Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central, Janelle money to welcome back
Speaker 1: to the Daily Show. Wow, That's what I said every
Speaker 1: time I see you. This is huge, this is fun,
Speaker 1: this is fun. We're back you know the people, and
Speaker 1: I'm happy to have you here because, like when I
Speaker 1: talked to you over Zoom, I don't get like for
Speaker 1: those who don't know Jenelle, when I always looks like this,
Speaker 1: like just always know, you are easily one of the
Speaker 1: most like glamorous, stylish people I have ever come across
Speaker 1: in my life. Like you looked like how we're just
Speaker 1: supposed to dress as a thing. You are so kind.
Speaker 1: I totally paid him to say, you know, we're in
Speaker 1: the pandemic. He was trying to make some extra money.
Speaker 1: I was my side. Hustle was complimenting genomone, Welcome back
Speaker 1: to the show. How how is life? How's how's everything
Speaker 1: treating it? Because you are one of the few people
Speaker 1: I know who just seems to excel in everything you do. Music,
Speaker 1: you excel and it's your own type of music, it's
Speaker 1: your own vibe. It's different. It's not easy. You know.
Speaker 1: In the movies you excel everything hidden figures. I mean,
Speaker 1: now you're gonna be in the New Knives out. It's
Speaker 1: just like your life is a dream and now a
Speaker 1: book that's already got start reviews, Well, tell it to
Speaker 1: my therapist because clearly, clearly there's a lot of things
Speaker 1: that I have to fix. According to them, Um, I'm amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm amazing, man, I'm gonna say that. I love and
Speaker 1: I'll say this. I used to kind of just say that,
Speaker 1: you know, because is it how you doing? What I'm doing? Great?
Speaker 1: How you do? But I am doing I am like
Speaker 1: in the most I don't have to prove anything space
Speaker 1: that I've ever been in in my life. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it took me a while to get there because
Speaker 1: you know, as public people, we try to inspire people
Speaker 1: with our words. But I don't feel like I was
Speaker 1: really living what I was saying. Oh I like that.
Speaker 1: I wasn't really believing in it myself. I was saying it.
Speaker 1: It was helping other people, But I had to do
Speaker 1: some deep healing during the pandemic. I was dealing with
Speaker 1: a lot of rejection and abandonment issues just from like
Speaker 1: my childhood, things that I had just kind of kept
Speaker 1: in me, and they were just coming to the service
Speaker 1: and I think one of the things that the pandemic
Speaker 1: has done is forced us all to go in state. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I'm at this place where like I'm ready
Speaker 1: to celebrate. If we're not talking about vacations, I don't
Speaker 1: want to talk. If we're not planning a vacation, I
Speaker 1: don't It's just like, what are we doing. We are
Speaker 1: supposed to be living our best lives. I'm young, I'm creative, No, seriously, like,
Speaker 1: what's supposed to be living our Earth's experience in the
Speaker 1: best way. And I think when I first started my career,
Speaker 1: I was really serious, like I have to prove a point.
Speaker 1: I have to prove that just because I look like this,
Speaker 1: I could do this type of news music, I can
Speaker 1: say these things, I can talk about science fiction. I
Speaker 1: had a lot to prove um. But now, man, I'm floating.
Speaker 1: We feel it. I love that what's beautiful? You don't.
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting because you start to feel that with
Speaker 1: artists when they hit that groove, you know, because I
Speaker 1: think everyone goes through the phase of you have to
Speaker 1: prove you know, because you understand that definitely, because because
Speaker 1: initially you're going will I keep the job? Do I
Speaker 1: belong here there's impostor syndrome. Over time, you develop a
Speaker 1: trust yourself, the audience, your experience is. The book feels
Speaker 1: like the perfect representation of that for me, because I
Speaker 1: knew that you liked science fiction. You know, I mean
Speaker 1: like you know, your your your albums for instance, your
Speaker 1: music videos. You you've never been afraid to say, like
Speaker 1: I I like science fiction. But now you wrote a
Speaker 1: book of short stories and I was like, oh no,
Speaker 1: Genelman loves science. You co wrote with with some amazing authors.
Speaker 1: Let's let's start with that. How did you even begin
Speaker 1: this process of going, you know what, I want to
Speaker 1: write like a future book. So this um short story
Speaker 1: collection is from the soil of Dirty Computer, my album
Speaker 1: that came out and I released a film with that,
Speaker 1: and I knew I had more to say. Sat down
Speaker 1: in the pandemic. Excuse me, look at me. Don't even
Speaker 1: know how dates I'm from the future. Sorry, I sat
Speaker 1: down in the Pandemic and I finally said that there's more,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, I was on mushrooms and I
Speaker 1: just came up with all of these thought experiments, you know,
Speaker 1: where I was like, what if there was this black
Speaker 1: woman she was the memory keeper of the city. She
Speaker 1: knew all of the people's memories before they were cleaned,
Speaker 1: before their identities were wiped clean, and she wants to
Speaker 1: fall in love. What does that mean when you want
Speaker 1: to fall in love but you know everybody's secrets. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's the first one that means. So that's the first
Speaker 1: one is called the first story. Imagine that first you
Speaker 1: already like the first story? Yeah? And then and then
Speaker 1: what if you lived in New York and there was
Speaker 1: a room that you could go into You didn't even
Speaker 1: know existed, but when you went into this room, time stopped.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so you could. It kind of speaks to
Speaker 1: time poverty in a sense. You know, black and brown folks,
Speaker 1: we've been spending our life fighting right to be included
Speaker 1: all these things. What if you had an opportunity to
Speaker 1: steal time, to get time back? Would you rest? Would
Speaker 1: you show the community this place? How? How would you
Speaker 1: if you could get time back? How would you use it?
