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How Dev Hynes, English Misfit, Became Blood Orange, R.&.B. Miracle Worker How Dev Hynes, English Misfit, Became Blood Orange, R.&B. Miracle Worker
(about 7 hours later)
On a sticky late-spring Saturday in New York, Devonté Hynes was on the set of the video for the song “Jewelry,” one of his newest solo recordings under the name Blood Orange — a typically restless, jazzy slow jam that starts as a spoken-word poem and ends as a kind of languid rap. The “set,” in this case, meant the sidewalk on a slip of street running west to east between Sixth Avenue and Washington Square Park. As with most of the videos the 32-year-old Hynes has created since he began making music professionally, back in his late teens, he was directing this one himself.On a sticky late-spring Saturday in New York, Devonté Hynes was on the set of the video for the song “Jewelry,” one of his newest solo recordings under the name Blood Orange — a typically restless, jazzy slow jam that starts as a spoken-word poem and ends as a kind of languid rap. The “set,” in this case, meant the sidewalk on a slip of street running west to east between Sixth Avenue and Washington Square Park. As with most of the videos the 32-year-old Hynes has created since he began making music professionally, back in his late teens, he was directing this one himself.
Earlier, Hynes and a cast of shirtless, mostly tattooed friends had performed the video’s elegantly homoerotic dance scenes. Then they rolled their gear through the park, past a crowd protesting New York’s criminalization of sex work, to this side street, where they shot a scene featuring Janet Mock, the writer, director and activist. Mock doesn’t just appear on Blood Orange’s fourth and latest album, “Negro Swan”; she serves, via a narration woven throughout the record, as a kind of proxy for Hynes’s authorial voice. “I’ve gotten so many texts from people,” she says of the response since Hynes started sending his new album around. “My friend Ilana Glazer is like, ‘I heard you on “Negro Swan,” and oh, my God, it’s amazing!’ ”Earlier, Hynes and a cast of shirtless, mostly tattooed friends had performed the video’s elegantly homoerotic dance scenes. Then they rolled their gear through the park, past a crowd protesting New York’s criminalization of sex work, to this side street, where they shot a scene featuring Janet Mock, the writer, director and activist. Mock doesn’t just appear on Blood Orange’s fourth and latest album, “Negro Swan”; she serves, via a narration woven throughout the record, as a kind of proxy for Hynes’s authorial voice. “I’ve gotten so many texts from people,” she says of the response since Hynes started sending his new album around. “My friend Ilana Glazer is like, ‘I heard you on “Negro Swan,” and oh, my God, it’s amazing!’ ”
The list of stars Hynes has produced and written songs with — Solange Knowles, Kylie Minogue, Carly Rae Jepsen, Mariah Carey — might lead you to expect a maker of slick and splashy hits, churning out bangers destined for a mall near you. But Hynes’s work, even with the shiniest of stars, is something else entirely: It has a tender, gauzy feel, a new-wave R.&B. sensibility more suited for bedrooms than big stages. It’s pensive; there is a streak of sorrow in almost everything he writes. It’s also, in countless ways, the aural incarnation of a socially engaged, emotionally intelligent, multicultural, gender-fluid zeitgeist that’s now reaching the shores of mainstream pop.The list of stars Hynes has produced and written songs with — Solange Knowles, Kylie Minogue, Carly Rae Jepsen, Mariah Carey — might lead you to expect a maker of slick and splashy hits, churning out bangers destined for a mall near you. But Hynes’s work, even with the shiniest of stars, is something else entirely: It has a tender, gauzy feel, a new-wave R.&B. sensibility more suited for bedrooms than big stages. It’s pensive; there is a streak of sorrow in almost everything he writes. It’s also, in countless ways, the aural incarnation of a socially engaged, emotionally intelligent, multicultural, gender-fluid zeitgeist that’s now reaching the shores of mainstream pop.
“Basically, releasing music that sounds like demos” — that’s how the producer and songwriter Fred Macpherson summarizes his longtime friend’s signature sound. “The way Dev makes music, and even his attitudes toward production, he’s quite anti-intellectual. It’s never the best studio, it’s never the best microphone. But if you have a microphone, a computer, a room, an instrument, he will put something down, and it can be very good.” That approach, he says, “has always made sense in the indie world. Now that’s what pop music sounds like.”“Basically, releasing music that sounds like demos” — that’s how the producer and songwriter Fred Macpherson summarizes his longtime friend’s signature sound. “The way Dev makes music, and even his attitudes toward production, he’s quite anti-intellectual. It’s never the best studio, it’s never the best microphone. But if you have a microphone, a computer, a room, an instrument, he will put something down, and it can be very good.” That approach, he says, “has always made sense in the indie world. Now that’s what pop music sounds like.”
With Mock’s scenes finished, there was only one thing left to shoot. Wearing cargo khakis, a rainbow belt whose buckle read “Iggy” and one of his signature head coverings — sometimes it’s a leather cap, today it’s a bucket hat — Hynes stepped into the street and peered west into the rapidly setting sun. No cops. “Maybe they can just back up from there,” he said, gesturing to a tricked-out white lowrider idling at the end of the one-way street. The car was causing a scene: Tourists walking up from SoHo, laden with shopping bags, gawked and took pictures of the small black kid hanging out the passenger’s window wearing giant white angel’s wings, a matching do-rag and a serenely menacing gaze. He’s known on Instagram as Kai the Black Angel, and a still shot of him staring at the camera as the car rolls past this leafy backdrop — a Magritte come to life — will be the cover of “Negro Swan.”With Mock’s scenes finished, there was only one thing left to shoot. Wearing cargo khakis, a rainbow belt whose buckle read “Iggy” and one of his signature head coverings — sometimes it’s a leather cap, today it’s a bucket hat — Hynes stepped into the street and peered west into the rapidly setting sun. No cops. “Maybe they can just back up from there,” he said, gesturing to a tricked-out white lowrider idling at the end of the one-way street. The car was causing a scene: Tourists walking up from SoHo, laden with shopping bags, gawked and took pictures of the small black kid hanging out the passenger’s window wearing giant white angel’s wings, a matching do-rag and a serenely menacing gaze. He’s known on Instagram as Kai the Black Angel, and a still shot of him staring at the camera as the car rolls past this leafy backdrop — a Magritte come to life — will be the cover of “Negro Swan.”
