Janelle Monáe Will Have You Slipping Down the “Water Slide” This Weekend
Janelle Monáe is again at it, melting brains with the music video for his or her track “Water Slide”, the newest from their album The Age of Pleasure. We’re nonetheless recovering from the “Lipstick Lover” video, and now this? Life won’t ever be the identical.
I’ve already written about how a lot I’m loving the period of Janelle Monáe’s music. She stated “titties out” and rattling it, they’re sticking to it. And whereas the titties are a little much less out within the video for “Water Slide”, don’t fret. It’s nonetheless very a lot a product of the period they’re at the moment in. From what I can inform, there’s a great likelihood Monáe filmed all the content material for this album on the similar time, as a result of the aesthetics are precisely the identical. I like the thought of them spending a complete day (or perhaps a number of days!) hanging out with a bunch of cool ass folks making all the content material for the album.
“Water Slide” is considered one of my favourite songs on the album, and never solely as a result of it’s very clearly about self-pleasure. That concept isn’t solely mirrored within the video, however the allusions to it are undoubtedly there.
The video opens with Monáe standing in a yard surrounded by folks clearly dressed for a day by the pool. A couple of toes away, somebody is standing reverse them holding on to their lengthy braids, and folks deal with the hair like a limbo stick, dancing underneath it. This can be a visible that will get repeated a number of occasions all through the video, and it’s no much less pleasing to look at every time. I really can not fathom having sufficient hair that somebody might use it as a limbo stick, however the thought of dancing underneath such a factor tickles me to no finish. Heck, it would even tickle actually.
Yard summer time get together is actually the theme of The Age of Pleasure on the whole, and we bought that vibe from the slick “Lipstick Lover” video, nevertheless it actually comes via in “Water Slide”. Sonically, the track appears like one thing you’d play whereas swimming within the pool and chilling with your folks. Positively the type of track you’d dance to after having a number of glasses of frosé. Monáe performs the bass alongside a band on the grass and takes middle stage alongside a gaggle of dancers mimicking the identical swimming strikes they’re singing about. It makes me need to spend a day on the pool with a bunch of cool, Black queer of us.
Monáe wears a sequence of cute bikinis within the video — the primary one they put on has lemon slices overlaying their nipples, being held up with nothing however string. They’re additionally topless a number of occasions; the scenes within the pool emulate the album’s cowl nearly completely. A number of others are topless too; somebody within the Autostraddle staff Slack observed that one of many partygoers had prime surgical procedure scars. It nearly makes me need to go tits out within the sunshine, however I’ll depart that to the people who find themselves a lot hotter than me.
Now in case you’ll forgive me, I’m going to look at the video one other dozen occasions.
