Good evening, and welcome to The Hotel Cortez. We're pleased to have you with us, and offer you some advice well worth taking: Don't get too comfortable, and we recommend against an open door policy. The new season of Ryan Murphy's thrill and chill fest is upon us, taking place at the mysterious Hotel Cortez in Los Angeles and spanning four decades. Many things are best when they've got a bit of an edge to them, and that certainly includes fashion. While you're watching all the dirty deeds go down, take sartorial notes: It's best to pair misbehavior with a fabulous wardrobe inspired by looks from the 1930's, '70s, '90s and today. We teamed up with American Horror Story: Hotel to bring you looks that take their cue from the thrillingly dark plot twists and dips you'll experience this season. Tune in for the premier of American Horror Story: Hotel Wednesday, October 7th at 10pm on FX.

"I didn't make it stand up hard intentionally!" she guffaws on the phone, describing the tribal-pattern strap-on she wore the night before, continuing to giggle as she insists it wasn't a controversial publicity stunt at all. "It just was like, 'No! Go to sleep, dildo dick,'" prefacing this all with the innocent assertion that, "I'm [just trying to] play the role of a naked guy in an Ibo tribe, Keith Haring body paint." And while it's hard to think of anyone's grandmother (especially in what Jones believes is our current "sexually repressed" society) partaking in the sort of outlandish sex toy-slinging she seems to delight in, one must remember that Jones is hardly anyone's idea of a typical human, let alone a typical sexagenarian -- a fact that's made abundantly clear in her new memoir, I'll Never Write My Memoirs.

As recounted in Memoirs, Jones is a legendary triple-threat, one who successfully straddled the underground and mainstream. Known for her gender-bending look and willingness to challenge racial and sexual norms at the height of '70s/'80s New York, she started as a model and gradually emerged as one of new wave's wildest outsiders with chart-toppers like "Slave to the Rhythm" (1985) and "La Vie En Rose" (1977). Jones eventually took her radical look to the silver screen, where she progressed from campy horror flicks to huge commercial releases à la Conan the Destroyer (1984) and the James Bond film A View to a Kill (1985). For the past few years, though, Jones has maintained a relatively low profile, spending more time with her family as a grandmother while still playing the occasional show as she works on another album.

In her absence, a younger, boundary-averse generation discovered her and held her up as an early icon of popular modern social movements like gender-fluid fashion and intersectional feminism. Tumblr kids can't reblog her photo collaborations with former creative and romantic partner Jean-Paul Goude enough. It makes sense that she would be the face of Warhol-era New York to the younger set; if there's one thing she became known for, it was being unapologetically outspoken in her otherworldly beliefs.

Libertango, painted photo, New York, 1981. © Jean-Paul Goude

Jones is a creature of her own making, one that lives in a forward-looking world of her very own creation; one that transcends time, space and, of course, social constraints. When talking with her, it quickly becomes evident that she's left our Earth in favor of her fantasy world. She's completely unplugged from the very modern, web-bred social movements and cultural touchstones that she had a huge hand in creating -- from the popularization
of androgyny and agender style to our collective embrace of the black alternative female pop star.

Though, who can blame her? It's not like Grace Jones needs the Internet, something she says she deliberately "unlearned a long time ago" because she didn't appreciate the blurring of boundaries and the not "knowing what's real. I just find that it's a lot of shit to sort [through], and I don't have time," she demurs dismissively. "So I just don't indulge in it at all."

However, it is surprising that she's unplugged to the point that she has no idea about viral web-based movements à la Black Lives Matter or Say Her Name, something that's reaffirmed by the fact that I spend several minutes insisting they're real things, all while explaining what exactly a "hashtag" is. "I'll have to look it up!" she laughs good-naturedly. Race is something she attempts to brush aside in conversation in favor of optimistic "universal love" rhetoric, seeing as how "we're all human beings and that's it, so I don't even go there."

It may be disappointing to the young, mostly progressive fan base drawn to her outlandish, construct-defying legacy, but her stance makes sense for someone occupying the sort of inward-looking, self-imposed isolation she seems most comfortable in. In her mind, as a citizen of outer space, she transcends racial boundaries; she is a powerful being that is bigger than any classification skin color could bestow on her. Instead, it's all about universal themes like maintaining a positive mindset and speaking your own truth at all times -- things far beyond petty social constructs.

"I think [political correctness] is the worst term ever. I never liked it," she says, likening it to fascism in the sense that she believes it staunches free speech. "I'm pretty radical about this politically correct bullshit, because it's the complete opposite of freedom." Everything she says makes her seem like a removed observer of humanity in all of our self-imposed war, disaster and pain, a position she seems to intentionally attempt to enforce as a self-proclaimed "alien."
It's something that differentiates her from the carefully constructed personas of modern pop stars like Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus, who she directly addresses toward the end of her memoir for "already being like me," asking them, "Have you become someone else, without really knowing it? Do you always have to stay in character for people to like you? Do you know that you are in character?"

