deal rock deities even decades after disbanding.The Real Start of the 60sThe Doors anthem of social sedition, fueled in part by Jim Morrisons use of LSD as a mind-expanding tool, arrived at the start of 1967, the year the 60s really became the sixties. The blend of gritty garage-rock tonalities and lithe, bossa nova-influenced grooves that rippled through “Break On Through” framed an invitation to abandon the cage of convention and leap headfirst into a bold, burgeoning countercultural realm. In that sense, for many it heralded the onset of the Aquarian age.Rock n Roll PoetryArriving ahead of game-changers like Sgt. Peppers and Songs of Leonard Cohen, "Break On Through" brought the world a brand of rock poetry that had nothing to do with Dylan. From its very first lines—"You know the day destroys the night/ Night divides the day"—it gave a glimpse of the possibilities still in store for rock n roll lyrics, possibilities Morrison fearlessly explored for the rest of his tragically short life.Trail of TributesIts a sure sign of a songs staying power when it appears in all sorts of disparate circumstances generations after its release. Any tune that can be covered by metal supergroup Adrenaline Mob, grunge gurus Stone Temple Pilots, power-pop heroes The Knack, and avant-garde guitar god Marc Ribot, as well as being sampled by hip-hop stoners Cypress Hill and Danish neo-garage rockers The Raveonettes, has got some serious shelf life.The Ultimate HonorIt would be absurdly easy to unfurl a laundry list of the countless times “Break On Through” has been used in movies, TV shows, and video games. And do you really need to know much beyond the fact that it was belted out on The Simpsons by Krusty the Clown himself, clad in Morrison-esque attire and writhing on the floor à la The Lizard King?

"Strange days have found us, and through their strange hours we linger alone" – Jim Morrison"Beauty always has an element of strangeness" – Charles BaudelaireThere was always something dangerous about The Doors. From the very beginning it was blindingly obvious that they stood far apart from the rest of the 60s Sunset Strip scene, not to mention the entire rock world. Sophistication? Sure. Darkness? Undoubtedly. Sensuality? You bet. Blend all of the above with a generous dose of transgression and you start to zero in on The Doors magic mixture. Not coincidentally, that same confluence of elements is pretty much the definition of 19th century Frances Symbolist poetry movement, as epitomized by Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud. It was an influence that is obvious to any fan of both The Doors and the French Symbolist, but it’s also an influence that Morrison spoke to when he mailed French literature expert and Duke professor Wallace Fowlie, thanking him for producing a translation of Rimbuad’s complete poems, and relaying, "I dont read French that easily. . . . I am a rock singer and your book travels around with me."If course, Morrison was hardly the only singer of that era to be influenced by poetry. The second half of the 60s saw a giant evolutionary leap for rock n roll lyrics, one that inspired fans to append the "poetry" label to rock for the first time. Bob Dylan got that ball rolling, followed closely by The Beatles, but the arrival of The Doors gave the rock-as-poetry concept an even bigger boost of an entirely different kind. Jim Morrison was rocks first real poetic enfant terrible, an heir at last to the moody mien of poetrys original dark princes, Baudelaire and Rimbaud. It was all right there in The Doors very first introduction to the world at large. The first line of their first single, "Break on Through (To the Other Side)," which was also the opening cut on their debut album, immediately served notice of Morrisons intentions. "You know the day destroys the night, night divides the day" was both a world away from what was coming out of most rock singers mouths and an entirely different kind of enhanced lyricism than that of Dylan or John Lennon.Dylan and Lennon dazzled their disciples with phantasmagorical, LSD-aided imagery perfectly in tune with the psychedelically stimulated times. But while acid undeniably acted as a launching pad for some of Morrisons lyrics, The Doors werent wowing fans with "tangerine trees and marmalade skies" or gently calling to Mr. Tambourine Man in search of a "jingle-jangle morning." Sure, Morrison was a lyricist who liked to paint vivid, sometimes psychedelic pictures with words. But he was also a libertine who loved nothing better than to line up taboos and, well, break on through to the other side. In all of these things, he was blazing his own trail on a path begun a century earlier by Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and company. Like The Doors singer, the French Symbolist poets were iconoclastic hedonists for whom nothing was more important than the derangement of the senses in the service of experiencing lifes absurd carnival to its fullest and finding an artful way to describe it. The bad boys of their eras literary scene, they might have been rock stars if the possibility existed at the time. But their visions burned as deeply and brightly as anything to emerge since. Morrison drew as much from these transgressive poets as he did from John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. He was an avowed admirer of their dark visions, from Baudelaires deliriously decadent Flowers of Evil to Rimbauds daring A Season in Hell. There was even a book dedicated solely to the topic of Morrisons relation to Rimbaud. But if you want to pick up on the connection all you need to do is listen.Its not so far a leap, for instance, from The Doors "End of the Night" to Baudelaires "Death of the Poor." The former finds Morrison crooning:

