Janelle Monáe has especially been lauded over the past few years for her talents as a musician, actor, and dancer, but apparently, that wasn’t always the case. In the outtakes from a Rolling Stone profile, Monáe revealed bricks were once thrown at her mother’s car after she won a talent show one too many times.
The artist recalled her mom “driving me in her 1988 Dodge Plymouth, to and from talent shows, while people would throw bricks at our car because we won the talent show three, four times in a row.” Monáe did clarify, however, that this only happened once. Thankfully, the haters didn’t prevent her from flourishing into one of the most truly multi-faceted talents around today.
Elsewhere in the outtakes, Monáe gave a strong picture of why she is so successful. From the beginning of her music career, she set out to get “500 supporters” to buy the CD that she was selling out of the trunk of her car in order to live comfortably and have the freedom to “do this independently.”
Related Video
Monáe also revealed that she didn’t take her first vacation until after the success of her first album, 2010’s The ArchAndroid. “I had cousins [whose] dads had worked at really good jobs growing up, and they used to always go cross country to different places,” she said about her first international trip to Jamaica. “And I was like, ‘Wow. I wish that I could have done this as a kid. I want to share this with everybody in my family.’”
In the originally published Rolling Stone profile, Monáe said she feels “much happier when my titties are out” while opening up about the skin-baring rollout for her upcoming album, The Age of Pleasure, which arrives June 9th via Wondaland Arts Society/Atlantic Records. The project features Consequence Song of the Week “Lipstick Lover” and the previous single “Float.”
Be sure not to throw bricks at Monáe on her upcoming North American tour. Get tickets starting on Monday, June 5th through a Live Nation pre-sale (use access code DISCO) ahead of the general on-sale taking place Wednesday, June 7th via Ticketmaster.