It’s an ecstatic sight, beautiful and somehow unsettling, which is pretty much how Hynes says he feels about being alive. “He’s someone who I often use as a dinner-party anecdote of successful people who aren’t happy,” Macpherson says. “Like, he is actually that rain-swept guy walking home at the end of the night, all alone.” Hynes is, fundamentally, melancholic. He avoids being self-indulgent about it — he doesn’t find his own despair very interesting — but there’s a sense of dislocation and loss shaping his art and his life. Later, he talked at length about his ongoing battle with anxiety, summarizing his latest album’s theme as “black depression.” He’s becoming “darker and sadder” as he ages, he said, and wanted to express themes of isolation, loneliness and displacement, especially as they pertained to race; he wanted to get at what he calls “the different weight of life” for marginalized people, “how it’s tackled and how you live with it.” And that, he said, is why the album moves through so many genres: gospel contributions from the singer Ian Isiah, a verse from the Harlem rapper ASAP Rocky, constant returns to jazz piano and sax. The effect is dizzying and comforting at once, an analgesic for the very existential condition it describes.It’s an ecstatic sight, beautiful and somehow unsettling, which is pretty much how Hynes says he feels about being alive. “He’s someone who I often use as a dinner-party anecdote of successful people who aren’t happy,” Macpherson says. “Like, he is actually that rain-swept guy walking home at the end of the night, all alone.” Hynes is, fundamentally, melancholic. He avoids being self-indulgent about it — he doesn’t find his own despair very interesting — but there’s a sense of dislocation and loss shaping his art and his life. Later, he talked at length about his ongoing battle with anxiety, summarizing his latest album’s theme as “black depression.” He’s becoming “darker and sadder” as he ages, he said, and wanted to express themes of isolation, loneliness and displacement, especially as they pertained to race; he wanted to get at what he calls “the different weight of life” for marginalized people, “how it’s tackled and how you live with it.” And that, he said, is why the album moves through so many genres: gospel contributions from the singer Ian Isiah, a verse from the Harlem rapper ASAP Rocky, constant returns to jazz piano and sax. The effect is dizzying and comforting at once, an analgesic for the very existential condition it describes.
Can music like that become as big as some of Hynes’s admirers hope? Prince and David Bowie are often held up as models for what Hynes could achieve, based on his virtuosity, his charisma, his ambiguous but potent sexuality. “There’s always some level of sexiness to every tune he’s making,” says Chris Taylor of the band Grizzly Bear, whose label, Terrible Records, released some of Blood Orange’s earliest music. “And he does it well. He’s a sexy dude.” Danny Fields — the former manager and journalist, and a legendary punk scene maker — finds Hynes equally magnetic. “He’s really an advanced human example,” Fields says. “Dev is one of those people that in their very existence are a testament to evolution.”Can music like that become as big as some of Hynes’s admirers hope? Prince and David Bowie are often held up as models for what Hynes could achieve, based on his virtuosity, his charisma, his ambiguous but potent sexuality. “There’s always some level of sexiness to every tune he’s making,” says Chris Taylor of the band Grizzly Bear, whose label, Terrible Records, released some of Blood Orange’s earliest music. “And he does it well. He’s a sexy dude.” Danny Fields — the former manager and journalist, and a legendary punk scene maker — finds Hynes equally magnetic. “He’s really an advanced human example,” Fields says. “Dev is one of those people that in their very existence are a testament to evolution.”
Yet Hynes actually says he feels “blessed” and “happy” that he’s never found “outright success” — “because I’m sure it would affect me somehow.” As the video shoot was ending, two young girls with shopping bags, noticing Hynes’s “Iggy” belt, asked if he was setting up a shoot for the rapper Iggy Azalea, a mainstream pop star if there ever was one. “Yeah, but don’t spread it around,” Hynes said under his breath. “We’re just the crew.” And as the girls made their way down the street, giggling, Hynes took off down the sidewalk on Kai’s skateboard, smiling.Yet Hynes actually says he feels “blessed” and “happy” that he’s never found “outright success” — “because I’m sure it would affect me somehow.” As the video shoot was ending, two young girls with shopping bags, noticing Hynes’s “Iggy” belt, asked if he was setting up a shoot for the rapper Iggy Azalea, a mainstream pop star if there ever was one. “Yeah, but don’t spread it around,” Hynes said under his breath. “We’re just the crew.” And as the girls made their way down the street, giggling, Hynes took off down the sidewalk on Kai’s skateboard, smiling.
Over several months, as I followed Hynes to London and Chicago and back again, I met or heard about an array of arresting figures Hynes has drawn into his orbit — from ASAP Rocky to the minimalist composer Philip Glass to the Strokes’s frontman, Julian Casablancas. When I asked Hynes how he had met them, the most common answer was a shrug and two words: “New York.”Over several months, as I followed Hynes to London and Chicago and back again, I met or heard about an array of arresting figures Hynes has drawn into his orbit — from ASAP Rocky to the minimalist composer Philip Glass to the Strokes’s frontman, Julian Casablancas. When I asked Hynes how he had met them, the most common answer was a shrug and two words: “New York.”
