Consumer Guide Album

Janelle Monáe: The Age of Pleasure [Wondaland Arts Society/Atlantic, 2023]
Her breakthrough album five years behind her, "fine-as-fuck" cultural heroine bets her iconicity on her pan-sexuality and comes out on top of a crowded field that includes Megan the Stallion, SZA, and Amaarae, none of whom has ever even feinted toward the conscious gravitas she rode in on as an audacious 22-year-old circa 2008. Secret classic: "Water Slide," track 10, by which point most of us have stopped noticing lyrics, which here include "'Cause the water feels fine." Do not make this mistake. And no, it's not a sex song--except insofar as it is. A-