In 2017, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez felt a spiritual calling. It seemed to be telling her, “There's so much that you don't know about the future. So while you're in the present, I'm going to come here and let you know what's happening, and you need to convey that message.” Rodriguez didn’t know what the message was yet — only that it had to be conveyed through music. But the following year, she was cast as Blanca Evangelista in Pose, and music had to take a backseat to her breakthrough role.
That sense that there was a message that Rodriguez had to share never went away, though, not until one fateful day in the studio at the end of 2019. She told her collaborator, Nick Smith, to lay down a beat, and the words came to her instantly: “Broken mirrors on the floor. I don't need you anymore, no, I don't.” The rest of the writing for the song that would eventually become “Green Lights” was a similarly subconscious process.
“When I read the lyrics, I was like, ‘Oh, my god. This is not Michaela Jaé, present day,’” the singer tells Them over the phone. “‘This is another form of Michaela Jaé.’” Whether this version of Rodriguez took the form of an entirely separate entity or a simply a different aspect of her spirit, “she's trying to relay the message of, ‘I’m here in the future, and I need you to know that it could be so much brighter if you and all of the people around you who are divine like you can make the world better in the present day,’” she tells me. Aiming to amplify that message through pop and R&B, her alter ego, Michaela Jaé 33F7, “the robot, android, humanoid, superpowered femme fatale,” was born, and so was the glittering, dystopian world of her debut album, 33, which she released last Thursday.
If you didn’t clock them from the jump, the Biblical parallels are intentional; “She loves divine people, she loves Jesús a.k.a. Jesus,” Rodriguez says. Jesus is said to have been crucified at the age of 33, and the singer has always been fascinated by “chosen one” narratives, like those of The Matrix’s Neo and Avatar: The Last Airbender’s Aang. Beyond that, she sees Jesus as “someone who was conscious and aware of himself, so much that other people around him deemed him different. And they challenged him because of the unknown.”
“I thought of myself and I was like, ‘Well, that’s what I go through every single day, yet people still condemn me,’” she says. “It doesn’t sound like a farfetched story. It sounds quite similar.”
Over the course of seven pop tracks inflected with R&B, Afrobeats, and ballroom influences (and two brief, atmospheric spoken-word interludes), 33 tells the story of a “chosen” android gone rogue. The album’s protagonist is the 33rd version of the Michaela Jaé prototype; while all the others before her failed, she not only survives but breaks containment, sparking an awakening among the people who inhabit the dystopian world contained within the record. The whole concept is incredibly ambitious for a debut album, yet Rodriguez pulls it off with style and aplomb. One needs only to watch the music video for “Green Lights” to see that she both wears her influences — Janet and Michael Jackson, Beyoncé, to name a few — on her shiny chrome sleeve, and to see that she’s crafting a pop project wholly her own.
On the heels of her album listening party at Soho House, Rodriguez spoke with Them on the phone from her native New York, and discussed the cathartic nature of the record, her dream musical collaborations, and her favorite anime.
Congrats on the album. How are you feeling now that it’s out in the world?
I'm feeling so, so good. I'm finally addressing how to be easy on myself and tell myself how proud I am of this kind of accomplishment. This is my debut album, and I had so many expectations and insecurities as well, and I was met with love and joy for the album. Last night after my release party, I got to really sit with the album again, and I think it's subconsciously healing the trauma that I never addressed.
Trauma as in…
The traumas of the world and things that I have dealt with. Just simply being a person who is different, whether it be being a POC, a person who's trans, being a woman. All of those things that I am and what I've experienced through being those intersectionalities have brought out a lot of reality. When I was listening to the songs, I just broke down and I was so happy that it could do that for me, and I was like, “This could heal me from what I was going through. It's definitely going to help somebody else out there.”
In a recent interview, you described yourself as a huge anime fan, and said that that inspired this album. What are some of your favorites?
Naruto is one of my favorites. I love [Little] Witch Academia because it's just an all-girl crew, and they are fucking shit up. I would say also, I was definitely inspired by anime, but it wasn't just anime either. There were definitely a lot of cartoons that I watched when I was younger, specifically Marvel and X-Men. I told myself when I was creating this whole album, and this character, “I want her to be a girl that has superhuman powers, who someone can look at and say, ‘That's tangible. I can be a superhero, too.’” And I looked to the storyline of the X-Men, and I was just like, “Well, these are outcasts, and yet they always still manage to save the world. Even when a human put them down and they tried to kill them, they still think humans deserve to live just as much.” We explore that in the music video.
Could you expand on that?
I feel like the storyline of the X-Men is a love story to the LGBTQ+ community as well as the hetero community that is ostracized from even their own. And that whole story was a way for all of us to see what our lives are like and how to fight for our rights, no matter how different we are. I wanted to incorporate the beginning stages of that, just to be very clear. Before the fight starts, there is something that has to break — any kind of fight, whether it's positive or negative. I think Michaela Jaé 33F7, her being built and having many failures of her 32, 31, 29. Those were failures that didn't make it. But 33 somehow made it. And that's what changed the dynamic for this dystopian world, and they know now that she's out and they're trying to catch her. But they can't.
And it always takes some kind of awakened, powerful, self-aware, and knowing human being or entity for people to be disrupted and scared. It can possibly lead people in the right direction and make them make their own choices. And disrupt in such a positive way where the higher ups don't want that. Sometimes, they want the people to just stay complacent. And I wanted Michaela Jaé 33F7 to be that. I wanted her to be a disruptor, but not the one that causes violence, instead her persistence of love, being the first of the models that was able to live. She wasn't supposed to pass 33. She was only supposed to stay there. So I wanted people to see that her rebirth, and the fact that she lived, is the disruption.
I would totally read a comic book that you wrote, just saying.
Oh, you would live for it. You would live for it.
Do you have any dream musical collaborations?
I have so many. I would love to collab with Beyoncé. Doechii, and Doja Cat. More than anything, I'm down to work with all of the pop girls and all of the hip hop girls. The men I would like to work with too, but girl power is my thing.
The artist who I thought of immediately was —
Please say Victoria Monét, please.
That would rule too, but I was actually thinking of Janelle Monáe.
Yes!
I really, really lived for their android era. I feel like you could be the person to bring that back. Just planting that seed.
Well, you know what, I really appreciate that. Thanks for the planting. You might have created some growth.
I love to hear that. Do you have anything coming up that you’re excited about?
I do have more music coming out, and that's what I'm really excited about. I have a single that I'm planning on releasing after we let the album breathe a little bit. And hopefully, some performances that will be happening next year, too. I'm having conversations with a tour manager. I think with this album, there has to be some performances to get the people up and happy, so I can't let them down.
Right, which I was absolutely gonna ask about. I was like, “This is an album that is meant for performance.”
Oh, yeah.
What would you say is the number one takeaway that you want people to have from the record?
I hope the album teaches people to never be afraid to ask questions. You can be disappointed [in the answers], but use the love to fight through it. It's time to reminisce and recollect your past. And then after that, carve your own path. And don't let anyone stop you from carving your own path.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
33 is out now via TribeDisciples Inc.
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