Hynes was born in Britain and grew up in Essex, just outside London, but he can’t bring himself to identify fully as English. Neither does he feel American. “More than anything else I feel like a New Yorker,” he says — and it is a relief for us both to finally find something Hynes is willing to declare he resolutely “is,” because his identity, both creatively and personally, feels like a moving target. He’s not really a photographer, but he takes photos every day. He’s not really a dancer, but he began studying tap and ballet as a teenager and still integrates movement into his work. He doesn’t identify as being of any particular sexual orientation; he has publicly dated women, but also radiates “a queerness,” as Mock puts it. He long resisted calling himself a producer, though he has produced for and written with some of the most interesting artists of the last decade, including Solange, Florence Welch, FKA Twigs and Haim.Hynes was born in Britain and grew up in Essex, just outside London, but he can’t bring himself to identify fully as English. Neither does he feel American. “More than anything else I feel like a New Yorker,” he says — and it is a relief for us both to finally find something Hynes is willing to declare he resolutely “is,” because his identity, both creatively and personally, feels like a moving target. He’s not really a photographer, but he takes photos every day. He’s not really a dancer, but he began studying tap and ballet as a teenager and still integrates movement into his work. He doesn’t identify as being of any particular sexual orientation; he has publicly dated women, but also radiates “a queerness,” as Mock puts it. He long resisted calling himself a producer, though he has produced for and written with some of the most interesting artists of the last decade, including Solange, Florence Welch, FKA Twigs and Haim.
He has no musical signature, yet a collection of his best tracks with other artists would sound less like a scattershot mixtape and more like a lost Blood Orange album. “When he’s writing for someone else, it could just as well be a Blood Orange song,” Taylor says of the work he has followed. “That artist gets to pretend to be Dev for a second. And I feel like that’s what people want — they want some of Dev’s coolness.” Until recently, Hynes hardly even considered himself a musician, despite a career in which he has released one album with a bratty dance-punk band called Test Icicles (at first it was simply called Balls), two more as a folk-pop solo project called Lightspeed Champion and then four, including “Negro Swan,” as Blood Orange. The last Blood Orange record, 2016’s “Freetown Sound,” was also about what Hynes “is,” or might be — an exploration of his family roots in Sierra Leone and Guyana. It was dedicated, as Hynes wrote on Instagram, to anyone who had ever felt not black enough, too black, too queer, not queer the right way.He has no musical signature, yet a collection of his best tracks with other artists would sound less like a scattershot mixtape and more like a lost Blood Orange album. “When he’s writing for someone else, it could just as well be a Blood Orange song,” Taylor says of the work he has followed. “That artist gets to pretend to be Dev for a second. And I feel like that’s what people want — they want some of Dev’s coolness.” Until recently, Hynes hardly even considered himself a musician, despite a career in which he has released one album with a bratty dance-punk band called Test Icicles (at first it was simply called Balls), two more as a folk-pop solo project called Lightspeed Champion and then four, including “Negro Swan,” as Blood Orange. The last Blood Orange record, 2016’s “Freetown Sound,” was also about what Hynes “is,” or might be — an exploration of his family roots in Sierra Leone and Guyana. It was dedicated, as Hynes wrote on Instagram, to anyone who had ever felt not black enough, too black, too queer, not queer the right way.
You can understand why descriptors like “prodigy” are leveled at Hynes. This year Glass selected him as one of four pianists to join the composer in performing his “20 Études” at the Kennedy Center. In another corner of the musical firmament, ASAP Rocky calls Hynes “just so musically talented. His versatility is crazy.” But Hynes’s central gift, the thing that makes him such a signal creative persona for his generation, is his ability to assert his identity as an absence of one, to express his creative gifts while committing fully to none of them. Ten or 15 years ago, a musician who inhabited and then discarded identities as quickly as Hynes has would have seemed insecure and unformed, an immature kid still in search of a voice. But Hynes’s creative coming of age coincided with a profound reframing of what it means to be an artist. With all the usual categories and gatekeepers weakened by the internet, today’s ideal “brand” is one that’s both unmistakably unique and utterly adaptable — a kind of portable self that can be packed up and carried from recording studio to live show to writing session, and then on to the screen, the theater, the page, the walls of a gallery. (Consider the way Donald Glover can work as an actor, rapper, filmmaker, writer or dancer, without exclusively identifying as any of them.)You can understand why descriptors like “prodigy” are leveled at Hynes. This year Glass selected him as one of four pianists to join the composer in performing his “20 Études” at the Kennedy Center. In another corner of the musical firmament, ASAP Rocky calls Hynes “just so musically talented. His versatility is crazy.” But Hynes’s central gift, the thing that makes him such a signal creative persona for his generation, is his ability to assert his identity as an absence of one, to express his creative gifts while committing fully to none of them. Ten or 15 years ago, a musician who inhabited and then discarded identities as quickly as Hynes has would have seemed insecure and unformed, an immature kid still in search of a voice. But Hynes’s creative coming of age coincided with a profound reframing of what it means to be an artist. With all the usual categories and gatekeepers weakened by the internet, today’s ideal “brand” is one that’s both unmistakably unique and utterly adaptable — a kind of portable self that can be packed up and carried from recording studio to live show to writing session, and then on to the screen, the theater, the page, the walls of a gallery. (Consider the way Donald Glover can work as an actor, rapper, filmmaker, writer or dancer, without exclusively identifying as any of them.)
