Janelle Monáe is reintroducing herself in a new cover story for British Vogue‘s upcoming Pride issue.
Promoting her new album The Age of Pleasure, Monáe opens up about coming out as pansexual in 2018, and as nonbinary last year.
“Nothing about me speaks to binary. I don’t think I had the words to express it before… I listened to my spirit and my spirit was screaming, ‘You are a free-ass mothaf**ka!’” she explains.
“The more I am free in my thinking and living outside of the binary, I’m on a constant discovery of who I can be. I can hold space for a lot of different things at the same time. I just felt like I wanted to free up my mind,” she adds.
She also confirms she’s been involved in polyamorous relationships. “I never was the girlfriend that would be jealous,” she says. “Looking back, I’m like — clearly!”
That spirit permeates The Age of Pleasure. “I’m hoping [the album] encourages people to find simple pleasures,” she says. “For me, sometimes that’s reading a book before 6 a.m., sometimes it’s having a party and being able to come dry and leave wet, kiss somebody that you just met, you know?”
She describes the album as “a soundtrack for the beautiful Black and brown people all over the diaspora,” revealing it was inspired by the Everyday People parties she helped host in her Los Angeles home, which brought together various muses “all from different corners of the world.”
During the freewheeling conversation, Monáe also reflects on her high-profile role in last year’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”.
“It gave me the opportunity to play essentially three or four characters,” she says, marvelling at how that particular acting role introduced her to a whole new audience.
“Many new people are coming into my life who don’t even know I have a whole music career,” she shares. “There’s so much more for me to do that people haven’t seen. It just needs to be written. I need to write them.”
READ MORE: Janelle Monáe Reveals Whether She’d Be Up For Starring In Another ‘Knives Out’ Movie
“Glass Onion”, she adds, “was a foreshadowing. The unfolding of Janelle Monáe.”
See the full feature in the July issue of British Vogue, available via digital download and on newsstands from Tuesday, June 20.
