I’ll just tip my hand. Monae remains one of the most brilliant and exciting musical artists of the current day and with The Electric Lady, she just continues to solidify that. Like a lot of other current artists, she’s fascinated with crafting some sort of a weird conceptual story out of her music and I will admit that this aspect of her music is of no interest to me at all, but luckily the music is great enough to stand on its own. This epic album is a solid nineteen tracks and only the three short interlude tracks are less than absolutely brilliant. Plus I got the special edition which contains four bonus tracks: two remixes, an original and a sweet, sad cover of I Want You Back. And I’d say every song on here is downright four stars. The thing most exciting about Monae is the facility she has with shifting and slipping through genres and styles. There’s the seventies-style love duet Prime Time, the shuffling rave Dance Apocalyptic, the soothing ballad What an Experience, the epic gospel shouter Victory, the luminously beautiful bossa Look Into My Eyes. And I could go on. This album is nothing short of miraculously great. 4 stars.
tl;dr – Monae’s genre-hopping genius is on full display on this epic, consistently great album. 4 stars.