Janelle Monáe's latest guitar is Epiphone's most affordable Les Paul model.] - Guitar | Technique

Multi-hyphenate artist Janelle Monáe has donned a wide range of guitars over the years, including a Fender Duo-Sonic HS and even a Squier Precision Bass in her earlier performances.

Now, in a new social media post hinting at a new artistic (and musical) era, Monáe is seen wielding the cheapest Les Paul Epiphone ever released – and playing neo-soul and jazz-inflected musings.

The Epiphone Les Paul SL, which launched in 2017, retails at around $99, and with slim ceramic single-coil units and a budget-friendly price tag, echoes Gibson’s ’60s entry-level staple, the Melody Maker.

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Monáe opts for the Sunset Yellow colorway and plays through a VOX AC15 – a curious pairing considering that her musical director, Kellindo, typically uses Fender Hot Rod Deluxe amps on her records, with the Marshall Plexi ’59 being his all-time favorite.

“It’s the holy grail,” he told Guitar World in 2020. “There’s something about the hand-wired versions that seem to have everything I like from Marshall, Fender and Vox all in one. What I love about Plexis in particular is how they receive distortion pedals with rewarding feedback. You can really milk it.”

As for Monáe, her relationship with the instrument goes way back – and marked a pivotal point in her artistic journey. “It takes me back to when I first started,” she told The Guardian in a 2014 interview. “I am playing the guitar, and that is what I was doing when I decided I wanted to be an independent artist.”

“I studied at the American Musical and Dramatics Academy in New York,” she extrapolated in a Red Bull Music Academy interview. “I studied acting, and music, and musical theater. When I left school there I moved to Atlanta, and I actually lived on the campus of the historically black colleges.

“I would perform at all the dorm lounges, like literally go into the dorm lounge areas and have a guitar and just be performing, and how I would find out if my music was any good is I would measure by okay, are they stopping it?”

And, speaking of Epiphone, the brand recently teamed up with Grammy-nominated Afrofuturist guitarist, singer-songwriter, and actress Fatoumata Diawara on a new signature model, making her the first woman of color to receive an Epiphone signature guitar.