Last Tuesday, Janelle Monáe chose to bless us all with another brand-new song and music video, “Pynk,” leading us up to her new album coming out later this month. This is the third new music video and song released by Monáe this year from her new album. The previous songs, “Django Jane” and “Make Me Feel,” were both released this past February. Her new song, “Pynk,” feels like a sweet gentle combination of the vibes from both of the other new songs and continues with the feminist driven, self-love, queer-as-heck energy found in the past music videos too. The “Pynk” music video, put together by Monáe in collaboration with Grimes and direction from Emma Westenberg, shows Monáe flanked entirely by women the entire video while singing about loving the “pink, like the inside of your [wink], baby.” The entire video is full of visual allusions to vaginas, from the voluminous pink vagina pants donned by Monáe and her back up dancers to visuals of fruit. The music video shows Monáe being proud to be a woman, proud of her body, proud of other women and seeing the beauty of being human.
Courtesy: Janelle Monáe
“Pynk” stars Tessa Thompson alongside Monáe which has helped to push farther the ongoing rumors of the two being in a relationship. These rumors are especially fueled by the visuals of Thompson’s head poking out from Monáe’s vagina pants with a cheeky grin on her face or the loving way the two appear to hold one another at the end of the video. Thompson has also starred in two other of Monáe’s videos, “Make Me Feel” and “Yoga,” and Monáe was spotted on the red carpet with Thompson for Thompson’s newest film Annihilation that came out in February. Some viewers of the video have been quick to point out that while the video is promoting feminism, the kind of “pussy power” feminism that is being portrayed can be excluding to trans women and women without vaginas. However, both Monáe and Thompson both took to Twitter to post their support of all women. Janelle Monáe tweeted, “Thank you to the incomparable & brilliant @TessaThompson_x for helping celebrate US (no matter if you have a vagina or not) all around the world! We see you. We celebrate you. I owe you my left arm T. Xx.” Tessa Thompson tweeted in reply to a tweet from Blavity (a website and media company created by and for black millennials) that said “Pynk” is pretty much giving black girls their own Vagina Monologues. Thompson replied to this with “to all the black girls that need a monologue who don’t have vaginas, I’m listening.” So, even though the music video for “Pynk” is very vagina heavy, both Monáe and Thompson are making it an effort to say that this isn’t just a song for women with vaginas, but all women because to celebrate vaginas and to celebrate women is possible without assuming one equals the other.
Courtesy: Twitter
Courtesy: Twitter
Dirty Computer, Monáe’s 1st studio album since the release of Electric Lady in 2013, is set to be released April 27. Monáe has promised that the album will come with and in the form of an “emotion picture.” According to the definition found in the description for the “Pynk” music video, an “emotion picture” is a narrative film and accompanying musical album. I don’t know about you, but I’m wholeheartedly looking forward to the release of Dirty Computer to be the shining ray of light leading me into finals week.