Cindi Mayweather Appreciation Post

Janelle Monae is known globally as an amazing actress who dabbled in music in the early 2010’s– producing several hits and paving the way for hipsters with her unique fashion and aesthetic for the era. After learning more about her and her significant contributions to afrofuturism through her music and conceptualization of Metropolis, I am now confident that she is SEVERELY underrated as an artist. Looking back, I really wish I had paid attention to the metropolis storyline and her cultivation of her alter ego, Cindi Mayweather, although my excuse is that I was young during the beginning of her music career. However, the afrofuturist masterpiece “Dirty Computer” was released not too long ago in 2018, and the world—myself included— has done Monae dirty by not giving the work the attention it deserved. I am forever grateful for this course for introducing me to Monae/Mayweather’s utter magic. How awesome is it to construct an alternate reality centering on an android character with such deep, symbolic meaning to the Black, queer, and femme community all at once in such an intentional and beautifully intersectional way that remains true to her own intersectional identity. It’s hard to convey just how legendary her artistry really is, but so easy to imagine how disgusted I am that it has all flown under my radar until being exposed to in this course.

The concepts and themes of Afrofuturism as a whole have flown under the radar of too many Americans! While the innovative contributions of afrofuturists have certainly been acknowledged, differentiating the concept from normal “futurism” has proven itself to me to be very impactful. The lessons Janelle Monae has established through her consistent storytelling in the realm of the fictional Metropolis, reveal very real societal issues the Black community faces and the ways that other marginalized identities we carry interact and conflate the oppression we have always faced. Cindi and Monae have worked tirelessly, hand in hand to offer some outlets to free ourselves from the weight of our identities and embrace ourselves for who we are— regardless of whose watching and regardless of who has the power. The awakening of confidence in ourselves and embracing who we are as an act of resistance echoes many common themes in the afrofuturist works we have discussed throughout this quarter. I am forever grateful to Janelle Monae for sticking with music over the years, even as attention may have shifted toward her craft as an actress or fashion icon— because the substance of her artistry will withstand the tests of time