Janelle Monáe's Reading List

"In the very beginning, I used Jim Collins’ book Built to Last to figure out my core values. And then I gave those core values to everyone I worked with: Atlantic Records, CoverGirl, etc., and as I embarked on new creative projects or business partnerships, I weighed my core values and the proposed opportunity and I decided accordingly."

"I love him. That was a huge inspiration to me and my writing process."

"Monáe handed out copies of Seth Godin’s essay collection at her first meeting with the marketing team of her label, Atlantic Records."

"It brought forth the revolutionary in me. I think that Malcolm X represented a lot of authentic militarism during a time of integration and segregation in the 50s and 60s. So he just gave me a new perspective on how he felt about integration and human rights – not just African-American rights."

"One of the last books that we read as a company was Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time . We have some incredible people working with Wondaland Records, and we knew that if we were going to be releasing five artists, including myself, we’d need to figure out a way to make sure we were on schedule. We wanted to find the quickest ways to get quality results we were all happy with. It solves problem on how we write music and how we run the company. It’s the way people use it..."