Realms of bliss, realms of lightSome are born to sweet delightSome are born to sweet delightSome are born to the endless night

In the latter, Baudelaire declares:

It is death who gives us life in excitationIt is the end of life, the one hope, the one delightThat, divine elixir, is our IntoxicationAnd which gives us the heart to follow the endless night

Parallels between Morrison and Rimbaud arent tough to spot either. Take the opening of the latters legendary A Season in Hell:

Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.One evening I seated Beauty on my knees. And I founder bitter. And I cursed her.I armed myself against justice.I fled. O Witches, Misery, Hate, to you has my treasure been entrusted!

It doesnt require a great contortion of sensibility to draw a line between that and "The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)," where Morrison cries:Listen to this, Ill tell you about the heartacheIll tell you about the heartache and the loss of GodIll tell you about the hopeless nightThe meager food for souls forgotIll tell you about the maiden with wrought iron soulMorrison never seemed to be aping his influences, but its certainly possible to imagine that he and the poets he admired were reporting from the same spiritual/psychological precipice. Of course, Morrison wasnt content to be considered merely a "rock poet" either; he published two books of his own verse, eventually combined as The Lords and The New Creatures. But The Doors singular mix of music and imagery remains the most intoxicating indication of the Symbolists sway over Morrison.

When it comes to rock ’n’ roll sans boys, sisters were doin’ it for themselves all over the globe as far back as the mid-’60s. Half-baked historians tend to trot out ’70s bands like Fanny or The Runaways as examples of rock’s first self-contained all-female bands, probably because—though hardly stars—they became better known than most of their forebears. But the fact is that when the mid-’60s garage-rock phenomenon was inspiring tons of teenagers to bust out guitars and drums, eschew aural niceties, and start playing guts-and-gravel rock ’n’ roll, there was no shortage of young women revving up for the revolution.In the U.S., distaff ’60s bands were thick on the ground. Goldie & The Gingerbreads, the launching pad for respected rocker Genya Ravan, were probably the first, getting together in New York City in 1962. But within a couple of years, they were joined by The Pleasure Seekers (including future glam-rock star Suzi Quatro alongside her sisters), The Debutantes, The Luv’d Ones, and hordes of others.But America wasn’t the only place where this phenomenon was being forged. England had its own female Merseybeat band in The Liverbirds, while Germany had Die Sweeties, and Indonesia boasted Dara Puspita. Quebec gave Canada Les Intrigantes, and Las Mosquitas generated a buzz (sorry) in Argentina, while Sanjalice showed up in Yugoslavia. Some of these bands were cutting covers of the hits of the day, but a lot were writing their own tunes, and even if the bands that made the femme-rock underground of the ’60s never really found their way to fame and fortune, they still made a crucial contribution to the culture. In an era when the women’s movement was just getting underway, the original Riot Grrrls made it clear that guys didn’t have a monopoly on rocking out.For more ladies of the first generation of rock, read Jim Allens story on pleasekillme.comhere.

Get set to realign what you thought you knew about some of your favorite songs—specifically, their origins. The past several decades have been loaded with widely loved tunes that have secret pasts. From rock staples to pop anthems to soul milestones, heres a heavy batch of classic cuts you never knew were not the original versions.Some one-hit wonders even built their entire careers off a stealth cover. Toni Basil’s lone success, the 1982 No. 1 “Mickey,” was the result of gender-tweaking a 1979 tune called “Kitty” by British glam-rockers Racey.You wouldn’t have wanted to be a member of Motown group The Undisputed Truth when their minor 1972 hit “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” found a place in the R&B pantheon courtesy of The Temptations’ version later that same year. The New Wave era brought plenty more. Blondie’s 1978 single “Hanging on the Telephone” first found life as the opening cut on power-pop cult heroes The Nerves lone release, a self-titled 1976 EP. Bow Wow Wow’s ’80s smash “I Want Candy” was originally written and recorded in 1965 by The Strangeloves, a band that included future Blondie producer Richard Gottehrer. Even some artists famous for revamping classic tunes have been known to slip one by. Though Joan Jett scored a bunch of hits by rebooting other artists’ songs, most people are unaware that her biggest track, “I Love Rock ’N Roll,” was a 1975 glam-rock nugget by The Arrows.A decade later, The Lemonheads were another act known for covers whose biggest single was widely mistaken for an original. “Into Your Arms” originated not with Evan Dando but with the Australian duo Love Positions, who released it in 1989, after which band member Nic Dalton joined The Lemonheads, eventuating their version of the tune.Even ex-Beatles were part of the phenomenon. One of the biggest hits of George Harrison’s solo career was 1987’s “Got My Mind Set On You.” The song never gained much traction in its 1962 release by R&B singer James Ray, but George became familiar with it and retained it all those years later. One of the things this goes to show is that you never can tell where a great song will wind up.

