Back with another installment of Hip-Hop Made, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the birth of Hip-Hop. Janelle Monáe talked with Audacy and ATL’s Big Tigger on V-103, sharing a her short list of artists that lead her to fall in love with Hip-Hop, her favorite moment in Hip-Hop history, plus what Hip-Hop means to her.

When asked which one song made her fall in love with Hip-Hop, Janelle found it difficult to pinpoint just one. Revealing,“I have so many artists,” in mind, adding, “I mean we’re in Atlanta too, so OutKast c’mon, 'Elevators' I think, made me be like ‘oooh they’re different’… ATLiens… and it was the video too that also help, and that chorus,” she added, before going on to sing a little bit of it.

“I was a big Lauryn Hill fan too, so I always listened to her whole Miseducation, even The Fugees, the way she was singing and then rap, when she did the Roberta Flack cover ‘Killing Me Softly.’”

"It’s like Hip-Hop is such a spectrum… there’s so many different levels of it. Love Lil Kim… I can rap a lot of Lil Kim stuff,” Janelle admitted, noting she’d have done it if she wasn’t so tired. “Her features are crazy,” she went on to add, “I feel like she changed so much, like she was so free, she’s a free a** motherf***er, like she been on it, and I started to appreciate her even more as I went through my own journey of evolution.”

Janelle continued, “Lil Kim was challenging everybody's thoughts about what it was to be a Black woman, what you could say, what you couldn’t say. She was like — you not gonna put me in a box — categorize me, I defy every label — and that’s what I live by too, so I love her.”

Revealing her favorite moment in Hip-Hop history, Janelle shared that she “loved Ladies Night, I love seeing like all those women together. That was a moment for me… when I was with my friends, with my girlfriends, we would always pick who we were, or we would have it on as we were getting dressed and ready to go hang out and it just solidified a sisterhood in Hip-Hop."

Beyond the music, for Janelle, Hip-Hop “represents freedom, it represents story telling, it represents Blackness… the spectrum of Blackness. We’re not monolithic, we don’t all think the same, eat the same, dress the same. So it just represents an opportunity for us to like continue to teach people about us as a people, our experiences.”

Listen to the entire conversation above.

Words by Maia Kedem Interview by Big Tigger