For all the acclaim heaped upon her, Janelle Monáe is not a superstar – yet. Dirty Computer will probably change that. At 32, the Atlanta-based singer-songwriter-rapper-producer has enjoyed lavish praise and respectable record sales without scoring a substantial hit. She may be better known to the mainstream public for her eye-catching roles in award-winning movies Moonlight and Hidden Figures. She featured on the soundtrack to superhero blockbuster Black Panther, too, and her aesthetic could have sprung straight from its fictional afro-futurist city.

In the past, though, Monáe’s funky psychedelic soul has erred on the side of musical and conceptual over-complexity, hiding its hooks and smothering its messages in elaborate fantasias delivered by a rebellious robot alter ego on 2010’s The ArchAndroid and 2013’s The Electric Lady.

Janelle Monáe

By contrast, Dirty Computer is unblushingly and unsparingly direct. “Let the vagina have a monologue,” Monáe raps on Django Jane, one of a number of tracks confronting sexism and racism in modern America. A joyous sense of provocation fuels the double-entendres of Pynk, a delicious electropop confection celebrating female sexuality. “You try to grab this pussy-cat, this pussy grab you back!” she asserts on uproarious call-and-response chant I Got The Juice.

Dirty Computer establishes itself as a contender for album of the year, in more ways than one. The witty, interlinked songs tackle subjects that have fuelled much of the discourse around “woke” social consciousness in the age of #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, in which even the American president has his finger on the Twitter trigger. Monáe explicitly equates sex with power on Screwed, a thrilling blast of funk rock advocating hedonism as a balm for the anxieties of the era: “I hear the sirens calling/ And the bombs start falling – but it feels so good”.

This is the politics of partying, of pledging allegiance to the freak flag. In speeches and sound bites Monáe attempts to tap into the foundational spirit of American liberalism. Yet none of her bold proclamations would count for much without such irresistible music to back them up. Inventive arrangements benefit from the harmonies of Beach Boy Brian Wilson, the quirky synths of electronic maverick Grimes and the R’n’B bounce of Pharrell Williams. Stevie Wonder pops up with words of wisdom on Stevie’s Dream.

These are impressive collaborations but it is the influence of Monáe’s late mentor Prince that looms largest in the clean, sharp, rhythmic propulsion of electric guitar-driven grooves. In its inventive eclecticism, her layered sound is as contemporary as that of such digital trailblazers as Kendrick Lamar or Kanye West, yet it has an old-fashioned organic quality that comes from a bedrock of live musicianship.

Dirty Computer sounds like 2018 distilled into a sci-fi funk pop extravaganza by a female Black Panther. “I am not America’s nightmare/ I am the American dream,” insists Monáe. A superstar is born.

Janelle Monáe, Dirty Computer is out now