Hynes is the archetype of this new model: a nerd polymath who has scored films, played TV appearances with a band dressed as “Star Wars” characters, written a miniature ballet, drawn his own comic-book series and made seven albums under three different names in multiple cities. In this era, to be restless, to be anxious, to be uncertain — and to be able to express those qualities in ways that are all unmistakably you — is to be, as Mock says on the new album, “doing the most.”Hynes is the archetype of this new model: a nerd polymath who has scored films, played TV appearances with a band dressed as “Star Wars” characters, written a miniature ballet, drawn his own comic-book series and made seven albums under three different names in multiple cities. In this era, to be restless, to be anxious, to be uncertain — and to be able to express those qualities in ways that are all unmistakably you — is to be, as Mock says on the new album, “doing the most.”
Hynes is pathological about having things feel organic. He doesn’t do traditional studio sessions. Anything that begins with managers talking to managers goes nowhere. It has to feel serendipitous, as if a chance run-in on the street led to an invitation to come upstairs for tea, which led to instruments being picked up, which eventually led to the song you’re hearing. So when he sat down to work with a new artist named Molly McCormick, it was in the cheery kitchen of a flat in East London, which his friend Macpherson had temporarily transformed into a studio. Hynes was in town shooting another video, this time for a gentle, acoustic-guitar-driven track called “Charcoal Baby.” It featured a split screen of a multigenerational black family attending a celebration — on one side in traditional African dress, on the other in Western clothes. Hynes, per usual, was a presence in the video but not its focus; he spent most of the day casually strumming a guitar in the background. “That was the first time I played in, like, a month,” he said.Hynes is pathological about having things feel organic. He doesn’t do traditional studio sessions. Anything that begins with managers talking to managers goes nowhere. It has to feel serendipitous, as if a chance run-in on the street led to an invitation to come upstairs for tea, which led to instruments being picked up, which eventually led to the song you’re hearing. So when he sat down to work with a new artist named Molly McCormick, it was in the cheery kitchen of a flat in East London, which his friend Macpherson had temporarily transformed into a studio. Hynes was in town shooting another video, this time for a gentle, acoustic-guitar-driven track called “Charcoal Baby.” It featured a split screen of a multigenerational black family attending a celebration — on one side in traditional African dress, on the other in Western clothes. Hynes, per usual, was a presence in the video but not its focus; he spent most of the day casually strumming a guitar in the background. “That was the first time I played in, like, a month,” he said.
Whatever Hynes is working on creatively, there is always a part of him that feels he should be working on something else, and whenever he moves to work on something else, there’s yet another part of him that feels he should really be out on a field or a court somewhere. “I play sports more than I play music,” he confessed to me in the flat. “I play football and tennis and basketball way more than I play an instrument.” He’s in a weekly pickup basketball game and plays soccer with Casablancas when they’re both in New York. He plays in Ping-Pong tournaments. Approximately 50 percent of our time together would be spent discussing soccer. “If you ever want to see just tons of men crying,” he says, “watch the World Cup.”Whatever Hynes is working on creatively, there is always a part of him that feels he should be working on something else, and whenever he moves to work on something else, there’s yet another part of him that feels he should really be out on a field or a court somewhere. “I play sports more than I play music,” he confessed to me in the flat. “I play football and tennis and basketball way more than I play an instrument.” He’s in a weekly pickup basketball game and plays soccer with Casablancas when they’re both in New York. He plays in Ping-Pong tournaments. Approximately 50 percent of our time together would be spent discussing soccer. “If you ever want to see just tons of men crying,” he says, “watch the World Cup.”
As a kid growing up in Essex, Hynes was a very good footballer. “That’s what I was meant to do,” he says. “This” — meaning making music — “is not the thing that was meant to go down.” He was scouted by Charlton Athletic, whose players often go on to the Premier League powerhouse Tottenham Hotspur, but quit when he was 17 and (briefly) studied English literature in East London. As a kid, though, Hynes was a fan of Manchester United, an enthusiasm that — in Britain’s byzantine system of soccer loyalties — makes no geographic sense; he should have been a West Ham United fan, like his father and most of the other people he grew up around. “But I hated them, I just couldn’t stand them,” he says. “I mean, I hated Essex. There was nothing for me there.”As a kid growing up in Essex, Hynes was a very good footballer. “That’s what I was meant to do,” he says. “This” — meaning making music — “is not the thing that was meant to go down.” He was scouted by Charlton Athletic, whose players often go on to the Premier League powerhouse Tottenham Hotspur, but quit when he was 17 and (briefly) studied English literature in East London. As a kid, though, Hynes was a fan of Manchester United, an enthusiasm that — in Britain’s byzantine system of soccer loyalties — makes no geographic sense; he should have been a West Ham United fan, like his father and most of the other people he grew up around. “But I hated them, I just couldn’t stand them,” he says. “I mean, I hated Essex. There was nothing for me there.”
You hear a lot about how nice and polite and conscientious and decorous Hynes is, and between that and the ballet dancing and the classical-piano playing, it’s easy to misunderstand him as someone who grew up insulated by privilege. (“A gentleman,” ASAP Rocky says. “He’s proper. He’s got that English accent.”) “I think people forget that I’m from Essex and had to fight, mentally and physically to, like, keep living,” Hynes says. “Being beaten up and going to hospital multiple times. Being spat on on the bus every day. I hated every living moment.” It interests him that not everyone grew up this way: “I am always surprised,” he muses, “by the amount of people that have never been punched in the face.”You hear a lot about how nice and polite and conscientious and decorous Hynes is, and between that and the ballet dancing and the classical-piano playing, it’s easy to misunderstand him as someone who grew up insulated by privilege. (“A gentleman,” ASAP Rocky says. “He’s proper. He’s got that English accent.”) “I think people forget that I’m from Essex and had to fight, mentally and physically to, like, keep living,” Hynes says. “Being beaten up and going to hospital multiple times. Being spat on on the bus every day. I hated every living moment.” It interests him that not everyone grew up this way: “I am always surprised,” he muses, “by the amount of people that have never been punched in the face.”