As such, it's not surprising she also has a problem with the man who embodies the idea of the ultimate music star turned mogul -- Kanye West.

"Kanye has been ripping off stuff from me and Jean-Paul Goude for a long time, so it was no surprise to me," she says. "I believe they would've done it anyway, and I believe Jean-Paul when he said he'd rather rip himself off than have someone else rip him off."

After all, according to Jones, Kanye is responsible for paying homage to several of their iconic ("I hate that word") images, using his then-girlfriend model and activist Amber Rose in renditions of Jones' Island Life album art and images from Goude's Jungle Fever book for Complex magazine in 2009.

"It's so like, 'I can't beat him, [so I guess I'll try to] understand him,'" she says, slightly exasperated. "But he did it with somebody else and really badly."  Though when we circle back to the topic of racism and the backlash our Kim Kardashian cover caused (which Goude also shot and which referenced a 1976 image of African American model Carolina Beaumont shooting champagne over her head), Jones scoffs -- caught off-guard by the fact that people are still interpreting Goude's work that way. Though Jones wasn't the inspiration for Goude's Kardashian cover, much of the discussion surrounding that image and its perceived exploitation of the black female form was focused on Goude's photos of Jones over the years -- including a picture of her in a cage on the cover of Jungle Fever.

"The work [Jean-Paul and I] did together, people were calling it racist," she says. "It wasn't racist at all. It was him basically putting me on a pedestal, really," explaining that no matter what the intention, there would be someone eager to point fingers and deem something "problematic" -- even if she can only see the positive intent, staunchly defending his work.

"There's a lot of humor in that picture in that original, (with) the champagne popping off," she says, audibly shrugging it all off once more as she allows her rich laugh to engulf the tail end of our conversation. "As an artist, you know, he probably just wanted to have an ass like that."

After last week's cameo-filled Empire season premiere, it was hard to think of a way that the second episode could come close for sheer insanity (I mean, Don Lemon? Al Sharpton?). Instead, this episode focuses primarily on snappy turns of phrase, insults, and introducing totally insane premises to the world that surrounds the Lyon family. Let's run through a few of the best bits.

5. "Snitch Bitch"

That's right, the song Lucious records in prison and gets out to the world to be the hottest thing on the radio -- featuring Petey Pablo and a dude who looks like Jason Sudeikis -- is the fifth craziest thing that happened on the show last night.

4. Ludacris the Prison Guard

Terence Howard continues getting all the good guest stars, as Ludacris replaces Chris Rock as "famous dude named Chris who antagonizes Lucious in prison." This time, Ludacris plays a prison guard who does his best to stop Lucious from dropping fire new Empire tracks from prison, because he's a dick or something. If you're going to get someone to play an annoying, kinda cliche prison guard, you might as well get the best (or, at least, the most noteworthy, since Ludacris is not a very good actor).

3. Thurston the Thirsty Lawyer

Played by The Wire's Andre Royo, Lucious' new lawyer looks like a great addition to the Empire supporting cast. He's got hustle, appeals to certain parts of Lucious' nature, and has that great, Andre Royo charm. Also, his name is Thurston, a.k.a. Thirsty, a.k.a. Thirsty the Lawyer, because God loves us.

2. "Dynasty... that's a dope name."

When Cookie tries to find a name for the new label she's starting with Hakeem (and Andre, for a hot second), she -- naturally -- uses the name of the show that Empire is not-so-subtly based on/influenced by. It's exactly the kind of winking boldness/insanity that often makes the show so much fun. But that's not even the craziest, most groan-slash-laugh-slash-clap moment from last night's episode, because...

1. Spilling the Tea

GUYS. GUYS. There's literally a talk show in the world of Empire called Spilling the Tea, because why wouldn't you do that? The only thing that stops this from being perfect is the fact that the Muppets belong to ABC, so there's no way Kermit could make his rightful cameo.

What happened to you, Avril Lavigne? 

Once the postergirl for mall-rat rebels everywhere, Avril was a verifiable superstar in the early-aughts with seminal sing-a-longs à la "Sk8r Boi" and "Complicated" -- however her star has fallen in recent years after a slew of terrible, kawaii-appropriation stunts, a foray into the world of sugar-rush EDM and, uh, Chad Kroger.

Well, according to a Noisey deep dive, some Avril fans in Brazil (specifically the "Avril Is Dead" Blogspot) have apparently come up with an explanation, because the real Avril Lavigne died immediately after the release of her debut album and was replaced by a doppelganger named Melissa Vandella.