Janelle Monae, Miguel Are Futuristic Lovers In ‘Primetime’

R&B star Janelle Monae has a new duet with Miguel, “PrimeTime,” and the pair are featured in a novel new video.

In Monae’s new video, Janelle and Miguel sing the slow and sexy track over a strange, David Lynch flavored nightclub… with a sort of Blade Runner twist.

The “PrimeTime” video featuring Janelle Monae and Miguel is certainly high concept… the YouTube blurb describes the album’s backstory, which isn’t entirely apparent with just a single runthrough of the video:

“PrimeTime is a love story based on the early adventures of Cindi Mayweather (Janelle Monáe) and her first love Joey Vice (Miguel.) The Emotion Picture gives a glimpse at Cindi’s humble beginnings as a ‘cyber-server’ at the Electric Sheep nightclub, a syn bar serving high-class ‘show droids’ to the rich and lonely in a dangerous section of Metropolis known as Slop City… the innovative cybersoul music played at the club directly impacted Cindi [who]… became determined to change the public perception of what an electric lady could be…”

Older Janelle Monae fans will definitely hear a perhaps unintentional Twin Peaksy feel in the background “ooooh, ooooh” hook, sort of like the Laura Palmer theme on the moody music released alongside the show.

But there’s also a bit of Sean Young styling to Monae’s “PrimeTime” look, and the storyline described above is definitely Blade Runner influenced.

It’s probably most certainly intentional, and when Janelle released album “Metropolis: The Chase Suite” back in 2009, she praised the iconic sci-fi film as a huge favorite.

Monae said then:

“I love Blade Runner. I love the hairstyles in Blade Runner. A lot of the shapes that I use, I got a lot of inspiration from the guy who started making the androids. I got a lot of styles from that movie, so fashion-wise it pushes lots of limits.”

Janelle continues:

“But the overall story is captivating and just hearing the music from the 80s, how it’s just kinda drugged-out a little bit… Yeah, I just think it pushes a lot of limits fashion wise and the story’s very strong. And it was actually one of the movies when I was writing “Metropolis,” it was one of our inspirations.”

Watch Janelle Monet and Miguel in the new vid, above.