Until this past week, I had last seen Janelle Monáe in 2019 at Coachella. It was an unbelievable performance, one of the best I’d ever seen; I remember not being able to fully comprehend how she managed to sing, rap, dance, and play instruments at a skill level better than most could hope to achieve at only one talent. So, I had high hopes coming into the last stop of Monáe’s The Age of Pleasure Tour.
They were very much exceeded.
Monáe is an American musician and actress, who is critically and commercially successful in both music (eight Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year at the 61st Grammy Awards) and film (Glass Onion and in the Academy Award-winning Best Picture, Moonlight). On The Age of Pleasure Tour, Monáe performs her recent release of the same name, fusing every talent under her belt together for the stage; dramatic, musical theater-esque movements and voicings, a plethora of expertly executed dance moves, elaborate vocal runs, and slickly penned rap verses.
The show kicks off with “Float,” where Monáe walks out donning a regal drape of flowers and matching flower crown. Her band elevates her words with a rapturous horn section, as Monáe effortlessly raps and performs vocal acrobatics over each instrumental line. Monáe leads the crowd through recent cuts “Champagne Shit,” “Black Sugar Beach,” “Haute,” and “Phenomenal,” hitting each dance move with precision along with a crew of backup dancers. While the beginning notes of “Pynk” play, Monáe walks out in her “pussy pants,” harkening back to her iconic music video. It’s a billowing, blush colored number that she punctuates by opening and closing her legs to the beat of the song.
During “Django Jane,” Monáe sings, “Black girl magic, y’all can’t stand it, y’all can’t ban it, made out like a bandit. They been tryin’ hard just to make us all vanish, I suggest they put a flag on a whole another planet.” It’s celebratory of how far Monáe has come through hard work and talent, a queer, female minority born to a blue collar family. The world wasn’t handing her any favors, and she hasn’t needed any. The lines remind me of one of my favorite interviews of hers, where she shares that she only ate Top Ramen when living in a boarding house in Atlanta, selling CDs out of her car.
During one of Monáe’s most popular songs, “Make Me Feel,” she stands in a low light silhouette, surrounded by billows of smoke. Striking poses that emulate Grace Jones and Michael Jackson, Monáe cements to the audience that she can communicate art through her body just as well as through her music. “Make Me Feel” marks the start of two encores, the first concluding with “Tightrope,” a fan favorite where Monáe showcases her insane balance through dance moves all over a staircase onstage, completed on one foot. The last song of the night is a bombastic rendition of “Come Alive (The War of the Roses),” where each band member leaves their all on the stage, both in their head banging and instrumentation. It’s an apt way to conclude a stellar night set complete with elements of pop, jazz, Afrobeats and reggae.
Toward the end of the night, Monáe also shares how some of her best songs were written in Los Angeles. She sings snippets of each, spanning old and new hits (“Locked Inside,” “Victory,” “Crazy, Classic, Life,” “Violet Stars Happy Hunting!!!” “BabopbyeYa,” “Float”) as her adoring fans scream out every lyric. While the audience shows how deeply they know her back catalog as she runs through her early songs, it’s hard to imagine her days eating a regular diet of 50 cent ramen. Monáe puts it best when she shares how there was a time when she “didn’t know how to love [her]self properly.” She then turns around with a gleeful laugh, looking back at the audience.
“Oh, how times have changed.”