Hynes was the youngest of three kids, but with siblings five and seven years older than him, he felt more like an only child. “I was alone a lot in my bedroom listening to tapes and playing cello,” he says — taping songs off the radio (by Ash, by Eminem, by DMX), soaking up his mom’s British soul and his siblings’ Nirvana and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and “Ministry of Sound dance stuff,” alternating it all with his favorite Bach pieces. His mother, originally from Guyana, worked as a health care consultant, counseling teenage mothers, and his father, from Sierra Leone, was a manager at the department store Marks & Spencer. “I didn’t have an unloving childhood,” he says. “They were definitely there. But it wasn’t like, ‘How are you today?’ I never spoke to them.” He pauses, thinking. “Honestly, it might just be a cultural thing.” When I ask how much his parents talked about the countries they’d come from, Hynes answers that “they kind of didn’t. There’s a ‘Master of None’ episode about this, and it’s so accurate for my generation — it’s like we’re not asking questions and they’re not talking about it.”Hynes was the youngest of three kids, but with siblings five and seven years older than him, he felt more like an only child. “I was alone a lot in my bedroom listening to tapes and playing cello,” he says — taping songs off the radio (by Ash, by Eminem, by DMX), soaking up his mom’s British soul and his siblings’ Nirvana and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and “Ministry of Sound dance stuff,” alternating it all with his favorite Bach pieces. His mother, originally from Guyana, worked as a health care consultant, counseling teenage mothers, and his father, from Sierra Leone, was a manager at the department store Marks & Spencer. “I didn’t have an unloving childhood,” he says. “They were definitely there. But it wasn’t like, ‘How are you today?’ I never spoke to them.” He pauses, thinking. “Honestly, it might just be a cultural thing.” When I ask how much his parents talked about the countries they’d come from, Hynes answers that “they kind of didn’t. There’s a ‘Master of None’ episode about this, and it’s so accurate for my generation — it’s like we’re not asking questions and they’re not talking about it.”
When a teenage Hynes arrived in London, the city was steeped in a wave of guitar bands like the Libertines and Franz Ferdinand, and an exaggerated Englishness was in style — “the Kinks and tea parties and the smell of rain on cut grass and old bottles of gin,” as Macpherson remembers it. But a zanier sound was also emerging. “It was carnage,” Macpherson says of the first time he saw Hynes and his Test Icicles bandmates on stage. They were noisy and deliberately dysfunctional and rude, fighting with the iPod playing their backing tracks and all freestyling into their mics simultaneously. Worse, “they were all speaking in American accents,” Macpherson says. “Dev spoke in an American accent since before he moved to America, then he got to New York and switched it.”When a teenage Hynes arrived in London, the city was steeped in a wave of guitar bands like the Libertines and Franz Ferdinand, and an exaggerated Englishness was in style — “the Kinks and tea parties and the smell of rain on cut grass and old bottles of gin,” as Macpherson remembers it. But a zanier sound was also emerging. “It was carnage,” Macpherson says of the first time he saw Hynes and his Test Icicles bandmates on stage. They were noisy and deliberately dysfunctional and rude, fighting with the iPod playing their backing tracks and all freestyling into their mics simultaneously. Worse, “they were all speaking in American accents,” Macpherson says. “Dev spoke in an American accent since before he moved to America, then he got to New York and switched it.”
There were some detours in between. Hynes moved to London around 2003, and by 2005 he was in France, recording Test Icicles’ one and only record. By 2006 he had turned his attention to a series of folky, confessional demos under a new alias, Lightspeed Champion, named after a comic he drew as a child. Those recordings attracted the attention of the American producer and songwriter Mike Mogis, best known for helping found the rootsy record label Saddle Creek and working with the band Bright Eyes. Mogis is based in Omaha. Hynes decamped there to record.There were some detours in between. Hynes moved to London around 2003, and by 2005 he was in France, recording Test Icicles’ one and only record. By 2006 he had turned his attention to a series of folky, confessional demos under a new alias, Lightspeed Champion, named after a comic he drew as a child. Those recordings attracted the attention of the American producer and songwriter Mike Mogis, best known for helping found the rootsy record label Saddle Creek and working with the band Bright Eyes. Mogis is based in Omaha. Hynes decamped there to record.
Hynes may have seemed like an unlikely match for Nebraska and the Saddle Creek scene, but his palate was broad and only becoming broader. On YouTube you can still find video featuring Hynes and a friend he met in London — Florence Welch, of Florence and the Machine — covering pop-punk songs by Green Day and Blink-182. (“He has spent most of his life following Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco with a true love,” Macpherson says. “Not a kind of ‘Ha ha, let’s go watch Blink-182 at the music festival and sing songs from when we were at school’ kind of way.”) Mogis remembers Hynes — back in an era when the singer dressed in cardigans and a coonskin cap — asking if there were any cool spots in Omaha to freestyle rap. “I was like, ‘What did you just say?’ ” Mogis recalls, laughing. “I had no idea he was into that.”Hynes may have seemed like an unlikely match for Nebraska and the Saddle Creek scene, but his palate was broad and only becoming broader. On YouTube you can still find video featuring Hynes and a friend he met in London — Florence Welch, of Florence and the Machine — covering pop-punk songs by Green Day and Blink-182. (“He has spent most of his life following Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco with a true love,” Macpherson says. “Not a kind of ‘Ha ha, let’s go watch Blink-182 at the music festival and sing songs from when we were at school’ kind of way.”) Mogis remembers Hynes — back in an era when the singer dressed in cardigans and a coonskin cap — asking if there were any cool spots in Omaha to freestyle rap. “I was like, ‘What did you just say?’ ” Mogis recalls, laughing. “I had no idea he was into that.”
