Janelle Monáe wants you ... to enter the 'Pleasure' zone

In the already uncomfortably hot summer of 2023, talk of pleasure can hit like a forbidden tonic, providing relief from a steady diet of grief, outrage and anxiety. Janelle Monáe's new album presents itself as both that stimulant and a guidebook, a compact compendium of fantasies and pep talks designed to encourage listeners to relax into the dopamine-rushed present tense. "If I could f*** me right here right now I would do that," the singer-actor-conceptualist turned libertine lifestyle coach sings in "Water Slide," a reggaefied mid-record romp that plays with swimming metaphors — —to invoke a tipsy kind of arousal that lingers delightfully, requiring no release. A floating feeling, like being drawn into a swimming pool's lazy river. Or like getting intimate without an end goal in mind, in a safe space with someone you love. "I could spend the whole day in it," Monáe swoons, and by "it" she means pleasure itself.