While contemplating whether or not to boycott Kanye, listen to the soulful, spiritual jazz of Kamasi Washington. Itll take the edge off, we promise.In this time of great shitiness, when the ruler of the world is a reality star who rose to power by stoking the basest racial sentiments of a populace knee-deep in Russian propaganda, I think back to other shitty times, namely the late-summer of 2005. Less than a year before, we’d re-elected a president who led us to war based on a lie that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and forever shattered the Middle East. Louisiana, my home state, was underwater after Hurricane Katrina, and people were dying. The president was, at best, cavalier about the loss of life, and, at worst, complicit in it. Kanye, during a marathon to benefit the victims of that hurricane, famously declared that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,” and that felt like one of the most courageous and comforting things I’d ever heard. His words were bold and empowering, and though the odyssey Kanye would undergo over the next decade was slightly more ambiguous, it all felt of a piece with that moment. To put it plainly, I loved Kanye.I supported Kanye after his marriage -- not despite of who he was marrying, but because of it. Kim Kardashian was a beautiful, wealthy, and savvy woman. Who wouldn’t want that? I thought what he did at the VMAs with Taylor Swift was funny and warranted, and that the more extreme reactions against it were tinged with racism. I didn’t agree with everything he said in his “rants,” but I also thought that it was an inspired piece of stagecraft. All those things were awesome, in my opinion, and are among the reasons I love him. What Kanye is doing now has nothing to do with that narrative. When he poses in a MAGA hat, as Lyor Cohen appears to be throwing up an alt-right hand sign, he’s giving comfort to those who want to hurt the ones I love. When he professes his love for Trump and bashes Obama, it feels as if he’s helping push the boot down on our collective necks. He is not smashing the liberal groupthink or spiking our bi-coastal kool-aid via with a truthbomb. There’s no aspect of this that qualifies as speaking truth to power at all. The conservatives in this country control every branch of government. They dominate at the federal and state level. They have instilled what is effectively state-run media that is the highest rated news source in our nation. And they’re being led by the guy who took out a full-page ad begging for the execution of five innocent African American kids. This is the guy Kanye loves.There’s no post-ironic reading of this. It’s enabling oppression. Listen, I don’t normally boycott people. People have their opinions, and I respect that, and I can generally separate the performer from the person. I still obsessed over The Good, The Bad and The Ugly even after that weird-ass Clint Eastwood speech at the RNC. I still love Michael Haneke movies even after said some pretty disagreeable shit about the #metoo movement. Im embarrassed to admit it, but I listened to R. Kelly a lot longer than I should’ve. This feels different. Kanye’s narrative is intrinsically tied to his artwork. It’s a postmodernist cliche at this point, but his life is his art -- he very consciously turned it into a cross-platform meta-narrative -- and, if in the course of crafting that story, you transform yourself into an alt-right villain, you shouldn’t be surprised when people treat you like one, and that means you get boycotted.Still, it’s difficult to turn my back on Kanye’s music. He’s given us so much, and I’ve loved each and every one of his albums. I can’t think of another artist from the past 20 years whose name is on as many classics. He’s changed the way music sounded at least three times over the course of that period, and I was genuinely looking forward to hear where he was taking it next. Still, it’s hard to separate KANYE, THE ART PROJECT from Kanye, the rapper and producer. Perhaps somewhere along the way the former overtook the latter, and now we’re left with this thick web of misdirection and irony that will never be untangled. But part of me says that even that reading is too generous.So, I get that this is normally the part of the essay where I, the writer, tries to negotiate the contradictions, clarify the argument, and come to full-throated resolution. I’m sorry, but that isnt’ happening here. I’ll wait and see, process my feelings about this, and see if I’m able to separate Kanye from KANYE. Its going to be tough, either way.

