15 celebrities who got political in 2018

9. Janelle Monae

For singer, actor, and overall artistic force of nature Janelle Monae, politics are inextricably linked to her work. Sure, earlier in her career, Monae may have been a little more cautious about what she said — who wouldn’t be, after all? — but it’s increasingly clear that she is not afraid to speak up.

Case in point: her speech at the 2018 Grammys in January, where she spoke to the powerful Time’s Up movement. Time’s Up was founded on January 1 of this year by a group of celebrities responding to sexual harassment allegations flying through the industry and beyond. Only a month later, in February, Time’s Up had raised over $20 million for its legal defense fund.

Monae has also spoken extensively on the importance of voting. Her grandmother, a sharecropper, was not able to vote, as were other members of her family. Her advocacy for voting has brought her close to former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama (whom Monae calls her “forever first lady”). Michelle Obama picked Monae to co-chair When We All Vote, a specifically nonpartisan organization that urged people to exercise their voting rights in the 2018 election.

As a resident of the state of Georgia, Janelle Monae has also had a lot to say about the state’s voting purge, which affected over 100,000 residents. That’s thanks to a “use it or lose it” law that denied voters who failed to vote in previous elections. Governor-elect Brian Kemp, who was then the Secretary of State for Georgia and whose office oversaw voter registration has come under fire for the purge. His tight race with Democrat Stacey Abrams made some suspicious – would those purged voters have gone for Abrams instead of Kemp?

Monae, for her part, has said that “the purging of voters here in Georgia is evil”.