In the past six years, the creative polymath Devonté Hynes has kept remarkably busy. Despite a global pandemic flatlining the music industry, Hynes contributed to albums by Lorde and Turnstile, crafted film scores for Passing and Master Gardener, and just last year penned some original music for the Broadway play Job. In 2023, Hynes was even set to perform alongside the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Australia. The passing of his mother derailed those plans, and as grief turned into nostalgic reflection, the ever expansive artist started to shift his gaze back into the R&B realm of Blood Orange.
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As Blood Orange, Hynes hadn’t released anything in over six years. His last outing as the gauzy R&B savant, 2019’s Angel Pulse, was labeled more as a mixtape, as a muted collage of moods that didn’t thematically stitch together quite like 2018’s Negro Swan — which dealt heavily with Black queer identity at a time when law enforcement abuse was a fiery political focal point. On “Look at You,” the intro track off Blood Orange’s latest album Essex Honey, which finally came out last week, Hynes coos: “How can I start my day/ Knowing the truth/ ‘Bout love and a loss of youth?”
His new album puts aging and grief under a microscope, and Hynes admits at first he wasn’t incredibly eager to dive back into the personal examination required for a Blood Orange record. He more did so because he felt that he “should.” “I got to this place where I’m very lucky,” Hynes tells Billboard on the eve of Essex Honey‘s release. “I should at least honor that luck.”
Below, Dev Hynes chats with Billboard about how his new Blood Orange record came together, and how aging and nostalgia inspired his rawest album yet.
This is by far the longest break you’ve taken between Blood Orange projects. I’m curious as an artist known for working on multiple things at once why you felt it was time for Blood Orange to take a backseat for a bit?
It was quite natural. It was lots of different factors kind of working in tandem. I was always working on music and doing things and just initially it was more that I was working on kind of a lot of [other projects]. Like the first couple of years it was the kind of thing that, I love doing it, but you know you sign on to two jobs then suddenly that’s like a year gone. [Laughs.] I was also just getting older and I started to question why did [Blood Orange] need to exist. There was always music, and I was always working on things but I could never really work out a good reason for it to exist.
Then I started thinking about how much of a span of music I am and how much I enjoy different types of things for different reasons. But then I started thinking it’s quite — I work hard — but I’m also at a place where I feel quite blessed that I even know how to make music and that I have a channel to release it and there’s even people there that would want to receive it. I started looking at it like that. I started to feel like I should make music, because even the younger me wouldn’t necessarily believe the position I’m in.
I guess in that regard, what was the vision behind Essex Honey, and when did it start to creatively emerge that you were making a new Blood Orange album — or that you “should” make a new Blood Orange album?
It’s this kinda thing where I’m essentially always kind of working on an album, even if I don’t necessarily know the end of where it’s gonna be or where it’s gonna land. So I was working on things and I started leaning into this place of where I was looking back on where I grew up, family, and grief and all of these things. I have all these names and album titles crazy far in advance, and usually they’re purely out of phonetics and things like that, and I had the Essex Honey title ready, like, seven years ago. But I didn’t think at the time that I was actually gonna be writing a record about where I was from. It was more just — I liked how it sounded, but naturally my life ended up pivoting that way.
It sounds like your creative process is almost stream of consciousness, like a flow state.
Yeah, it’s going wherever it goes. I feel like the intentional aspect comes when I look at everything and I see that there’s something. When it gets to that place, it’s usually the last few months of a process, then I’m a bit more decisive. Before that it’s really whenever, wherever, really!
How was the process of creating a broadway musical different or similar to working on a Blood Orange album? Did that experience help at all with Essex Honey?
I don’t know, it’s very different just in the sense that when I’m working on my music I’m excavating. I’m trying to get something out inside of me. On other people’s things, I like to be more of service. I like to be used however they want me to be. Whether they just want ideas, or maybe they just want me to play bass or cello. Wherever they are comfortable with and that they want me to be involved, that’s honestly my favorite state of music making is being of service.
