Since the release of his second album (The Electric Lady, 2013), Janelle Monáe has invested the Hollywood sets, her talent having earned her eight Oscar nominations. So we will listen The Age of Pleasure as a distraction from her acting career: it’s light, eye-catching, unlike the feminist and afrofuturist monuments that her three previous albums are. Very short (33 minutes), it passes for a mixtape, the songs blending together to create this pleasant ode to love and carnal pleasures woven with Afrobeat (Black Sugar Beach, Know Better), R&B, rap and reggae (the one-drop of Lipstick Lover, Water Slide that samples the classic Bam Bam of Sister Nancy, Only Have Eyes 42 borrowing from rocksteady hit The Loser by Derrick Harriott). In all honesty, this album is as tasty as a Popsicle in the middle of a heat wave, therefore much less nutritious than her ambitious previous albums which consecrated Monáe as one of the most eloquent pop musicians of the last decade. In concert on September 20 at the MTelus.
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