I first met Janelle Monàe when she was 22 years-old and opening up for the Oakland neo-soul legend Raphael Saadiq at the San Francisco venue Bimbos, a mid-size club on the outskirts of that city’s North Beach neighborhood. A few months before, she’d released her debut EP, Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase). It was an exciting, groundbreaking collection. It combined the wild, post-rap funk of Outkast and afrofuturism of George Clinton with the tech dystopianism of William Gibson and a more formalalistic, Brechtian remove. For a kid weaned on semiotics and Gang Starr, this collision was enthralling, if a bit messy. Janelle’s voice was captivating, but the songs sometimes couldn’t keep up with her energy -- the backing vocals blurred together, and the choruses weren’t always memorable. In short, I liked the idea more than her music.Regardless, she was a dynamic personality, and I was excited for the interview. About a half hour before she took the stage, her manager took me backstage, where Janelle was cloistered inside of small changing room -- more of a closet than a suite. She was already outfitted in her signature white tuxedo shirt, with her hair was bunched up into its beehive coif. She was nervous, but friendly. She offered me a water, which was nice of her. I spent the first 10 minutes of the interview trying to place her in the lineage of afrofuturism, discussing Octavia Paz and Parliament. In retrospect, it was a dumb move -- I assumed that her reading of herself was the same as mine, and didn’t allow her to speak for herself -- and the strategy bit me in the ass when, with five minutes left in my appointed interview window, she, annoyed and maybe embarrassed, declared that she didn’t know much about afrofuturism, she’d barely even heard of it. I felt shitty and a little bit disappointed. I hated that I had put her in a foul mood, and, more selfishly, I had no idea if anything in the interview was usable.But her live show that night was rapturious, a prolonged ecstatic release of energy that found her bouncing, jerking, and bounding across the stage in barely controlled dance patterns. You couldn’t take your eyes off her. And though she doesn’t make dance music, you couldn’t help but move. It didn’t matter that here hooks weren’t quite there, or that she hadn’t yet been able to name her own style, the performance was special, even singular. Since then, she’s made some jaw-dropping tracks that’ve shown immense growth and refinement, but the music, though oftentimes very very good, has never quite escaped her heavy conceptual framework. Luckily, she’s entirely catches up with herself on Dirty Computer. The album largely, though not entirely, loses the funkified Android conceit of her earlier work. It’s both more personal and more self-assured. It glides where her other music tends to churn, and the hooks are immediately catchy, and stick in your head. It’s still occasionally directive of other people’s work -- “Make Me Feel” sounds remarkably like Dirty Mind-era Prince, for example -- but she entirely makes it her own here; the sums of her influence coalesce into something much more personal and singular. It’s the best work of her career, and may end up being both the most fun and important album of 2018.The album’s two opening tracks are among the most memorable one-two punch in recent memory. Brian Wilson’s vocal remain pop’s greatest invocation, and amidst his lilting, layered , the lead-off title resurrects Janelle’s dreamy, sensual landscape. She invites us to “look closer” at the “text message caught up in the sky.” Once again, she’s identifying with hardware (a dirty computer, in this case), but the vocals are warm and human, and, soon, we hear MLK reciting the Declaration of Independence. We’re onto “Crazy, Classic, Life” now -- one of the neat tricks the front half of the album pulls off is blurring the space between songs, so that it all sounds like one, long jam -- and Janelle quickly asserts a theme that will run through the album. It’s 2018 now, and her and people like her are no longer on the margins; they’re now the “rulers” and “kings.” “Im not Americas nightmare,” she coos on the song’s pre-chorus, “Im the American dream.”In that way, it resembles Frank Ocean’s Blonde, another coronation of a queer America that was curtailed by Trump’s election a few months later. Monàe’s work contains little of Ocean’s melancholy or ambience; Dirty Computer is pure pop music, euphoric and uncluttered. “PYNK,” which features Montreal steam pop producer Grimes, is a technicolor march down the broadest boulevards of American culture. The song hems together and subverts lyrical archetypes. Witness the pre-chorus:“So, here we are in the carLeavin traces of us down the boulevardI wanna fall through the starsGetting lost in the dark is my favorite partLets count the ways we could make this last forever"Taken out of context, this could be sung by Tom Petty, Britney Spears, or any number of chroniclers of main street adolescence. That Janelle is using this in the service of an anthem to pansexuality should be subversive, but, in 2018, it seems perfectly normal. This is a victory for all of us.Monàe’s previous music has always seemed to exist in a different time. The revved-up guitar riffs and funky drummer breakdowns place her in the ‘60s, while the lyrics’ runaway-Android lover motif put her firmly in the (20)40s. But Dirty Computer feels necessarily of this time. The world caught up with her. The techno-dystopian daydream of her earlier work has become a crippling reality, and, yes, that’s unfortunate. But the sheer, self-conscious otherness of Janelle, which ten years ago was a commercial liability, is not only permissible, but is celebrated, and this album is funky testament to this new freedom.