npr:

Janelle Monáe is many people in alternate timelines at once. She’s an archivist of right now, interpreter of back then, dreamer of one day. She imagines black people into the future in the midst of past and present threats of erasure. And after two studio EPs and three albums, the full scope of her work illuminates how the past, present and future might exist simultaneously. Who we were, who we are and who we’d like to be swirl and layer until timelines merge.

She’s Cindi Mayweather, an android on the run from an oppressive government dressed in black and white. She’s Jane, a human who holds onto her memories even as powers-that-be aim to systematically erase them. She’s a singer and actress; a queer, black woman who grew up in Kansas, City, Kan. to working class parents; an Atlanta transplant who sold her CDs and sang on Atlanta University Center library steps before signing with Bad Boy in 2008.

Janelle Monáe Is The 21st Century’s Time Traveler

Photo Illustration: Kevin Winter/Getty Images and Angela Hsieh/NPR