It’s interesting to hear you talk about it like that, because there are so many features on Essex Honey it feels almost like an ensemble album. Like without a keen ear, you might miss hearing Daniel Caesar on “The Field.” The way the features are layered it feels like they’re in service of the song. Why did you believe layering other artists in this way was the best approach?
A lot of the features, even on other records, are quite natural in the sense that they’re people who are literally in the room with me. Then the other times it’s a bit more friends who I trust and I know they can add something — like Caroline [Polachek], we’ve worked some times before, and I knew she could bring something that I thought would be cool. But yeah, I think I make music in way of — however it can get to the place, usually with friends and people around me.
I feel very lucky, I don’t know. The way I make music it’s still the same from when I was 13 years old. Starting things, by myself, in my room. And whenever I can get other voices on it it’s still this amazing thing to me that I can get someone else’s voice on it!
What’s your relationship like with Lorde? What do you enjoy about her as an artist?
It was so great. We became friends when she moved to New York and we’d spend time together. We almost had to find time to work, because when you’re friends with someone and hang out so much, it’s hard to find that time to set up these kind of moments. I love how she thinks. She has a really incredible pop brain, which I’m eternally intrigued by, because I don’t have it. I just don’t have that brain! I like people that do — I find it really, really interesting. She’s super easy to work with.
A lyric that stood out to me was: “So I surrender to be a body just with tired limbs.” Tell me about that lyric and the album’s theme of reflection and growing pains.
There’s a lot of dealing with reality and aging on this album, which is quite important to me. I wanted it to feel age accurate, you know? That [lyric] wasn’t something that, while it wasn’t something I was specifically writing about, it was kinda an unavoidable truth that I wanted to keep throughout. Especially because Blood Orange started in my early 20’s. There’s an energy there that one has at that time in their life that, no matter how hard you try, you can’t recreate it. You see people try and recreate it, and it’s not accurate, it’s not real. So I wanted to kind of show that reality, lyrically at least.
Did you learn any new lessons about yourself after you finished the album?
I’m not sure, actually. I really, um… yeah, I don’t know. Music for me always sounds completely different when it gets released. It always just sounds like some other thing, so I’m curious how it’s going to feel. I’m definitely feeling very different than how I felt before, which I’m finding quite interesting. I’m trying to work out what it is and why. I still have those moments every few days where I think to myself that I don’t necessarily want it released. I have that in my head at times, and I haven’t listened to [the songs].
You’re saying you haven’t listened to Essex Honey in full yet?
I usually do [listen to my albums once they’re out], but this album I haven’t listened to the songs that have been released. I’ve kinda avoided them, and I don’t have an answer [as to why]. I’m curious when the album is living in the world if the same thing [will happen], or if I’ll have a weird emotion attached to it. I don’t have an answer.
You’ve talked a lot about the struggle of being Blood Orange because of how particular you are when making music that you know is to serve a fanbase. I’m curious at this point in your career if the vision for Blood Orange has changed at all?
I guess the change is not so much in how [the music] is made, but kind of what I was talking about that energy of being in your early 20s — how it does shift and change? There’s a part of me that, when I look at it, I’m very grateful that it’s been allowed to exist and move for so long in the world. But it’s very easy for me to throw certain resentments into [Blood Orange] for some reason. Almost like it’s a split personality to do that.
I don’t fully know why, but there’s something that feels kind of unsettling — but I guess also I think the fact that it is unsettling is good. If it wasn’t, if things were quite easy, then it really looks like: What’s the point? Cause there’s no friction or anything like that. I don’t know, it’s a weird one. This last year has been interesting in that regard, just in terms of how there’s been a song or two that have had these viral TikTok moments.
It’s an interesting thing for me, because they’re songs that are from thirteen years ago. First off, It’s cool that people like music I made, but then there’s another side to it too where I think that there’s this jungle, almost like an arena where [the songs] are all competing with one another. I think the reality is none of it actually matters because everything is an anomaly. There’s no control, and things can just do what they do and be what they are. There’s arguably more freedom in knowing how randomly things are received.
