Janelle Monáe feat. of Montreal - Make The Bus

mp3: Janelle Monáe feat. of Montreal - Make The Bus

On Tuesday, Georgia-based soul/indie-pop singer Janelle Monáe released her debut album The ArchAndroid, and the same day she performed the album's first single, Tightrope, on Letterman. The single is a collaboration with fellow Georgia musician Big Boi (of OutKast fame), and is some of the most fresh and funky sounding stuff I've heard since Hey Ya hit the world almost a decade ago.



Her artsy and eccentric persona really shone on her first television performance ever. My favorite song of hers right now, however, is definitely Make The Bus – another collaboration with a fellow Georgia star: of Montreal's equally eccentric and artsy Kevin Barnes. It's arguably more of an of Montreal song than a Janelle Monáe song, but as a big fan of Barnes, I just love what he does in this song.

In Barnes' earlier albums, he made quirky, modest and introverted lo-fi music heavily inspired by the Beatles and 60s psychedelia, but in 2007's Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? he introduced his new alter ego 'Georgie Fruit' on the latter half of the album, and while in this character, he explores a loud, extroverted, funky, shrieking falsetto side of himself that showcases his more recent and different influences, such as Prince. On 2008's Skeletal Lamping, the Fruit character dominated most of the album, but he still never let that side of him completely loose - until he collaborated with Monáe. This is going to be one of my favorite tracks for this summer, for sure!

For an example of one of the songs on Skeletal Lamping that sounds close to this, check out Id Engager and its lovely video.