I’m tempering my disappointment because Janelle Monáe did not win the Grammy for Best Progressive R&B Album and Album of the Year.

I happened to tune into the live pre-show, scoping the multiple vantages of the camera – entry, red carpet fashion cam, backstage, and main floor awards – hoping to get a glimpse of them on the red carpet, and more importantly, hear their name called for their nominated category.

From what I witnessed from IG stories and felt through the passion of the tour, the FAM put a lot of love into the Age of Pleasure. The Age of Pleasure is a sensual moment of ecstasy, a rolling climax that lingers in the most delightful of ways. This energy still lives on! We’re not done living and loving, exploring and being free. There’s still so much to be experienced, and so many layers to peel back and savor. There’s so much more to this than the Grammys (though it would’ve been nice!)

Through this, I’m learning how we have to define our own measures of success. We cannot wait for other people’s validation to celebrate us and our journey. Especially when our ways are avant guard and off kilter from the lockstep of the mainstream. When we are liberating, educating, and celebrating who we are. There is a certain confidence we have to cultivate in knowing we are ahead of common knowledge and modern consumption. Being a trailblazer, sometimes you get burnt. We have to love ourselves enough to see ourselves first, regardless of if we are seen and received by the masses.

What we are creating is longstanding, eternal, deeply and authentically rooted. Crazy, classic lives.

Janelle has been contributing to a lot of different projects, continually magicking in the background, only to astonish us at the forefront in unexpected ways. From the recent Adobe visual art pieces for Only Have Eyes 42 and Haute, DJing parties, directing a film about an intersex teen, headlining with Coldplay in Europe, and so many other things behind the scenes we don’t know about yet, Janelle is entering a season of prolific and dynamic creativity. This is a moment of celebration and awe! What an artist!

So, we’ll be sad for a moment to not take home a Grammy dedicated to the highly melanated arch-android orchestrated, but we’ll continue with our heads high knowing the impact of Janelle’s vision, decision, and prolificness. The concert tour changed my life, made a notable shift in how they were able to breathe life and sensuality and passion and presence into my existence, and the lives of so many people. How Janelle embodies the Spirit of Soul, in the most Bazaar ways. And with so many recognitions that underscore Janelle is just now entering a prime light of experience and acknowledgement from the art world and fandroids alike.

May they continue to share their brilliance with the world, and we are ever blessed to witness to transformation of Janelle Monáe.