Janelle Monae

Janelle Monáe Robinson is an American singer, songwriter, rapper, and actor born on December 1, 1985. Over the course of her career, she has received ten Grammy Award nominations and earned accolades including a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Children's and Family Emmy Award, and the ASCAP Vanguard Award. She has also been recognized by Billboard Women in Music with the Rising Star Award in 2015 and the Trailblazer of the Year Award in 2018.

Monáe was born in Kansas City, Kansas, and raised in the working-class community of Quindaro. Her mother worked as a janitor and hotel maid, while her father was a truck driver. Monáe learned to sing in local churches and developed an early interest in performing, taking inspiration from the fictional character Dorothy Gale and Lauryn Hill's album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. As a teenager, she participated in the Coterie Theater's Young Playwrights' Round Table. After graduating from F. L. Schlagle High School, she studied musical theater at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City before relocating to Atlanta to attend Georgia Perimeter College.

Monáe began her musical career independently, self-releasing her demo album The Audition in 2003. After attracting the attention of musician Big Boi and record executive Sean Combs, she signed with Bad Boy Records in 2006. She released her debut extended play, Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase), in 2007. Through a joint venture with Atlantic Records, she released her debut studio album, The ArchAndroid, in 2010, which peaked at number 17 on the Billboard 200. In 2011, Monáe featured as a guest vocalist on fun.'s single "We Are Young," which topped the Billboard Hot 100, earned a diamond certification from the RIAA, and garnered three Grammy nominations.

In 2013, Monáe released her second studio album, The Electric Lady, which debuted at number five on the Billboard 200. Her third album, the concept record Dirty Computer, was released in 2018 to critical acclaim, accompanied by a sci-fi film and a tour. Based on the album, she wrote the 2022 cyberpunk story collection The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer. Her fourth studio album, The Age of Pleasure, was released in 2023 and earned a nomination for Album of the Year at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards.

In addition to her music career, Monáe gained recognition as an actor for her roles in the 2016 films Moonlight and Hidden Figures, receiving a Critics' Choice Movie Award nomination for portraying engineer Mary Jackson in the latter. Her screen credits include the films Harriet (2019) and Glass Onion (2022)—winning a National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress for Glass Onion—as well as the television series Homecoming and We the People. In 2015, she launched her record label, Wondaland Arts Society, in a joint venture with Epic Records.