Janelle Monáe’s “PYNK” Video Is A Celebration Of Pussy Power

Janelle Monáe celebrates pussy power and the femme identity in the song and video for "PYNK."

Released today, "PYNK" is the third single from Monáe's forthcoming Dirty Computer album. It features Grimes, though you wouldn't know it from watching the video because she's nowhere to be found. No matter, though! 

The visual does see Monáe and her dancers in vagina-loving Duran Lantink fashions in a pink desert. They venture to the Pynk Restaurant, where "girls eat free and never leave." The full spectrum of pink gets airtime, from an aggressive magenta edit to the soft pastels of the surrounding femme oasis. Tessa Thompson's appearance will undoubtedly again spark conversations about Monáe's sexuality, considering the song's lyrics are laced with innuendo, but that's beside the point. Like "Make Me Feel," "PYNK" is not a coming-out video. It's coming forward with a message of femme empowerment—one that speaks to the universality of feminine energy, and how it exists in all of us regardless of the BS gender binary.

With verses spoken like a true android baby, Monáe sets the listener up for a chorus that explodes with celebratory guitars and a choir throwing their hands up singing, "Boy, it's cool if you got blue/ We got the pink!" The multitudes of this song echo the multitudes of femmes everywhere, their ability to be hard and soft—sometimes at the same time.

Dirty Computer, along with its corresponding "emotion picture," drops April 27 via Atlantic.