Pynk Is the Color of Everything She’s Got Right

Every time Janelle Monáe appears somewhere, I cycle through the same three thoughts. First: how is one person this constitutionally perfect? Second: what does her dentist know that mine doesn’t? Third: why, with all that talent and relentless work and that face, is she not the biggest pop star on the planet? The math genuinely doesn’t add up.

I fall fast and get over it fast—that’s always been my rhythm. But Janelle doesn’t work like that. There’s something almost frightening about her, like standing in front of a painting that’s too good and suddenly becoming aware of all the ways you’re too small to be in the same room. I don’t have a crush on her. I have something closer to reverence, which is worse.

None of that changes what Pynk is. She made it with Grimes—who has been somewhat adrift lately—and together they’ve built something explicitly and unapologetically feminist, celebratory, and more than a little horny. The song celebrates pink in every sense of the word, including the anatomical ones. The vagina pants in the video are iconic enough to carry a lesser song; the fact that the song doesn’t need them at all is the whole argument for why Janelle Monáe is exactly what she is. The world will catch up eventually. It always does with her.