“For years, Janelle Monáe played an androgynous android, all suits, saddle shoes and pompadours, tap-dancing across the soul-music spectrum with a heavy dose of Afrofuturism. But no matter how good her music was, the arm’s-length distance between Monáe’s art and her audience sold her short. That was then, and the Monáe that astonished on Friday night at the Anthem is now.”
