Grace Jones & Janelle Monae ‘Pull Up to the Bumper’ In Brooklyn Show

On a drizzly Monday (June 9) night in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! summer series kicked off with a knockout double bill of Grace Jones and Janelle Monáe that also served as an unofficial Pride Month party.

“Grace Jones is the most original, innovative artist of our time,” Monáe said toward the end of the night, saluting the Jamaica-born musician who went from singing disco in Studio 54 to pioneering a spiky, brash blend of reggae and art rock in the ‘80s. Standing in the park after nightfall, gazing up at the inimitable Jones under the dramatic stage lights in all her imposing, undaunted glory, you’d be a fool to argue semantics with Monáe or attempt to insert a qualifier. Jones is undoubtedly one of the most wildly underappreciated living pioneers, a Black woman whose experimental and experiential art pop was decades ahead of its time. And at 77, Jones is still sowing the wildest of oats, bucking the narrative that edgy musicians need to settle into some kind of well-coiffed adult contemporary mold after crossing a certain age.

Bashing on cymbals throughout “Demolition Man,” straddling a metal gate while singing “My Jamaican Guy,” prancing around matador-style during “I’ve Seen That Face Before (Libertango)” and letting her tongue run amok the entire evening (“I do like to stick out my tongue; don’t make it make you crazy?” the contralto purred), Jones is as uninhibited as ever. Not to mention inscrutable. When she chugged a glass of wine and belted out “Amazing Grace,” it was hard to parse whether it was an earnest expression of faith, a cheeky brag about how wonderful she is or both.

“Nobody’s hurt, right?” Jones asked her band and backup singers after sending a cymbal sailing across the stage. After ascertaining that everyone was fine, she hugged her singers. “You can take a beating,” she said with a wide grin. “I’ve taken a lot. And I’m still here.”

In addition to playing a new, unreleased funk song called “The Key” which found her in her characteristic sing-speak mode augmented by a vocoder or talk box effect, she delivered the lion’s share of her catalog favorites, including her full-throated, hard-hitting “Love Is the Drug.” In a shimmering bowler hat under a spotlight, Jones whipped the crowd into a sing-along fervor at the end of the Roxy Music cover, declaring, “It’s wake up the neighbors!” and urging the all-smiles audience to pump up the decibels and “wake ‘em up!” with every fresh round of whoa-ohs.

“Curfew? Who’s ever heard of a curfew?” Jones snarled as she put on a massive, seashell-esque red headpiece and began slinking around to the flirty funk guitar of “Pull Up to the Bumper” (a gay club favorite for reasons that become clear when you pay attention to the lyrics). “Bumper” stretched out into an extended jam session for her nimble band, with Monáe – who had opened the show with her own indefatigably funky brand of pop&B – joining Jones onstage. It was ostensibly a duet on the 1981 reggae-disco classic, but in practice, it was an excuse for the two to let loose: they offered up some French kicks; Jones licked the microphone while Monáe sang into it; they collapsed into each other’s arms, laughing; and one point, Monáe, on all fours, climbed through Jones’ legs, with Jones proceeding to drum on Monáe’s backside and then swivel around and ride her La Dolce Vita-style. Not long after, Monáe pantsed Jones (how often do you get to pants your music and style icon?) and then attempted, unsuccessfully, to free Jones from her slacks. “You’re a naughty, naughty girl,” Monae told Jones after the escapade, wagging her finger in cartoonish disapproval.

Jones shouted out “Brooklyn Pride!” a few times during the show, and while it wasn’t an official Brooklyn Pride event, the playful, resilient spirit of the LGBTQ community – from the audience to what was happening onstage – undoubtedly elevated the evening.

Curfew be damned: after that duet, Jones came out for an encore despite the house lights having already come up.

And what an encore. Jones crooned, cooed, barked and spat the lyrics to her Billboard Dance Club Songs No. 1 “Slave to the Rhythm” while hula-hooping for the entire classic (and she did the long version, too, introducing her band and bringing out her backstage crew during the song). When the show was finally over, the ebullient Brooklyn audience was ecstatic but fully danced out – and left with a lingering suspicion that at 77, Jones is still running circles around us all.