The Electric Lady imagines a hypothetical future, one where humans and androids love whomever they want, where water turns to wine just in time for the party, and where every trip to the dance floor is as spine-tingling as watching the Four Horsemen ride across the sky. But Janelle Monáe, the Kansas-born, Atlanta-based, pompadoured soul singer behind The Electric Lady, is much more of a social progressive than a musical one. She's not in the business of discovering new sounds so much as breaking down the boundaries between the old ones. The record, Monáe's follow-up to 2010 debut The ArchAndroid, is futuristic in the same way the world of the Fallout video game series is futuristic, which is to say it sounds like a heavily stylized version of the past.