The end result of their collaboration, Lightspeed Champion’s debut, “Falling Off the Lavender Bridge,” is wonderfully strange — “like if Queen were a folk band,” Mogis says. Hynes had escaped the violent stagnancy of Essex for London, where he landed right in the middle of a dance-punk scene on the rise, only to abandon it in favor of an alt-folk scene in which he was still an outlier. Then he left that one too, and eventually ended up in New York. A second Lightspeed record came out in 2010, around the time Hynes was crashing on a friend’s couch in Long Island City. By 2011, he had written Blood Orange’s debut, “Coastal Grooves,” though his label, Domino, initially treated the tracks as a side project; their lush R.&B. felt miles away from Hynes’ earlier work. “But then I was like, ‘How can I be a side project for myself?’ ” Hynes recalls.The end result of their collaboration, Lightspeed Champion’s debut, “Falling Off the Lavender Bridge,” is wonderfully strange — “like if Queen were a folk band,” Mogis says. Hynes had escaped the violent stagnancy of Essex for London, where he landed right in the middle of a dance-punk scene on the rise, only to abandon it in favor of an alt-folk scene in which he was still an outlier. Then he left that one too, and eventually ended up in New York. A second Lightspeed record came out in 2010, around the time Hynes was crashing on a friend’s couch in Long Island City. By 2011, he had written Blood Orange’s debut, “Coastal Grooves,” though his label, Domino, initially treated the tracks as a side project; their lush R.&B. felt miles away from Hynes’ earlier work. “But then I was like, ‘How can I be a side project for myself?’ ” Hynes recalls.
“He never fit exactly into one place,” Macpherson says. “If he ever gets too much into one, it’s almost like he then has to escape that as well, or reject that. Which I guess is why New York is the perfect place to him: It’s the city of displaced people.”“He never fit exactly into one place,” Macpherson says. “If he ever gets too much into one, it’s almost like he then has to escape that as well, or reject that. Which I guess is why New York is the perfect place to him: It’s the city of displaced people.”
When critics make their lists of this decade’s best tracks, one early fruit of the Blood Orange era will surely be omnipresent: “Everything Is Embarrassing,” a song co-written and performed by the pouty pop misfit Sky Ferreira. It’s a deceptively low-key tune, a plaintive pop song that manages to synthesize an entire era into just over four minutes: the sound of 20-somethings walking home at dawn to water near-dead houseplants in grimy Williamsburg apartments. The first line Ferreira sings, “Everything and nothing always haunts me,” feels like Hynes’s psyche in a nutshell.When critics make their lists of this decade’s best tracks, one early fruit of the Blood Orange era will surely be omnipresent: “Everything Is Embarrassing,” a song co-written and performed by the pouty pop misfit Sky Ferreira. It’s a deceptively low-key tune, a plaintive pop song that manages to synthesize an entire era into just over four minutes: the sound of 20-somethings walking home at dawn to water near-dead houseplants in grimy Williamsburg apartments. The first line Ferreira sings, “Everything and nothing always haunts me,” feels like Hynes’s psyche in a nutshell.
A more lasting introduction to Hynes’s sound — a kind of haunted, rainy-day gloss on ’80s R.&B. — came from his collaboration with Solange Knowles. The pair first met the year before “Coastal Grooves” came out, and the EP they made together, 2012’s “True,” was then known mostly as a breakthrough by Beyoncé’s kid sister. But it has since become, to a select group, one of the most cherished bits of music of the past decade. “That’s how I first heard of him,” Mock says. “From my hair stylist, who is obsessed.” Mock was talking about how much she loved the record, “and he was like: ‘No! You know who made that, right? The real genius behind that is Dev!’ ”A more lasting introduction to Hynes’s sound — a kind of haunted, rainy-day gloss on ’80s R.&B. — came from his collaboration with Solange Knowles. The pair first met the year before “Coastal Grooves” came out, and the EP they made together, 2012’s “True,” was then known mostly as a breakthrough by Beyoncé’s kid sister. But it has since become, to a select group, one of the most cherished bits of music of the past decade. “That’s how I first heard of him,” Mock says. “From my hair stylist, who is obsessed.” Mock was talking about how much she loved the record, “and he was like: ‘No! You know who made that, right? The real genius behind that is Dev!’ ”
Hynes and Knowles met, not inconsequentially, through the rapper Theophilus London — part of a just-emerging group of young black musicians, like Frank Ocean and Janelle Monáe, whose music felt rooted in genres like R.&B. and hip-hop but also informed by the moods of new-wave and indie music. The crumbling of the contrived boundaries among these sounds and audiences — between “black” and “white” influences — was a welcome consequence of the internet. It was, after all, exactly this kind of forced allegiance to identity-by-hashtag that had kept Hynes on the run, both literally and metaphorically, since he was being beaten up in Essex by (mostly black) kids who saw him coloring outside the sociological lines.Hynes and Knowles met, not inconsequentially, through the rapper Theophilus London — part of a just-emerging group of young black musicians, like Frank Ocean and Janelle Monáe, whose music felt rooted in genres like R.&B. and hip-hop but also informed by the moods of new-wave and indie music. The crumbling of the contrived boundaries among these sounds and audiences — between “black” and “white” influences — was a welcome consequence of the internet. It was, after all, exactly this kind of forced allegiance to identity-by-hashtag that had kept Hynes on the run, both literally and metaphorically, since he was being beaten up in Essex by (mostly black) kids who saw him coloring outside the sociological lines.
