Janelle Monáe, The Age of Pleasure review: A frothy, horny ode to erotic delight

For her fourth album, Monáe trades sci-fi mythologising for carnally-minded joy

On her fourth album, Janelle Monáe embodies the happiest person at the orgy (Jheyda McGarrell)

Across three albums, Janelle Monáe has made listeners do their homework. She crafts sci-fi extravaganzas, funk-soul LPs with distinct acts, characters and storylines. There are accompanying short films, spin-off books and alter egos. Easter eggs in the liner notes seem almost quaint in comparison. The Age of Pleasure, her fourth full-length, is a lot simpler in approach: this is a sex record, a frothy, horny ode to erotic delight that breezes past in a carnal blur.

As if recorded off the edge of an infinity pool, this tight collection of 14 tracks – many of them brief, lush interludes – embraces laidback cool while endlessly calling back to the pioneers of Black soul. Seun Kuti, son of Afrobeats titan Fela, supplies shimmering brass on the braggadocious “Float”. “Champagne S***” is a mélange of marching band horns and dancehall synths. Grace Jones rocks up, cooing in French (“Trouble, trouble, trouble,” she purrs) before peacing out. “Lipstick Lover” bounces on a vintage reggae groove.

At the centre of it all is a never more confident Monáe, the happiest person at this particular orgy, whose version of self-love is amusingly forthright: “I’m looking at a thousand versions of myself,” she proclaims against a grimy bass riff on “Phenomenal”, “and we’re all fine as f***.” She becomes even less coy on “Water Slide”, an airy bit of funk seduction: “If I could f*** me right here, right now, I’d do that.”

It all tracks with Monáe’s personal evolution in recent years, which includes coming out as pansexual and identifying as a variety of pronouns at once (“she/her”, “they/them”, and “free-ass motherf****r”). Lyrics here repeatedly nod to a kind of utopian gender ambiguity (“A bitch look pretty/ A bitch look handsome”) and celebrations of free love – as well as the sheer thrill of desiring and being desired. “Let our rain become a monsoon, I want the rush,” moans actor Nia Long at the top of “The Rush”, a slow jam that is practically naked, bar a Spanish guitar and some sensual reverb.

Clocking in at a scant 31 minutes, you could call The Age of Pleasure a quickie – but one that more than manages to scratch that itch.