Negro Swan
| Blood Orange
Negro Swan
Negro Swan is the fourth studio album by Blood Orange, an alias of British musician Dev Hynes. It was released on 24 August 2018, through Domino. The album was preceded by the singles "Charcoal Baby" and "Jewelry". -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
Dev Hynes’ fourth album as Blood Orange focuses on black depression, sketching his anxious alt-pop, progressive R&B, indie hip-hop, downtempo rock, and spacey chillwave into a minimalist emulsion.
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Consequence of Sound
The rare album that transcends influences to build its own vibrant world.
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NME
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.
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SPIN
Dev Hynes’ Aesthetic Is Fully Realized on Blood Orange’s Brilliant Negro Swan.
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The Guardian
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.
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Drowned in Sound
Every note and sonic decision coded into the message: It’s hard to be alone, it’s hard to do your own thing, but it can also be very beautiful and ultimately empowering. It’s telling that the album closes on a note of hope: “The sun comes in,” sings Hynes, “my heart fulfills within."
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Paste Magazine
Negro Swan looks unflinchingly at black and queer life—its traumas, its tensions, its passions. And tucked somewhere within it all, is hope: “The sun comes in,” Hynes reminds us at last.
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Rolling Stone
Dev Hynes delivers praise songs to self-realization and fluidity, with help from Janet Mock, A$AP Rocky, P-Diddy and others.
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Tiny Mix Tapes
It all sounds incredible, but there is a fundamental, unignorable disconnect between what wants (or needs) to be said and what is actually said. Situating oneself in New York City may be one of the easiest things to do while listening to Negro Swan, which is a fairly lukewarm prospect. Perhaps Negro Swan is merely a step along the way, as Blood Orange continues to contend with monolithic, difficult ideas, but for now, this patchwork of sweltering grooves, amicable conversations, and urban ambience remains limited in its vision.
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Slant Magazine
The ecstatic climax of “Charcoal Baby” is followed immediately by the sound of a gunshot, as if to emphasize the fragility of joy in a society that’s systemically hostile to black and queer people. But it’s this ability to capture both sides with equal commitment—the struggle and the resistance through self-love—that makes Negro Swan Hynes’s most assured, accomplished, and significant album to date.
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Stereogum
Negro Swan may be born of trauma, but it is ultimately the magical music of resilience, of courage under fire, of resounding triumph.
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The Young Folks
Negro Swan is one of the most important albums this decade, without a doubt.
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The Line of Best Fit
Negro Swan is the most introspective, important Blood Orange record yet.
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WUOG Radio
Dev Hynes continues to make high quality albums focusing on social issues with a well-executed collaborative approach, as he gives the sentiment that his music is his community’s music.
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The Quietus
On his fourth album as Blood Orange, Devonté Hynes moves further into beautiful expressions of queer black experience, playing, experimenting and collaborating with Janet Mock, Asap Rocky, Puff Daddy, TeiShi and more.On his fourth album as Blood Orange, Devonté Hynes moves further into beautiful expressions of queer black experience, playing, experimenting and collaborating with Janet Mock, Asap Rocky, Puff Daddy, TeiShi and more.
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Treble Zine
In a time when hate is fashionable, white supremacy is emboldened, and mainstream inclusion seems like a distant dream, a voice like Hynes is a godsend.
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Medium
Negro Swan’s beauty comes in moments of isolation. It’s best listened at the time of the quiet night when your world is asleep and your mind breaks free from the worldly constraints of daily life. As Brian Wilson noticed the importance of this in Pet Sounds, Blood Orange does the same with Negro Swans.
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Sputnik Music
What frustrates is merely that it seems to be stretching toward a dreamlike sound that might entrance the listener into itself so that they’d be subliminally left susceptible to its ideas and movements. Because what makes dreams so alluring is their ambiguity. Searching for a message to interpret where you aren’t even sure there is one. Maybe thats why this only feels like half a dream. Half asleep, and half painfully awake.
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WRSU Radio
“Negro Swan” was one of the best surprises in my discovery of any album I’ve been unaware of. The style of music fit into a genre that brought me a feeling of nostalgia and positivity. The complexity of each song truly impressed me and although I did not describe every track on the album; I highly recommend listening to every single song.
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Loud And Quiet
‘Negro Swan’ talks the same talk, overlapping introspection with a greater narrative of black existence and black depression.
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NZ Herald
Although some listeners may get lost in Negro Swan's strange pacing, it's a fine progression of Hynes' proudly political form of pop.
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Independent
Dev Hynes has acquired the laidback air of a cat who once chased his tail but now finds he can capture it simply by curling into a ball.
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Northern Transmissions
With very little dead weight in its extended run, this is one of those records that will likely only improve on repeat listens.
