Janelle Monáe isn’t holding anything back anymore, and that includes talking about how many people she loves.
In a new cover story for British Vogue this week, the iconic artist, now firmly in their sensual “Lipstick Lover” era, opened up about, well, opening up. “The more I am free in my thinking and living outside of the binary, I’m on a constant discovery of who I can be,” Monáe explained. As it turns out, that also means they don’t have to be monogamous.
“I never was the girlfriend that would be jealous,” Monáe told the magazine, confirming that she has previously been in polyamorous relationships. “Looking back, I’m like – clearly!”
Monáe came out as pansexual in 2018 and revealed they were nonbinary in 2022, but they prefer to talk about their love life in a general sense rather than naming names. Still, this probably won’t extinguish any fan gossip that Monáe and actor Lupita Nyong’o used to be an item — a rumor on which both have declined to comment.
For Monáe, sharing that she’s polyamorous with the world is just another part of being fully present in her body, peeling back layers of identity through projects like last year’s hit film Glass Onion. “I listened to my spirit and my spirit was screaming, ‘You are a free-ass mothafucka!’” Monáe told British Vogue, explaining that her carefully crafted personas like Cindi Mayweather are on pause while she gets back in touch with her truest self. “There’s so much more for me to do that people haven’t seen,” Monáe said. “It just needs to be written. I need to write them.”
Monáe is truly leading us all into our best “titties out” eras, encouraging everyone to question gender and simply be the freest motherfuckers we know how to be. So it’s official: Monáe’s The Age of Pleasure is the free-love soundtrack of the summer. Take it up with the Council of Polyamorists, we don’t make the rules.
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