jan 1, 2010 - Janelle Monáe (Robinson)

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2010: Janelle Monáe (Robinson) career began in 2003 with a self-released demo album The Audition. She is an actress, singer, songwriter, and rapper, born in 1985, who attended F.L. Schlagle High School. She grew up in Quindaro as her mother worked as a janitor and hotel maid, and father as a truckdriver. With her family she performed music at the local AME Church, Baptist Church and Church of God in Christ.

As a teenager, she was enrolled in the Coterie Theaters Young Playwrights Round Table where she began writing musicals. She first gained attention for musical performances at Kansas City Juneteenth Celebrations. She moved to New York City where she was the only African-American student at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. She left to write music eventually selling her first demo out of her car. In 2010, Monáe won an MTV Video Music Award and the ASCAP Vanguard Award. She has received 8 Grammy Award nominations. In several music publications in 2018 she was awarded album of the year for her third studio album Dirty Computer.

In 2012 she became a Covergirl spokesperson and works as a model. As an actress she had an important supporting role as Mary Jackson in the 2016 docudrama Hidden Figures. In this role she played one of three brilliant African-American women at NASA who made the mathematical computations for the first manned orbital space flight. The movie earned a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. Also, in 2016 she starred in the Moonlight as Teresa. This motion picture received an Oscar nomination for best picture. Monáe lives in Boston where the City Council on October 16, 2013 held Janelle Monáe Day in recognition of her artistry and social leadership. She is a social activist for African-American’s. Monáe has exercised support for the LGBTQ community identifying herself as both bisexual and pansexual.

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