With his fourth album as Blood Orange, pop polymath Dev Hynes cherry picks jazz piano, unstructured guitar and A-class collaborators to create an introspective masterwork about the desire to be loved.
He’s given us not just a great album, but a piece of himself that stands as a whole truth that need not be escaped, but rather, treasured.
An absolutely stunning venture into the nuances of anxiety, depression, and loneliness within Black/LGBT communities and how to navigate around those emotions in our 2018 world.
Set over gorgeous production, and serving as a comforting reminder to black sheep and ugly ducklings everywhere that it pays to be true to one’s full self, Negro Swan is a dizzying triumph.
Though nothing from the album may ever get played in a ballroom, Negro Swan is a grand work that gives credit to the pioneers of the culture while building a path forward within that framework, placing Hynes firmly in the canon as one of the most insightful musicians of his generation.
Though Hynes isn’t always on lead in this latest album, their creativity is always very present on every track to assure it’s a Blood Orange cut. With very little dead weight in its extended run, this is one of those records that will likely only improve on repeat listens.
Musically ‘Negro Swan’ is both Hynes’s most energetic and most subdued work, playing like a carousel lampshade illuminating and warping the brief patterns of melodic soul, jazz, hip-hop and RnB. Every conversation is personal but feels applicable to a greater black narrative.
Negro Swan sonically is as fluid as it is fragmented, synthesizing and bounding between bedsit post-punk, desolate dream pop, chillwave-coated quiet storm, and low-profile hip-hop soul.
It will resonate the most with its intended audience: appreciating beauty in the things that don't belong to us, without needing to possess them, has always been Blood Orange's overarching message, and Negro Swan drives that message home.
Negro Swan is Blood Orange's most assured, accomplished, and significant album to date.
The past few years have seen Dev Hynes become one of the most prominent, important voices in pop. Negro Swan builds upon this legacy.
With myriad collaborators from A$AP Rocky and Puff Daddy, to rising talents TeiShi and Ian Isiah, Negro Swan looks unflinchingly at black and queer life—its traumas, its tensions, its passions. And tucked somewhere within it all, is hope.
Hynes is personal, searing and close to the bone on Negro Swan, easily making it the most exceptional record of his career thus far.
Negro Swan dives even deeper into the black psyche as Hynes captivatingly articulates his inner exploration of black existence.
Blood Orange's latest is a dreamy, sensual, and holistic album with a message.
Tighter than its predecessor and boasting Blood Orange’s purest pop moments yet in Saint and Nappy Wonder, Negro Swan might yet convey Hynes’ message to the mainstream.
While Negro Swan elaborates on Hynes’s best work, he remains grounded in cosy bedroom-pop by shambling drum machines, vocal compressors and gratuitous psych pedals.
Hynes creates an elegant sadness that is balanced and ultimately flawless.
It’s clear that through this album’s 16 introspective, tender and heart-rending tracks, this is the kind of world Dev Hynes is striving to create through his music: one where the negro swan isn’t only desired, but allowed to soar.
Negro Swan sees Hynes thoughtfully explore themes of racial and sexual identities and anxieties within songs that can be a s gorgeously vaporous as "Take Your Time," as ecstatically funky as "Charcoal Baby," or any state in between.
Intentionally or not, Hynes has surreptitiously convinced listeners to deeply engage with his art; we're digging for the grooves, searching out the hooks while questioning our own habits and assumptions, as we look for our own meaning in the music. And there's plenty in Negro Swan.
It’s rare that an artist can operate within the pop template, collaborate with household names and still produce work that can be considered as significantly culturally important, but that’s what Hynes manages.
All of this is reflected in tunes that warp and slide uncomfortably, guitars that never seem to stay quite in tune, beats and hooks that dissolve before they resolve, Dev Hynes’ vocal always naked and vulnerable, with no effort made to hide his insecurities with his own ability.
Negro Swan is more consolidation than the ext great leap forwards.
Just when you settle into Negro Swan’s groove, it changes tack, leaving you feeling weirdly unmoored from it and, worse, emotionally disconnected.
It all sounds incredible, but there is a fundamental, unignorable disconnect between what wants (or needs) to be said and what is actually said.
He examines such personal territory via the medium of slickly produced beats, and solid cameos from the aforementioned heavyweight guests, but it is the spoken word excerpts by transgender rights activist, writer, and broadcaster Janet Mock that set Negro Swan apart as a piece of social commentary.
Final Edit: This might be the best rnb record of the decade
Edit: I can offically say that it has grown on me. Hope, Jewelry and Charcoal Baby are absolute gems.
Edit2: holyyyyyy shitttt
With Negro Swan, Blood Orange created a piece that majestically explained his feelings towards a wide variety of topics like family, sexual frustration, loneliness and wealth. The biggest problem with this album was its replay value. The second time through I was longing for the end by the 5th song which ... read more
The first Blood Orange song I’ve ever listened to was Charcoal Baby. It’s been on repeat since the first time I heard it, and it led me to check out this album.
Turns out it’s chock full of bangers. It goes into detail about the struggles of Black and LGBT people and the desire to be loved. It’s set its messages really well in this album.
Favorite: Charcoal Baby
Least Favorite: Holy Will
one of my fav album covers ever, also makes me want to visit nyc ngl
+ minetta creek
+ orlando
+ charcol baby
1 | Orlando 3:02 | 88 |
2 | Saint 3:12 | 91 |
3 | Take Your Time 2:51 | 84 |
4 | Hope 3:59 | 88 |
5 | Jewelry 4:32 | 85 |
6 | Family 0:41 feat. Janet Mock | 82 |
7 | Charcoal Baby 4:02 | 95 |
8 | Vulture Baby 1:14 | 83 |
9 | Chewing Gum 4:23 feat. A$AP Rocky, Project Pat | 88 |
10 | Holy Will 4:22 feat. Ian Isiah | 79 |
11 | Dagenham Dream 2:45 | 85 |
12 | Nappy Wonder 2:38 | 83 |
13 | Runnin’ 3:55 feat. Georgia Anne Muldrow | 82 |
14 | Out Of Your League 2:20 feat. Steve Lacy | 83 |
15 | Minetta Creek 1:58 | 82 |
16 | Smoke 3:33 | 84 |
#4 | / | Clash |
#5 | / | Northern Transmissions |
#5 | / | SPIN |
#6 | / | Spectrum Culture |
#8 | / | NOW Magazine |
#9 | / | Complex |
#9 | / | Dummy |
#12 | / | Drowned in Sound |
#12 | / | NME |
#12 | / | OOR |