JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Devonte Hynes, who performs as Blood Orange, is a true musical polymath. He's composed classical symphonies, scored Hollywood films and produced and performed hits in genres ranging from experimental R&B to pop-punk and indie folk.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I CAN GO")
BLOOD ORANGE: (Singing) I can go.
SUMMERS: Now he's out with a brand new Blood Orange album. It's called "Essex Honey," and it minds from his childhood growing up in Essex, a county just east of London.
DEVONTE HYNES: I'm always very much intrigued by working through memory. The corners of memory, like the - almost like the unreliable narrator, looking at what I can remember and the emotions of various situations in growing up.
SUMMERS: It's Hynes' first studio album since 2018's "Negro Swan." During that stretch of time, there was the pandemic, then his mother got sick. And he spent time at home in Essex with her until her death in 2023.
HYNES: As much as it explores family and Essex and England and grief, it's also looking at a constant of all of this, which is music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I CAN GO")
BLOOD ORANGE: (Singing) I can go.
SUMMERS: When I spoke with Dev Hynes, I asked him about how all of his experiences - from early life influences to the more recent loss of his mother - shaped the album.
HYNES: It's a lot of questions. It's a lot of darkness. It's a lot of - it's the realities of, I guess, trauma and death and grief, the realities of depression. You know, the biggest shock, I think, that I think happens to people when something very bad happens is the realization that the world is still moving. You know, like, this...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
HYNES: ...Horrible thing has happened, but the world is still moving. People are still going out for lunch. And so in this album, I think that's something that is happening. There could be these moments where it feels like it's about to get up...
(SOUNDBITE OF BLOOD ORANGE SONG, "THINKING CLEAN")
HYNES: ...But then you kind of get dragged back down again, you know? You haven't fully lost the memory of the reality.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THINKING CLEAN")
BLOOD ORANGE: (Singing) I couldn't bear to see...
SUMMERS: Is there a specific song on this album that you wrote after her death, or one that reflects on that experience?
HYNES: Lyrically, the whole album is quite literal. I really, really wanted to write literal lyrics. I wanted it to be very precise and direct 'cause I've always felt that the more precise and specific you are, it suddenly becomes way more universal 'cause you get to the root of the emotion. And the emotion is the thing that people can relate to.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE LAST OF ENGLAND")
BLOOD ORANGE: (Singing) Nothing more to do but leave.
HYNES: I think it sounds metaphorical. There's a line that talks about a knitted heart that was given to me, and it's real. The hospital gives you these tiny, little knitted hearts when you lose someone.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE LAST OF ENGLAND")
BLOOD ORANGE: (Singing) Knitted heart they gave to me.
HYNES: I would say "Vivid Light" is pretty much direct about, I guess, immediate emotions following.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "VIVID LIGHT")
BLOOD ORANGE: (Singing) It's a fallen fallacy. Waiting at your window in the corner. Reaching out. Nothing makes...
SUMMERS: If I remember correctly, this is the song that author Zadie Smith makes an appearance on. Is that right?
HYNES: Yes. Yeah.
SUMMERS: Can you tell me a little bit about working with her and why you asked her to be a part of this record?
HYNES: Yeah. So kind of like everyone else on the album, she's a friend. And she was visiting back in New York, and she then just came by my apartment 'cause she wanted to hear what I was working on. And I played her that song, and really, I basically just shoved a mic in her hand 'cause she's always singing, and she has an incredible voice.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "VIVID LIGHT")
BLOOD ORANGE AND ZADIE SMITH: (Singing) And the more you write.
SUMMERS: Did you have to do much convincing to get her to sing on this album?
HYNES: No. No, I mean, she loves singing way more than I do. I mean, I guess that's not that hard, but she does (laughter).
SUMMERS: But singing in your kitchen or singing in your living room is different than singing on an album that everybody's going to hear and consume.
HYNES: I guess so, but she was still singing in my living room (laughter).
SUMMERS: Fair point.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "VIVID LIGHT")
BLOOD ORANGE AND SMITH: (Singing) It's like you've never seen.
SUMMERS: Much in the same way of your other Blood Orange albums, you have this long list of collaborators on "Essex Honey," including Caroline Polachek, Lorde, Brendan Yates from Turnstile, Zadie Smith - to name a few. What is it that you get out of working with so many different musicians on your albums?
HYNES: I - it's the conversation. I just love conversation (laughter), and I love talking to friends. I'm trying to just, in my own view, make the best things that I can do. And what that then allows is the door to be completely open because this combination of wanting to see what I can do but also wanting to make something that is the best in my own eyes means that I can open the door to friends. And if they have an idea, and in my eyes it is a better idea, then incredible (laughter). We're like - we're - you know, we're getting somewhere.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MIND LOADED")
BLOOD ORANGE: (Singing) Dark weather, new order. New packet, light smoker.
HYNES: Caroline added on - there's a song called "Mind Loaded." And the vocal she added really - I mean, that song had existed for me for quite a long time, and I'd been working on it on and off. And then towards the end of the process she added this, like, really incredible almost, like, countermelody over the - I mean, I guess they're verses. I don't even know (laughter). But she added something over them, and it was so next level, something I could never have ever thought of, but something that only Caroline could ever have thought of.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MIND LOADED")
LORDE: (Singing) And it's hard...
BLOOD ORANGE: (Singing) Still broken.
LORDE: (Singing) ...To feel...
BLOOD ORANGE: (Singing) Can't think straight.
LORDE: (Singing) ...Yourself alone...
BLOOD ORANGE: (Singing) Mind loaded.
HYNES: To me, that's the perfect example of why it's always so cool to bring people in.
SUMMERS: Now, your last full-length studio album as Blood Orange was out back in 2018, and you released a mix tape, "Angels Pulse," in 2019. What has changed, if anything, about the way that you release music since those releases?
HYNES: Oh, God, so much. It's [expletive] awful now (laughter).
SUMMERS: Why? What makes it awful?
HYNES: (Laughter) I mean, it's so intense - like, the noise. There's so much noise out there in the world, and everyone is fighting for attention, and then they're fighting for attention for it to get lost in an algorithm. I - it's a little too crazy for me. All of it just makes you want to be as direct as possible, as self-aware as possible. Just - I don't want to be like, hey, look, I'm cool. Like, I don't want to do any of that. I don't know. I'm 39. Like, I just (laughter) - I don't think it's, for myself, really that fitting. You know, the reality is is that I make music, and it's - I'm very, very fortunate that people want to listen to it. And so if I can do that literal thing - I don't know, I feel like I've done what I need to do.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE FIELD")
TARIQ AL-SABIR: (Singing) Hard to let you go. See you and I know why it's always grey.
SUMMERS: We've been speaking with Devonte Hynes, who performs as Blood Orange. His new album, "Essex Honey," is out now. Thank you so very much.
HYNES: Yeah, thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE FIELD")
AL-SABIR: (Singing) A journey home. For a journey home. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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