This hasn’t entirely stopped: When Hynes was on the cover of Out magazine, in 2014, there was backlash from some who felt he wasn’t gay enough to earn the honor. (He has spoken openly in the past about trying sex with men and concluding that it wasn’t for him, and he told the sex columnist Karley Sciortino that perhaps what he’s attracted to is “the femininity of a woman, combined with the strong features and beauty of a man.”) There’s pressure to represent for a collective blackness, too. In a moment he’s not proud of, Hynes says, he found himself in a social-media battle over whether it was racially insensitive to set the video for the song “Augustine” at Miss Lily’s Bake Shop & Melvin’s Juice Box, a popular Jamaican establishment in downtown Manhattan. “I guess the owner of Miss Lily’s is white and this person was of color,” Hynes says, referring to one online sparring partner. He shakes his head. “I feel that — the energy of the critique of people I feel I’m somewhat aligned with pushing me away.”This hasn’t entirely stopped: When Hynes was on the cover of Out magazine, in 2014, there was backlash from some who felt he wasn’t gay enough to earn the honor. (He has spoken openly in the past about trying sex with men and concluding that it wasn’t for him, and he told the sex columnist Karley Sciortino that perhaps what he’s attracted to is “the femininity of a woman, combined with the strong features and beauty of a man.”) There’s pressure to represent for a collective blackness, too. In a moment he’s not proud of, Hynes says, he found himself in a social-media battle over whether it was racially insensitive to set the video for the song “Augustine” at Miss Lily’s Bake Shop & Melvin’s Juice Box, a popular Jamaican establishment in downtown Manhattan. “I guess the owner of Miss Lily’s is white and this person was of color,” Hynes says, referring to one online sparring partner. He shakes his head. “I feel that — the energy of the critique of people I feel I’m somewhat aligned with pushing me away.”
Hynes has proved remarkably prescient in his work — not just musically, but almost sociologically. Blood Orange’s second LP, “Cupid Deluxe,” arrived in late 2013, less than two years before gay marriage would become legal across the United States; it’s a subversive, sexy dance record that takes as its inspiration the history of L.G.B.T. life in New York. One of its biggest singles, “Uncle ACE,” is about an arts program for homeless queer kids who often slept on the A/C/E subway line, Hynes explained; they called it “Uncle Ace.” The follow-up, “Freetown Sound,” was being written as the Black Lives Matter movement gathered steam and arrived the day after the acquittal of the Baltimore police officer who drove the van in which Freddie Gray was fatally injured. Woven into the album’s elegant disarray were snippets of an interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates, bits from Marlon Riggs’s documentary “Black Is ... Black Ain’t” and a piece on black feminism by the poet Ashlee Haze.Hynes has proved remarkably prescient in his work — not just musically, but almost sociologically. Blood Orange’s second LP, “Cupid Deluxe,” arrived in late 2013, less than two years before gay marriage would become legal across the United States; it’s a subversive, sexy dance record that takes as its inspiration the history of L.G.B.T. life in New York. One of its biggest singles, “Uncle ACE,” is about an arts program for homeless queer kids who often slept on the A/C/E subway line, Hynes explained; they called it “Uncle Ace.” The follow-up, “Freetown Sound,” was being written as the Black Lives Matter movement gathered steam and arrived the day after the acquittal of the Baltimore police officer who drove the van in which Freddie Gray was fatally injured. Woven into the album’s elegant disarray were snippets of an interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates, bits from Marlon Riggs’s documentary “Black Is ... Black Ain’t” and a piece on black feminism by the poet Ashlee Haze.
And yet, as weighty as Hynes’s work has been thematically, the experience of listening to it feels casual. His music seems found, natural, almost rambling — meticulous, yet willfully aimless. The video for “Chamakay,” in which Hynes tracks his maternal grandfather to a hut in Guyana, came into existence because he was in his East Village apartment and spontaneously decided to get on a plane. He had never met any of his grandparents, or even been to his parents’ home countries. “The last time my mom went there was the year before I was born,” he recalls. “When I got there, I called her and I was like, ‘Guess where I am?’ Then I was like, ‘O.K., so, what’s your sister’s number?’ ” The video has the poignant innocence of a home movie, and the song feels like part of a long, perpetually unfinished exercise in self-discovery, happening as much to the person listening as to the person singing. This is a Blood Orange hallmark; Hynes invites you to use him as a proxy, but would be horrified if he became your hero. “My ideal is that people wouldn’t look at musicians while they’d hear my music,” he explains. “I’m actually going out of my way when I’m making my music for it to not sound like a bunch of musicians.”And yet, as weighty as Hynes’s work has been thematically, the experience of listening to it feels casual. His music seems found, natural, almost rambling — meticulous, yet willfully aimless. The video for “Chamakay,” in which Hynes tracks his maternal grandfather to a hut in Guyana, came into existence because he was in his East Village apartment and spontaneously decided to get on a plane. He had never met any of his grandparents, or even been to his parents’ home countries. “The last time my mom went there was the year before I was born,” he recalls. “When I got there, I called her and I was like, ‘Guess where I am?’ Then I was like, ‘O.K., so, what’s your sister’s number?’ ” The video has the poignant innocence of a home movie, and the song feels like part of a long, perpetually unfinished exercise in self-discovery, happening as much to the person listening as to the person singing. This is a Blood Orange hallmark; Hynes invites you to use him as a proxy, but would be horrified if he became your hero. “My ideal is that people wouldn’t look at musicians while they’d hear my music,” he explains. “I’m actually going out of my way when I’m making my music for it to not sound like a bunch of musicians.”
