Janelle Monae @ Hudson Hotel NYC for Charity Water Benefit

My first glimpse of Janelle was back in 2006 when Outkast dropped their video for Morris Brown off the Idlewild soundtrack. In a video filled with singing walls, Coney Island-style amusement park hijinks, and a fuschia colored talking dog, one question kept repeating itself over and over in my mind: Who is that girl?! A year or so later, I got hooked on a singer named Janelle Monae when I heard her song Lettin' Go on internet radio. Fast forward to the summer of 2008 and I begin to connect the dots, and my question is finally answered. The Many Moons video/mini-movie event flickered across my screen and I jumped up, pointing to the monitor. That's who she is! That's that girl from that Outkast video! That's Janelle Monae!

To celebrate the opening of Private Park, Hudson Luxury Hotel's outdoor event space, the hotel teamed up with GIANT STEP and Charity Water (a non-profit organisation that brings clean drinking water and digs wells in 14 of the poorest countries on the planet) to present an intimate performance by Janelle Monae. The crowd was atwitter with excitement, and tingling from an open bar, a very attentive wait staff, and music on the ones and two's by DJ Ge-Ology. Almost everyone I spoke with had never seen Janelle perform live before, but they'd all seemed to have heard great tales about what to expect. When Miss Monae finally took to the stage in a pompadour hairdo and her signature saddle shoes for a set that was all of twenty minutes long, her adoring public thought that they were more than ready for it. The truth is there is nothing that can prepare you for the Janelle Monae experience.





Accompanied on the tiny stage by drummer Young Pete and guitarist Kellindo (yes, that dude from the Many Moons video that looks like the love child of Kat Williams and Andre 3000 is real and his guitar skills are even realer), Janelle opened the set with Violet Stars Happy Hunting and wasted no time in whipping the crowd (and herself) into a frenzy. After about 30 seconds, you really do start to believe that she may actually be that "alien from outerspace" that she sings about on her EP, Metropolis: The Chase Suite. Following up with her smash single, Many Moons, the artist jittered, twitched, and danced on and around the stage like some kind of hyperkinetic energy source from the future; all the while interacting with the sea of rabid fans and cameras aimed in her direction from the foot of the stage. There was a brief pause while Janelle gathered herself, and Kellindo did his thang, his skills giving the impression that you can style yourself however you want as long as you can do that on a guitar! When she returned to the stage a few moments later, Janelle climbed atop a 3-foot tall stool and calmly, serenely sang her rendition of the 1936 Charlie Chaplin composition, Smile, to a hushed and riveted audience. Though songs like Many Moons and Sincerely Jane are often the performances that are most talked about the next day, Smile is that segment of the evening where Janelle Monae's sheer vocal skill and purity of tone are showcased to perfection. Following up with Sincerely Jane and a punk-style explosion of guitar riffs, Janelle used the heads of two fans (one of which was yours truly) to launch herself out into the crowd. She was very happily passed overhead around the space and redeposited onstage where she did some riffing of her own. And then, as quickly and suddenly as it all began, the show had come to an all to soon end. The audience held their positions, awed into a silent shock and disbelief until the evening's promoter took to the mic and announced, "No, really. It's over. Good night. No, really. Good night."

The conclusion, Metropolis is not enough songs. Janelle needs to put out a full length album so that her fans can have a full length show.

Here's Janelle's performance of Many Moons recorded on my crappy cell phone camera...Enjoy!


See you at the next show...