The Bite Magazine - Autumn/Winter 2019 - Issue 26

Through her narrative, these androids represent the LGBT community and people of colour. When speak- ing to the Evening Standard in 2013, she compared these androids to “being a lesbian or being a gay man or being a black woman.” Last year she came out and said: Being a queer black woman in America, someone who has been in relationships with both men and women - I con- sider myself to be a free-ass motherf**ker.” In conversation with body-positive rapper Lizzo for a debut cover story for Them , a new LGBT commu- nity-driven magazine, Janelle admitted that she was terrified. “I thought people were gonna say, ‘Oh, she’s doing this as a publicity stunt.’” She went on to reveal how she felt coming out, the liberation of her latest album Dirty Computer and how it feels to be young, black, wild, and free. Not afraid to highlight the ways society has made her feel unwelcome at times, she said this means “you can be misunderstood”. “You can be hated. It also means that you can be cele- brated and loved.” This is the foundation on which Dirty Computer is based on, and a theme on which the film that accompanies the album rests. During the Metropolis Saga, Janelle seemed to hide behind her alter ego and was restricted in a way, subtly revealing her sexuality and her eagerness to be free herself but not making it ultimately plain. With Dirty Computer , she has broken through that barrier and is free to be her sexy, carefree and liberated self. “It has been a journey. For me, sexuality, and sexual identity, and fluidity is a journey. It’s not a destination,” she added. “I’ve discovered so much about myself over the years as I’ve evolved and grown, and spent time with myself and loved ones. That’s the exciting thing - always finding out new things about who you are. And that’s what I love about life. It takes us on journeys that now even we ourselves sometimes are unprepared. You just adapt to where you are and how you’ve evolved as a free-thinking person.” During her journey from where she started in music, Janelle probably felt that she had been cast out from a world that has rejected her but eventually found a community that embraces her. “I just hope we can get to a point where black women who don’t identify as strictly heterosex- ual are normalised.” Over ten years in the making, the singer has finally reached the stage where she feels she can be the fullest version of herself and this is the reason the latest album was created. “With Dirty Computer, I made a bigger declaration to myself - that I’m not putting out an album if I can’t be all of me. You’re gonna take the blackness, you’re gonna take the fact that I love science fiction. You’re gonna take the fact that I am a free-ass moth- erf**ker. You’re gonna take that all in, and because that is what you’re gonna get.” This is certainly true as Janelle has freed herself from the Cindi Mayweather cyborg dinner jackets and donned more liberating and sexy outfits. The singer coming out hasn’t stopped speculations of if and who she is dating being put under the microscope in the media. Whilst she hasn’t confirmed a relation- ship to the public, she has been linked to rapper MC Lyte and actress Tessa Thompson. With the rapper, she shared a suite at Manhattan’s Greenwich hotel on and off in mid-2015 but then met Thompson in the same year, who has first appeared in Janelle’s video for ‘Yoga’ as a back-up dancer and went on to appear in four other music videos. With both Janelle and Tessa coming out around the same time in 2018, the fact that the actress played Janelle’s lover in the music video for ‘Pynk’ - a song based on the vagina, sent the rumour mills turning faster than ever before that the two were dating. Tessa said in an inter- view with Net-a-Porter, “It’s tricky because Janelle and I are just really private people and we’re both trying to navigate how you reconcile wanting to have that privacy and space, and use your platform and influence.” In a separate statement, the actress seemed to confirm the rumours about her and Janelle, “We love each other deeply. We’re so close; we vibrate on the same fre- quency.” But she then turned it back around by adding, “If people want to speculate about what we are, that’s okay. It doesn’t bother me.” Whether they are or not, earlier this year, it was established their romance had ended when Janelle was seen dancing with Black Panther actress Lupita Nyong’o at an afterparty. Being more liberated with her latest album, you may have noticed a Prince-like twang on the track ‘Make Me Feel’. This is because he wrote the synth line that was used on the track. His DJ, Lenka Paris recalled that some time ago, she was playing a party for Prince when he bite music