Traditionally, we want to either admire or see ourselves in our pop stars; we want them to know who they are and what they are selling. But Hynes is selling an identity that’s still in the making. Though he has never had a major hit, the paradigm he’s working in — you could call it restless pop — has been widely adopted. Which is dangerous for him, given his revulsion to the idea of the artist as figurehead. He cites Kanye West’s debut studio album, “The College Dropout,” as one of the most revelatory albums he heard as a kid; he remembers shoplifting it from a Virgin Megastore just after dropping out of school, when he was working as a cleaner in his father’s Marks & Spencer. But when I ask if he’s still rooting for West, he laughs. “This may sound bad,” he says, “but I don’t really root for many people. I don’t think it’s healthy.”Traditionally, we want to either admire or see ourselves in our pop stars; we want them to know who they are and what they are selling. But Hynes is selling an identity that’s still in the making. Though he has never had a major hit, the paradigm he’s working in — you could call it restless pop — has been widely adopted. Which is dangerous for him, given his revulsion to the idea of the artist as figurehead. He cites Kanye West’s debut studio album, “The College Dropout,” as one of the most revelatory albums he heard as a kid; he remembers shoplifting it from a Virgin Megastore just after dropping out of school, when he was working as a cleaner in his father’s Marks & Spencer. But when I ask if he’s still rooting for West, he laughs. “This may sound bad,” he says, “but I don’t really root for many people. I don’t think it’s healthy.”
If Hynes’s personal journey has tended to sync up in uncanny ways with broader issues — queer identity, the immigrant experience, blackness in America — then “Negro Swan” suggests that the question of the moment is whether it’s a good idea to stay alive. When I first met with Hynes in London, Anthony Bourdain had just died by suicide, not long after Kate Spade. The New York music world had lost, in what was thought to be a suicide, a lesser-known but significant figure, Stewart Lupton, of the band Jonathan Fire*Eater. Hynes had just seen and been moved to tears by a documentary about Alexander McQueen, who also killed himself.If Hynes’s personal journey has tended to sync up in uncanny ways with broader issues — queer identity, the immigrant experience, blackness in America — then “Negro Swan” suggests that the question of the moment is whether it’s a good idea to stay alive. When I first met with Hynes in London, Anthony Bourdain had just died by suicide, not long after Kate Spade. The New York music world had lost, in what was thought to be a suicide, a lesser-known but significant figure, Stewart Lupton, of the band Jonathan Fire*Eater. Hynes had just seen and been moved to tears by a documentary about Alexander McQueen, who also killed himself.
Hynes wanted “Negro Swan” to be dark. That was important. But he also talked about how his response to pain is, generally, movement. He’d had a video shoot scheduled for the day after the 2016 presidential election; “Everyone wanted to cancel,” he recalls, “but I was like: ‘No. [Expletive] that.’ ” I told him about how his friend Julian Casablancas’s band the Strokes had rehearsed on 9/11, and he nodded. “That was kind of how I felt,” he said. “I’m not really into mourning.”Hynes wanted “Negro Swan” to be dark. That was important. But he also talked about how his response to pain is, generally, movement. He’d had a video shoot scheduled for the day after the 2016 presidential election; “Everyone wanted to cancel,” he recalls, “but I was like: ‘No. [Expletive] that.’ ” I told him about how his friend Julian Casablancas’s band the Strokes had rehearsed on 9/11, and he nodded. “That was kind of how I felt,” he said. “I’m not really into mourning.”
Then, as I was writing this story, news broke that Hynes’s former Test Icicles bandmate Sam Mehran had died. The cause of death was suicide. He was 31. “Every time I was with you we were 17 again,” Hynes posted on his Instagram. “You were such a gift to this world. The floor has gone and I don’t know where to stand.”Then, as I was writing this story, news broke that Hynes’s former Test Icicles bandmate Sam Mehran had died. The cause of death was suicide. He was 31. “Every time I was with you we were 17 again,” Hynes posted on his Instagram. “You were such a gift to this world. The floor has gone and I don’t know where to stand.”
I found myself wondering how Hynes might be handling this grief. “Charcoal Baby,” from his new album, is sweet, but weary and unsettled, and has faint sounds of distant sirens in the background; its lyrical refrain says “No one wants to be the odd one out at times/No one wants to be the Negro swan.” But the album concludes with “Smoke,” which contains the cheery sounds of a house party, and a chorus of people singing “the sun comes in, my heart fulfills within” — for over a minute, in tones ranging from anguish to joy. I remembered a story Hynes had told me, about being approached in Washington Square Park by some N.Y.U. students who asked what films he had enjoyed lately. They expected to hear something weighty and erudite, some high-art solution to the problem of feeling hopelessly alone. But Hynes is not a hopeless person; he’s always looking for the sun to arrive. His answer? “Avengers: Infinity War.”I found myself wondering how Hynes might be handling this grief. “Charcoal Baby,” from his new album, is sweet, but weary and unsettled, and has faint sounds of distant sirens in the background; its lyrical refrain says “No one wants to be the odd one out at times/No one wants to be the Negro swan.” But the album concludes with “Smoke,” which contains the cheery sounds of a house party, and a chorus of people singing “the sun comes in, my heart fulfills within” — for over a minute, in tones ranging from anguish to joy. I remembered a story Hynes had told me, about being approached in Washington Square Park by some N.Y.U. students who asked what films he had enjoyed lately. They expected to hear something weighty and erudite, some high-art solution to the problem of feeling hopelessly alone. But Hynes is not a hopeless person; he’s always looking for the sun to arrive. His answer? “Avengers: Infinity War.”
“The look on their faces!” he recalls, smiling to himself.“The look on their faces!” he recalls, smiling to himself.