Janelle Monáe at the Anthem. (Jordan Grobe)

By Chris Kelly

As a child, Janelle Monáe had nightmares about two people: Grace Jones and Prince.

“I’ll never forget it,” the singer says. “Prince was chasing me in a purple suit, and Grace Jones was just laughing hysterically.” Subscribe for unlimited access to The Post You can cancel anytime. Subscribe

In time Monáe would become both a friend and an artistic heir to the two iconic musicians, each untethered by conventions of genre and gender, and each capable of alchemizing androgyny and Afrofuturism into new forms. But it wasn’t until adulthood that she understood the nightmare obscured a dream.

“What I later found is that there was a part of their freeness and freedom that I was not ready to tap into yet,” the multi-hyphenate talent s

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