An interlude featuring Saint Grace Jones murmuring in French sets up the section then comes "Lipstick Lover," the summery reggae single that hovers in the air like a throwaway while establishing Monáe's all-important perspective. Her excursions occupy the album's middle and most interesting section, a set of mid-tempo grooves that turn inward to describe a queer experience of pleasure. Flipping a line from decadent Euphoria, she speaks up for seductiveness as a strength instead of a destabilizing element. "I'm looking at a thousand versions of myself, and we're all fine as f***," Monáe spits over an avant-funk beat, ready to grab her besties and go on the prowl. This is the warm-up, the infusion of pride required to pursue pleasure without too much risk of being exploited. Monáe doesn't walk, she floats she's on her champagne s***, phenomenal, so hot she's haute. The dominant voice here is that of a haughty rapper who also likes to play. The first four tracks are flexes, runway struts redolent of the ballroom (and, inevitably, Beyoncé's Renaissance). True to her style and accommodating an instrument that's more chameleonic than stunningly distinctive, Monáe puts on many voices throughout The Age of Pleasure. It's a round, a story that's not linear but grounded in an ebb and flow, again like a woman's sensuality - and in service of a utopian eroticism that runs on true mutual recognition. But unlike her earlier Cindi Mayweather trilogy, with its hugely detailed world-building and heady ideas about power, race and humanity itself, The Age of Pleasure is contained, naturalistic and circular. It unfolds in three acts, with a bold opening, a complicated middle and a pleasing denouement. Supposedly an autobiographical departure from her previous character-driven concept albums, this neat set still displays an actor's sensibility. The Age of Pleasure is just over 30 minutes long and its structure is clean and tight. If this sounds like a lot, Monáe and her collaborators make sure it goes down easy. Music Reviews With 'Fountain Baby,' Amaarae redefines herself as a pop auteur Monáe queers the trend with lyrics that celebrate same-sex encounters and polyamory and by filling Pleasure's songs with quick turns, interludes and echoes, creating a sinuous inflorescence evocative of many women's responsive patterns and the polymorphous attention blur of a friendly orgy. Afrobeats is the ground of much current mainstream pop, recasting hip-hop on the global stage in ways that are both historically minded - the presence of Nigerian scion Seun Kuti and Egypt 80 on this album accomplish that goal - and au courant. Monáe and her collaborators in the Wondaland Arts Society ground The Age of Pleasure in the complex yet accessible rhythms of Afrobeats (some prefer Afropop), the diasporic dance music that shares sonic borders with global Latin pop and Caribbean riddims. Musically, these values find expression in a certain cadence, that clavé groove that unfolds the way sexual excitement does, slowing time down and speeding it up all at once. In Monáe's world pleasure means some obvious things - material comfort, self-love, carefully maintained ties with intimates and an open-ended approach to alluring strangers. "I could spend the whole day in it," Monáe swoons, and by "it" she means pleasure itself. Or like getting intimate without an end goal in mind, in a safe space with someone you love. A floating feeling, like being drawn into a swimming pool's lazy river. "If I could f*** me right here right now I would do that," the singer-actor-conceptualist turned libertine lifestyle coach sings in "Water Slide," a reggaefied mid-record romp that plays with swimming metaphors - backstroke, freestyle, surfing on the thing like it's high tide -to invoke a tipsy kind of arousal that lingers delightfully, requiring no release. Janelle Monáe's new album The Age of Pleasure presents itself as both that stimulant and a guidebook, a compact compendium of fantasies and pep talks designed to encourage listeners to relax into the dopamine-rushed present tense. In the already uncomfortably hot summer of 2023, talk of pleasure can hit like a forbidden tonic, providing relief from a steady diet of grief, outrage and anxiety. On her new album, The Age of Pleasure, Janelle Monáe concocts a vision of sensuality that is open to complication but goes down easy.
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