At Home With Janelle Monáe: The Playlist

R&B visionary and actor Janelle Monáe likes to create playlists that start and end with a purpose. “I always feel like I'm being defined by my playlist,” Monáe tells Apple Music. “It's that sacred for me, music.” On this exclusive Apple Music playlist curated by Monáe herself, she highlights songs by Prince, Outkast, and Lauryn Hill—all of which share a political and/or social message. “When I'm going through something, especially when the world is in turmoil and we're in the middle of a real revolution, these are songs that I can listen to,” she says. “I feel ready. I feel reconnected. I feel like I'm moving out of love and not out of fear.” Monáe sets the mood right from the top with four back-to-back tracks by Stevie Wonder, an artist whose virtuoso talent and activism she holds to high esteem. “When you talk to him, he lives, eats, sleeps, breathes that level of high frequency,” she says. “Great storytellers, to me, have that ability to figure out, 'How can I get my point across to where you don't even know I just preached to you?' That, to me, signifies an incredible artist.”