Released in conjunction with the Prince-saturated “Make Me Feel,” “Django Jane” and its video offers something of a more “militant” tone than its companion single, the kind Beyoncé seemed to want to achieve with the look of her “Formation” video and the “controversial” Super Bowl performance of it that followed.
Set in a palace clearly dominated by an all-female government (seemingly a monarchy), Janelle Monáe appropriately opens the track with the lyric, “This is my palace/Champagne in my chalice.” A throwback to the late 90s/early 00s admission to decadence, Monáe also melds the same political message that went with her speech at the Golden Globes this year (filled with diet misandry though it may have been), during which she stated, “We come in peace, but we mean business.” And that is essentially what it has always meant to be a woman–to walk softly and carry a big stick (usually one bigger than a man’s). Except, lately, we ain’t so prone to hidin’ our stick when we approach, and that is precisely why Monáe has chosen this moment to at last release the content she was working on even before The ArchAndroid, yet didn’t feel comfortable speaking so personally until now. Serving as a mouthpiece for those who have felt as “the other” in society for too long, Monáe commented to The Guardian, “…the marginalized in society–that’s who I wanted to support, and that was more important than my discomfort about speaking out.”
Feeling confident enough to regale us with all she’s achieved and the many gender-bending trails she’s blazed, Monáe raps, “Remember when they used to say I look too mannish?/Black girl magic, y’all can’t stand it/Y’all can’t ban it, made out like a bandit/They been trying hard just to make us all vanish/I suggest they put a flag on a whole ‘nother planet.” It certainly has a more powerful, less redundant vibe than “Okay ladies now let’s get in formation.”
Railing against the patriarchy, as is the requisite job of being a woman, Monáe feels inclined to remind men that: “We gave you life, we gave you birth/We gave you God, we gave you Earth/We fem the future, don’t make it worse/You want the world? Well, what’s it worth?” Seemingly not much, based on the current administration and the desperate clinging to the second amendment. And, with regard to the type of male so fond of his right to bear arms without ever opening his own to others to show any form of love, Monáe shuts them all down with the line, “And hit the mute button/Let the vagina have a monologue/Mansplaining, I fold em like origami/What’s a wave, baby? This a tsunami.” And it’s one you best let overtake you. Because there’s no stepping aside from this level of far less self-interested feminism than the kind Beyoncé’s been profiting from. Even though it was long ago fairly obvious that no feminist worth her weight in self-respect would take back a cheating man. Unless she could craft a highly successful, critically acclaimed visual album out of it to glean something worthwhile from her pain.
