After moving to Atlanta, Georgia in 2001, Janelle Monáe wanted to kickstart her career as singer and songwriter. Once down there, Monáe lived in a boarding house with five other women while working at a Office Depot. While working there, Monáe wrote and produced her first demo titled, Janelle Monáe: The Audition. To get her name out there, she began to tour and perform on college campuses. While on tour, she met Chuck Lighting and Nate Wonder, who were both songwriters. The three founded a record label titled Wondaland Arts Society. This label was created to support innovative arts and music.
In 2005, Monáe got her big break while performing Roberta Flack’s, Killing Me Softly, at a open mic might. In the audience was one of two members of Outkast, Big Boi. He was so impressed by her performance that he later featured Monáe on two tracks, “Time Will Reveal” and “Lettin’ Go,” from the hip-hop group Purple Ribbon All-Stars’ album Got Purp? Vol. II . In 2006 Outkast featured Monáe on two more songs, “Call the Law” and “In Your Dreams,” from the album Idlewild.
After Idlewild’s success, Monáe released her 2007 EP titled Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase). The EP attracted the attention of songwriter and producer Sean Puffy Combs who signed her to his Bad Boy Records label. Monáe’s EP Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase) eventually reached No. 115 on the Billboard Album charts, and its lead single, “Many Moons,” received a Grammy nomination for Best Urban/ Alternative Performance.
In 2010, Monáe released her debut full-length album, The ArchAndroid, which peaked at No. 17 on the Billboard U.S. album chart and featured the singles “Cold War” and “Tightrope.” Based loosely on the 1927 German expressionist film Metropolis, which depicts a dystopian futuristic world, The ArchAndroid is a concept album about a robot named Cindi Mayweather in the year 2719. The album is at once a futurist sci-fi story and an allegory of African-American history. The ArchAndroid received extraordinary reviews and earned Monáe another Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary R&B Album.
In 2013, Monáe released her second album, The Electric Lady. This album did better well than her last album by peaking at No. 5 on the Billboard Top 200. In 2015, Monáe’s record label Wondaland Arts Society announced a collaboration with L.A. Reid’s Epic Records to promote her artists, with the release of Wondaland Presents: The Eephus, which features tracks by Jidenna, Roman, St. Beauty, Deep Cotton and herself.
Recently in 2018, Monáe released her third studio album Dirty Computer which was accompanied by a motion picture. This album was named, Best Album of 2018, by many journals like Time, Rolling Stone, and Entertainment Weekly.