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Electric lady lands: Celebrate Brooklyn! blasts off with Janelle Monae

Electric lady lands: Celebrate Brooklyn! blasts off with Janelle Monae
Photo by Baptiste Monae

The mothership is landing in Prospect Park.

On June 4, funk goddess Janelle Monae will open this year’s season of music at Celebrate Brooklyn! with a free show featuring her unique blend of rhythm and blues, rock, and musings on intergalatic relationships.

Monae carries on the tradition of funksters such as James Brown and Funkadelic, mixing epic showwomanship and danceable beats with a strong message of love, perseverance and resistance.

Her two full-length albums “The Electric Lady” and “the ArchAndroid,” as well as earlier record “Metropolis the Chase Suite,” recount her alter-ego Cindi Mayweather’s adventures as a feisty android who travels through time and becomes a messiah after she is sentenced to death for falling in love with a human man.

On Monae’s albums, she has collaborated with artists such as Erykah Badu, Of Montreal and Big Boi.

Officials from BRIC, which has been staging the summer-long Celebrate Brooklyn! series for 36 years, said they felt Monae was the perfect opening act for the season of concerts at the Prospect Park Badnshell.

“She is at once, futuristic, retro and completely of the moment — which is what Celebrate Brooklyn! aspires to be,” said Rachel Chanoff, the festival’s artistic director.

Other free Celebrate Brooklyn! shows this year will include St. Vincent, the Dum Dum Girls, and Bebel Gilberto. Ticketed shows, including big names such as Jack Johnson, the National, and Neutral Milk Hotel, are already sold out.

Janelle Monae at Celebrate Brooklyn! (Prospect Park band shell near Ninth Street and Prospect Park West in Park Slope, www.bricartsmedia.org). June 4 at 8 pm, Free

Reach reporter Danielle Furfaro at dfurfaro@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-2511. Follow her at twitter.com/DanielleFurfaro.