Aja Monet Preps New Album, Shares “Elsewhere” Video

Aja Monet has a new album, The Color of the Rain, coming May 22 via Drink Sum Wtr. Co-produced by Monet, Justin Brown, and Meshell Ndegeocello, the blues poet’s follow-up to their 2023 debut When the Poems Do What They Do features guest vocals from Mick Jenkins, Vic Mensa, and Brandee Younger, among others. Watch Jesse Boykins III’s video for “Elsewhere”—which features Georgia Anne Muldrow, Ndegeocello, and Novena Carmel—below.

In a press release, Monet dedicates “Elsewhere” to Sly Stone. “We were in the studio working on the album and learned of his death,” she says. “Meshell told me to go home and write something not in memoriam but in homage. The next day we started working on the song and it was like he was in the room with us. Everything came together in divine timing. I had already reached out to Novena Carmel and also Georgia Anne Muldrow but they both responded the same day and joined us. The song reminds me of our love for one another and the portal of possibility.”

Ndegeocello conducts a live band on the LP that comprises Burniss Travis, Josh Johnson, Daniel Mintseris, Jermaine Paul, Ambrose Akinmusire, and Nico Segal. Monet has a show lined up at New York’s Carnegie Hall the week of the album’s release, on May 20.