INTERVIEW – Janelle Monáe Doesn’t Know Time Either: The queer icon talks ‘too on the nose’ pandemic, LGBTQ representation and Pride plans

I really hadn’t planned on telling queer powerhouse singer-actress-activist Janelle Monáe that I made food for my boyfriend the night before I got on Zoom with her.

That afternoon, Monáe was feeling it all. This global pandemic, the quarantining. She told me she can’t even create right now because she doesn’t have the mental bandwidth. When we linked up, her mind was understandably heavy and momentarily adrift. While talking about Amazon’s second season of its thriller Homecoming, Monáe accidentally called her character – a war vet who we first meet on a boat, alone and drifting, unsure of how she got there – an "ex-veterinarian." "I said veterinarian," she started, realizing her slip-up. "It’s that quarantine mind!"

Then I diverted her attention to her neo-soul album Dirty Computer, a life-affirming celebration of queerness released in 2018.

I began by telling her about my night before we Zoomed, when my spiraling mind happened to find a rare moment of pure, unencumbered joy within that album as I prepared for our virtual chat. Songs from Dirty Computer had my boyfriend and I bopping in the kitchen. Emerging from her face was a smile so wide I could almost see my reflection in it. It was like I’d cracked a code. A pandemic-era topic universal enough that it got even Janelle Monáe curious that she, during a promo tour for a TV show, couldn’t help but ask me a question everybody is asking everybody because all we do is cook now: "What were y’all eatin’?"

Monáe’s in isolation too of course, trying to navigate not merely how to be an artist but if that’s even possible for her right now. From lockdown, she at least looks put together. Greeting me like the bots she sings about, she says, "Hi, I’m Janelle and I don’t know who I am today." She appears to be reclining on a couch, a white top hat perched on her head; her virtual backdrop is appropriately one for Homecoming. In August, Monáe leads the cast of the slavery-themed horror film Antebellum, which...