Best New Track: “PYNK” [ft. Grimes]

Janelle Monáe recently told Zane Lowe at Beats 1 that her forthcoming album, Dirty Computer, will be “extremely vulnerable.” So far, the route Monáe has chosen to take equates vulnerability with boldness. The artwork for her new single, “PYNK,” features Monáe in Bowie-style wide-brimmed trousers shaped like a vagina; its video is a multisensory, radical journey into a new dimension of queer sexuality. In these visions, the governing symbols aren’t phallic, as usual, but shaped like the female reproductive system, where life always begins. With that, “PYNK” heralds a new start for Monáe’s musical journey, using a color synonymous with girlishness to discuss the future of gender.