Hot Sci-Fi Beyonce: A Q&A With Janelle Monae

Metropolis: The Chase Suite is a concept album — one of four parts. Did any concept albums influence you?
Actually, no. I've heard about David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and I have never listened to it. I've been wanting to, but you know when I'm writing there's only so much information that I want to allow myself to take in. I want to be really like careful, but I'm very tempted to listen it because I hear it's incredible.

So where did you get the idea for Metropolis?
Metropolis is not something I made up. It was a black-and-white silent film from 1927 by Fritz Lang, a German expressionist. It really spoke out to me — the constant struggles between the haves and the have-nots [depicted in the film] are still going on today. I'm a huge lover of science fiction as well: I love Octavia Butler and Isaac Asimov and The Twilight Zone, and Blade Runner, and of course The Matrix and Star Wars. I've always had a fascination with the supernatural. So I kind of meshed all this in my mind.

The album paints a dystopian picture of the year 2719, when evil cyborgs are set to take over the Earth. It sounds like something you'd dream up in an acid-fueled state. Were you using any chemical enhancements?
Oh, no, no, no. My father is a recovering crack addict — he was in and out of prison — so I've seen the ups and downs of drug addiction. Things were taken from us growing up — I would win like $500 in a talent show and I had to give it to my mom to help pay for the light bill and the gas bill — so I don't play around [with drugs] at all. A lot of my uncles and cousins got strung out on crack. It was embarrassing at times — I didn't want your friends to know about it. But I had to grow up and learn from it.

The album tells the story of Cindi Mayweather, an android who falls in love with a human. How did you come up with that storyline?
Cindi Mayweather is real — that's not a made-up act. She actually does exist. She's a real android, and she and I made a pact to tell our respective lands about what's going in Metropolis and what's going on now. And our job really with this album is to really help save the future. From what I was told there clones come into our world and take humans and push them forward to 2719. Cindy is programmed not to love, not to feel, but she does, and it's kind of like if she lets anyone know that she's fallen in love or that she has human characteristics, she could easily be disassembled. I don't want to do is diminish the story by like me trying to sum it all up for you right now. In suites Two and Three you'll get to know Cindy more. This isn't an alter-ego for me, you know.