Janelle Monáe - Make me Feel

If St. Vincent is largely known as the new David Bowie, Janelle Monáe is starting to trace her own legacy as the new Prince. After the death of two pop icons of such magnitude, we felt the urge to find worthy successors that kept a legacy of bending the norms of a genre that everyday seems more and more superficial.

Unlike St. Vincent, who in "New York" laments the lost of a hero (Bowie) that she never got to met, Monáe can claim that she had the personal blessing of Prince and when in Make Me Feel we feel a immediate connection to Prince's own "Kiss", it's because it was the pop royal himself who was in charge of the synth line of the track. But beyond the sound, Make Me Feel is uniquely a Prince tribute thanks to the unchained sexuality that it displays. Monáe's electric personality matches for a new musical sex queer revolution like the one Prince fronted 30 years ago.

Because the achievements of Prince and Bowie's music politics weren't for the "gay", but for the "queer", that gender and sexuality fluidity that transgressed the binomials of man-woman and heterosexual-homosexual. By never defining themselves in terms of a sexual orientation, they opened a window for the possibilities of not needing a label and be free to express your identity in whatever way you prefer without owing explanations to anybody. In a way, both Monáe and St. Vincent are heirs of this queer attitude. Even if the media have heavily reported on their possible relationships with famous female models and actresses, neither of the musicians have "come out" in the traditional way, they have never hide their "special friendships"; Monáe is making her "supposed girlfriend", actress Tessa Thompson, the co-star of all her new videos.

Make Me Fell, then represents the empowerment of enjoying and assuming our own sexuality as a way to free ourselves, instead of as a tight box where we need to fit. For Monáe this freedom makes her feel "like I'm powerful with a little bit of tender; an emotional sexual bender". And indeed, owning herself has allowed Monáe to deliver performances with such strength and self-security that bring the best of the emotional soul legends and the electric rock idols. Make Me Feel is funky, fun and a joyous pop moment with electrifying guitar riffs. Monáe's new album seems to be a statement of forward feminism, and a reconstruction of sexual songs; her tracks are not aggressive seductions that claim a body as if it was a territory to be claimed, Make Me Feel recognizes the sensations that two human beings can arouse in one another; her feminist sex is an endless exploration and the only limits are the ones stablished by consent.