Janelle Monae - “Tightrope” (ft. Big Boi)
I love the bravado and pure ambition with which Janelle Monae talks about being, well, in the middle. She calls herself “something like a Terminator” and throws down the gauntlet by calling you to dinner—“You can rock or you can leave / watch me tip without you.” Hate her all you want (though I have yet to meet anyone who does), she sticking to her guns. The guns she’s sticking to, though, are not those of a sky’s-the-limit conqueror. Being high or low, being famous or a nobody, being a robot or a dancer; none of them is as important to her as walking the treacherous line between them.
The play of loose, jazzy R&B against sweeping cinematic strings is great, too (surprisingly moving at the end). Big Boi shows up half way through to make jokes about MacBooks, the stock market, and the Gap, his delivery effortlessly morphing from measured to spitfire in seconds. But this is firmly Monae’s show, and just like her high-wire balancing act of ambitions and conceits, her voice runs the gamut from robotic rap-singing to cheap-seat belting to cool diva posturing to shouting like young Michael Jackson. Turns out that’s the secret of walking the tightrope: doing it all so well that no one will believe you could actually fall.
