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After months of Wondaland’s successful grassroots marketing of Metropolis, Combs made an offer to be Wondaland’s partner for a major release through Atlantic Records. Because major label executives already told Monáe that they “didn’t know what to do” with her, she wanted to make sure Combs accepted the Metropolis project as is. She explains, “I wanted our partner to be extremely excited. They had to be able to accept that I’m obsessed with black and white right now. They had to accept this pompadour. They just had to love what they had seen versus the other way around.”

For his part, Monáe says, Combs was ready to evolve. She continues,

“He was ready to give something to the industry that he believed in without record sales. Now it’s a different thing because record sales have declined. There’s no incentive for you to make a radio hit because radio hits are not going to help you sell your records. For him, and I’m sure a lot of the other record execs, now it’s like they can go ahead and try out new things. I wanted to do the partnership to show other independent artists like myself that it can be done. It can happen. This division doesn’t have to exist. Mainstream changes everyday. Now they’re looking to us grassroots independent artists to help so it’s been a really big blessing and I’m excited about it. Of course, it’s a lot of work but I love doing this. This is what I was doing before I met Sean and I get a chance to do it more on a larger scale, for a broader audience.”