Carnegie Hall

Afrofuturism in American popular music isn’t hard to find. According to Black Girl Nerds founder Jamie Broadnax’s definition of the movement as “the reimagining of a future filled with arts, science, and technology seen through a Black lens,” old-school hip-hop qualifies when you consider DJ Grandmaster Flash’s manipulation of mixers and turntables in the early ’70s.

George Clinton fused his funk music to a sci-fi mythology through bands like Parliament and Funkadelic. Decades later, Prince crafted a narrative on his album Art Official Age that involved waking from suspended animation 45 years in the future. Afrofuturism exists anywhere we care to look. Here are a handful of pop artists and projects to listen to when headed black to the future.

Parliament-Funkadelic

In the 1970s, funk pioneer George Clinton created a unique, signature cosmology around his funk group, Parliament, and his psychedelic Black rock band, Funkadelic. The cornerstone concept of African Americans in outer space was central to the P-Funk mythos, evidenced by the group erecting a 20-foot, 1,200-pound flying saucer on nationwide concert stages. (The spaceship currently sits docked in a hallowed hall of Washington, DC’s “Black Smithsonian,” aka the National Museum of African American History and Culture).

Clinton’s alien alter ego, Star Child, and both groups’ futuristic costuming, cover artwork, and science-fiction themes make Parliament-Funkadelic a fundamental practitioner of Afrofuturism.

Labelle

David Bowie ushered in glam rock as interstellar rock star Ziggy Stardust, with all the makeup, wigs, and outrageous costuming that entailed. Then he moved on—but visionary designer Larry LeGaspi moved on, too, outfitting KISS, as well as the Afrofuturist fashion of Parliament-Funkadelic and the female rock-soul trio of Labelle. Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendryx, and Sarah Dash opened for The Who and the Rolling Stones sporting silver spacesuit couture and glittery cosmetics, singing songs like “Space Children” and “Cosmic Dancer.”

Black Panther: The Album

Marvel Studios gave Compton, California’s own Pulitzer Prize–winning rapper Kendrick Lamar the assignment to imagine hip-hop in the context of the Black Panther’s utopian Afrofuturist nation of Wakanda. Lamar’s curated soundtrack to America’s highest-grossing film of 2018 features Babes Wodumo—queen of the African electronic dance music subgenre known as gqom—plus Johannesburg rapper Yugen Blakrok and his Jo’burg brother Sjava rhyming alongside Kendrick—a transatlantic high point for the African diaspora.

In a video for “All the Stars,” SZA swirls about, singing in a crimson-colored constellation of stars shaped like the continent of Africa—a sexy sci-fi moment rivaling Barbarella.

Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer

Singer Janelle Monáe called her 2018 short film an “emotion picture.” Rolling Stone called it a sci-fi masterpiece. Exploring concepts of womanism, gender fluidity, and identity, Monáe cast herself as Jane 57821 in a totalitarian, dystopian society reminiscent of THX 1138—but with Black folks displaying an open sexuality.

The Grammy-nominated record that this visual album stems from caps a career full of Afrofuturistic concepts, like Monáe’s cyber alter ego Cyndi Mayweather, and the Octavia Butler­–esque back story underlining The ArchAndroid album and her seven-part Metropolis EP series.

Beyoncé’s Black Is King

“You were formed by the heat of the galaxy,” says Beyoncé, while a Black boy free-floats in outer space like the star child from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The trailer to Black Is King—Beyoncé’s 2020 reimagining of The Lion King—is a fierce appetizer for the visual album itself.

Her pan-Africanist, Afrobeat-infused collection of musical vignettes features many Afrofuturistic images: an African youth streaking through space like a meteor; Beyoncé herself standing regally in desert sands with a lunar backdrop, like Rey Skywalker on the planet Tatooine. The whole project stands as the most African-American black-to-the-future musical moment since Michael Jackson’s “Scream” visual.

The resistance initially raised against Black-invented music genres like jazz, rock ’n’ roll, and hip-hop (all of which were inevitably embraced and subsumed by mainstream culture) happened because those music forms were innovative, cutting edge, and ahead of the times in which they were created. Afrofuturistic, in other words.

The unique struggles of Black life have always necessitated a lean forward into a future when the challenges of white supremacist ideals might be eliminated. Our music—from the squealing guitar feedback of Jimi Hendrix to the off-kilter time signatures of Dilla—has always reflected that. Increased scholarship around Afrofuturism ensures we’ll all be able to identify those reflections when they occur.

Photography: Fuzheado via Wikimedia Commons