It’s an awfully strange time to call for an Age of Pleasure. In 2023, governors are making drag shows illegal. Teenagers declare that pleasure is something that’s not relevant to the plot of movies and should therefore be removed from the public sphere. Billionaires bemoan the rise of nonprocreative sex. Call it a backlash, or a moral panic, but pleasure is getting crowded out.
Enter Janelle Monae. Her new album, The Age of Pleasure, is both a reinvention and a call to—well, it’s too cool and relaxed to say it’s a call to arms. The Age of Pleasure wants to both turn down and turn up the temperature. As is the responsibility of every generation of horny people, Monae is remaking pleasure in her own image.
