Dirty Computer

Fierce, honest and a challenge to the forces of obsolescence, Dirty Computer feels like a vital upgrade from a true renegade. [Jul 2018, p.110]

There is a concept here, but it is Janelle Monáe; there is a story here, but it is Janelle Monáe’s. And she’s outdone herself in both the execution of this vision and its resonance.

A record that will go down as a milestone not just as a work of art in its own right, but as the perfect celebration of queerness, female power, and self-worth.

This record isn’t a monument to His Royal Badness. It’s one of the greatest artists of our time carrying Prince’s baton into the new world.

Dirty Computer establishes itself as a contender for album of the year, in more ways than one. The witty, interlinked songs tackle subjects that have fuelled much of the discourse around “woke” social consciousness in the age of #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter.

Taking stock of the dizzying array of touchstones on this record, this also the sound of an auteur hellbent on short circuiting all convention. ... Dirty Computer might just be the record that finally elevates her to pop’s highest echelons

Monáe is, as always, a true master of melding genres, influences, and styles. Her central themes of identity and internal conflict are as tangible on Dirty Computer as they ever have been.

As a whole, Dirty Computer strikes the perfect balance between joy and sadness, offering a deeply resonant account of Monáe’s personal experiences as a black woman. Some of these experiences are unquestionably difficult. Yet in relaying them to us, Monáe never deprives herself (or the listener) of pride, joy, or autonomy.

With funky guitars riffs and breezy melodies, Monáe's latest effort manages to resemble a throwback and tribute to the Purple One yet avoids feeling too nostalgic.

In its own way, its as artful, ambitious, determined, joyous and inspiring, as Lemonade or To Pimp a Buttery. It's a sexy MF-ing masterpiece.

None of this would matter much if the songs didn’t deliver, and at its best, “Dirty Computer” entwines racial and gender politics into a double-helix of liberated lyrics and skillfully askew musicianship.

With her third album Dirty Computer, that she’s truly achieved a tour-de-force. ... There are times though where Monáe’s feminism feels disappointingly cis- and vagina-focused--I wish she’d taken the time to explore the politics of non-cis women and non-binary people a little more. But Dirty Computer succeeds at what it came to do--it’s here to make you think, and it’s here to make you dance. It is the most clearly delivered result of Monáe’s vision so far.

While this is easily the most loaded Monáe album in terms of guests, with Brian Wilson, Stevie Wonder, and Grimes among the contributors, there's no doubt that it's a Wondaland product. It demonstrates that artful resistance and pop music are not mutually exclusive.

An LP so irresistibly danceable and irrefutably topical that it'll also leave generations of up-and-comers clamouring to team up with Janelle Monáe.

It’s a rawer, less elaborate work than its predecessors, yet still hugely ambitious.

On Dirty Computer, she finally makes good on her promise, keeping the fearlessness of her earlier albums while refining her focus. This album is only 48 minutes long, but it feels as ambitious and grand as her previous 70-minute releases. In the process, she has raised the standard for her music.

She mostly succeeds at marrying that [transcendent black pop] to a sound that’s broader and more accessible than anything she’s put out to date. [Jul 2018, p.53]

While some fans of her earlier, more challenging, material may be mildly disappointed sonically by such a straight-up pop record, even they must acknowledge what an important album this is both personally to Monae and socially to the current world, and for that, it is a successful and pleasurable work.

Her ability to transcend her influences has always been song-to-song, and that’s true here, too. But it also feels like she is inching closer to a breakthrough: an album that fully lives up to her reputation and ambition.

It's the full-on pop record that Monáe had been hinting at for years, and though some of her stylistic choices may not age well--especially when she veers into trap territory - she approaches them with a kind of flighty confidence.

A warm and vibrant tribute to the marginalized people, especially women and those with fluid ideas about gender and sexuality, whom Monáe sees as the true embodiment of America's promise.

It is a juicy, genre-crossing pop record ripe with the funk, which somehow combines Beyoncé’s Lemonade and St Vincent’s Masseduction with lashings of Lauryn Hill.

It’s Prince’s ghost that reigns supreme over the record, and while she nails both absorbing his spirit and infusing her own, there are times when you wish she would push the envelope a little harder, as she has on previous records.

Monáe has given us a pop record that feels gleefully youthful, perhaps even the album she wishes she could have had as a teen in Kansas City. The songwriting is precise if not always flawless.

Dirty Computer falters along the way with a few weak hooks and some questionable lyrics but at least she was able to wipe out the old Monáe and reboot who she’s truly meant to be--both artistically and personally.

After navigating complex matrices of identity under an indulgent, accessible veneer, Dirty Computer is ultimately--even “simply”--a cathartic assertion of self in a hostile system.

Dirty Computer succeeds overall because of it mostly delivers the same elements that made the Metropolis lineage soar.

While the songs here are consistently hooky, they lack the earlier albums' sonic adventurousness.

What held together the sounds from her previous records for me were the classical segments, the overarching concepts, the storytelling and the interludes between songs (admittedly these aren’t enormously popular or easily translatable to a live show), which are completely removed here. Given the switch in tone, it feels like Monae is more comfortable in her skin and her sound, but is this a good thing for the music?

Hints of Michael Jackson's melodic moonwalking lace in the type of hip-hop ennui that will appeal to fans of Solange's A Seat at the Table, plus a sexy swagger of feminist liberation that screams 2018.

She repeatedly refers to her inability to express her emotions fully--which is exactly how Dirty Computer leaves you feeling. [Jul 2018, p.88]