Speaker 1: I love how you've used the stories in the book
Speaker 1: to delve into topics that sometimes are too dense or
Speaker 1: to like, you know, they fraught with politics and they
Speaker 1: don't let us just think about them. For instance, the
Speaker 1: first story, you talked about it's in the future. This
Speaker 1: this woman, she's going all these memories. How does she
Speaker 1: trust people? How does she know people? All I found
Speaker 1: myself thinking. I was like, man, I feel like that's
Speaker 1: what social media is slowly slipping us into. Is people
Speaker 1: have now lived the entire life online. Now in a
Speaker 1: generation where people have gone from my baby steps all
Speaker 1: the way through I have existed online. So now do
Speaker 1: I have any anonymity? Can I Can I write my
Speaker 1: own story without other people writing it from my posts? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean I think that, you know, social media is
Speaker 1: a virtual reality. It's a whole another world. Like people
Speaker 1: create and we curate the type of people that we are.
Speaker 1: I think being human, in my opinion, is performative. I'm
Speaker 1: performing a version of what I think Jenelle on a
Speaker 1: should be. I tell you, I'm from the future. It
Speaker 1: gets deep, it gets deep. It's all feedback. We're getting
Speaker 1: feedback from how we should be, how what we've seen
Speaker 1: we didn't like. And it's like, ah, now I'm this
Speaker 1: person because of that information. But that's a whole another story. Um.
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I think that there is some
Speaker 1: gathering done there with our memory and with this book
Speaker 1: I'm just challenging everybody to be their own memory librarian.
Speaker 1: Like I started to look at my life and I
Speaker 1: started to think about, man I was I didn't, I
Speaker 1: wasn't in the moment in so many ways, I was
Speaker 1: so in the future here for like the majority of
Speaker 1: my career, I was in the future. And so how
Speaker 1: can I create memories now? Like our memories are the
Speaker 1: things that determine the quality of our life. Without them,
Speaker 1: who are we? You know, when you take away somebody's
Speaker 1: identity and who they are is just like that that
Speaker 1: was their life's experience, you know. Yeah, And I want
Speaker 1: to shout out Elijah Don Johnson. I wrote The Memory
Speaker 1: Librarian with her, and I wrote this, this entire collection,
Speaker 1: each short story. I partnered with a writer that I
Speaker 1: well friends who were writers because I knew, like, okay,
Speaker 1: with there's a story called never Mind and there is
Speaker 1: uh an incredible writer by the name of Danny Lore
Speaker 1: and non binary, and they are just really really good
Speaker 1: when it comes to action, like they're doing some stuff
Speaker 1: this James Bond graphic novel, and I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: Danny would be great for that. And then Eve l
Speaker 1: Ewing I did Time Box with um Shari Renee Thomas.
Speaker 1: I did time Box altered with Johanka Delgado. I did
Speaker 1: save changes. Imagine if you could go back and there
Speaker 1: was this device and you wanted to just like, I
Speaker 1: don't want to give too much away, but these stories
Speaker 1: are just incredible and then, um, you know, I said,
Speaker 1: uh Alia down Johnson. I just want to make sure
Speaker 1: I shout them out because this is a super innovative
Speaker 1: way of releasing a book. It really is. You know,
Speaker 1: you know what I enjoyed about it is when you
Speaker 1: go from story to story, what you've done is there
Speaker 1: is the common thread of Janelle Money. I can feel
Speaker 1: the future you in all these stories and the way
Speaker 1: you think. But then it's infused with like different elements
Speaker 1: from all of the different rites. You know, if you
Speaker 1: if you know Eve's writing and her stuff, you can
Speaker 1: feel it in some of the dialogue and some of
Speaker 1: the moments if you know the author becomes So it's
Speaker 1: almost like you've created the first book that has like
Speaker 1: features on it. Yeah, it's like a it's like a
Speaker 1: compilation out it's normal. So they feel so different from
Speaker 1: story to story, and yet they have a common thread.
Speaker 1: I can see why it's getting rave reviews. I can
Speaker 1: see like, now the question is are you going to
Speaker 1: turn this into I know it started with the album
Speaker 1: that's a movie, and then now there's a book. But
Speaker 1: now this book seems like it's begging to be turned
Speaker 1: into a TV show? You think so? Do you think
Speaker 1: it could be a TV show? Every time I was
Speaker 1: reading this, I was like, Okay, guys, everybody watching, listen,
Speaker 1: we need to make that doesn't make it out. We're
Speaker 1: gonna make it that and thank you so much. Everybody
Speaker 1: will be available paper nineteenth. Watch The Daily Show weeknights
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