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Diandra Reviews It All
Blood Orange has garnered a following that flocks to his avant-garde sound. He wears rhythms like jewels and cloths sewn together to create capes of music. Yet, in each jewel is a history and in each cloth is a tradition that is woven together like skin. Such an idea feels rightful for an artist singing to black depression in his new, powerful record: Negro Swan.
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Crack Magazine
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.
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Exclaim!
After immersing myself in Hynes' world for the better part of a week, what I think Hynes seems to be saying is that no matter how you listen, being a Blood Orange fan means having to put in some work. 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.
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WPTS Radio
In my opinion Negro Swan is a sonic disciple to Blonde in its experimentation and beauty, and flawlessly documents the current space and trajectory of R&B in 2018, in its themes, personnel, and above all its willingness to take risks.
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All Music
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.
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Redbrick
Negro Swan certainly feels like a development from previous releases, with less pop influence and a more serious tone to the album, reflecting some of Hynes’ own personal struggles from the last decade. The album is an emotional and powerful listen, that reaffirms Hynes as one of the most innovative and creative musicians of the moment.
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The Cypress Chronicle
On Aug. 24, 2018, it was released on Domino Recording Company for all music platforms- written and produced by Hynes, it demonstrates his evolving maturity as an artist, beginning with the opening track “Orlando.”
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DIY Mag
Not the most immediate listen, but undoubtedly one with real weight.
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Clash Magazine
On ‘Negro Swan’ they just work. During ‘Orlando’s outro the line “My eternal resolution will be to do too much”. This sums up this album - and Hynes himself - perfectly.
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Riff Magazine
Negro Swan‘s wandering, languid soundscapes won’t appeal to everyone. But what this album lacks in the dynamic and energetic character of “Freetown Sound,” it more than makes up for it in heart and poetic pathos.
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NPR Music
Blood Orange bottles the spirit of an outsider in soulful sweetness.
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KSDB Manhattan
Somehow, Hynes developed a mixture of several styles. This includes funk and soul, and he incorporated themes of identity, sexuality, belonging, and spirituality among other issues that have the shaped his existence.
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No Ripcord
Negro Swan is another sure-footed step forward. 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. A voice for the under-heard and an education for everyone else, Negro Swan demands your attention, and is more than worthy of it.
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Coog Radio
If this were my project, the one major thing I would change would be to make the lyricism more clear in its intent. It is really easy to get lost in the music and completely miss the message each song carries. With that being said, the production of this album is top notch and I wouldn’t change a thing musically.
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A.V. Club Music
Blood Orange is not sharing the story of Black/queer/marginalized people for anything but a chance to bring himself and anyone else who can understand a feeling of peace. 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.
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L.A. Times
Throughout “Negro Swan,” the writer, director and trans activist Janet Mock (known for her work on FX’s acclaimed “Pose”) delivers a kind of running monologue about how other-ed individuals find affirmation in a culture that too often reduces them to caricature. As she puts it in “Family,” one means of doing that is by seeking out spaces where “you show up as you are without judgment, without ridicule, without fear or violence or policing or containment.” Hynes’ bold and moving album feels like just such a space.
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Immortal Reviews
Blood Orange keeps it intimate in Negro Swan, telling stories and really capturing the purest essence of the African American experience. It's an album that lends itself to relaxing but also tuning into stories. It's not necessarily stuff that's unheard of, but it certainly has its own personality.
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WRBB Radio
Negro Swan is Blood Orange’s darkest, most vulnerable release yet.
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The Irish Times
While the album possibly could have been stronger if about a quarter of an hour had been shorn off and left on the cutting-room floor, it is still a major release from an increasingly important artist in a day and age when transgender rights and diversity are such hot topics. In inhabiting the blurry ground between pop and R&B, sadness and joy and the whole gamut of human emotion, Hynes has crafted a very fine album, which should feature on a few best of 2018 lists when Christmas comes around, but it won’t convincingly blow the socks off the unconverted.
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Highsnobiety
Negro Swan dives even deeper into the black psyche as Hynes captivatingly articulates his inner exploration of black existence.
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Livewire 1350
Despite some repetitive sounds, Negro Swan is Blood Orange's most low-key and minimal sounding album to date, putting emphasis on what he has to say and the stunning vocals he uses to express them.
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High Clouds
That "Negro Swan" includes enough great songs to stop it from being forgettable is a testament to Dev Hynes’s expertise at songwriting.
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Strathclyde Telegraph
The album comes to a close with the stripped back ‘Smoke’, its delicate acoustic riffs and lulling falsetto bringing Negro Swan full circle.
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The Student Playlist
Dev Hynes paints a beguiling portrait of horror and beauty, reflecting 2018 back on itself with his fourth Blood Orange album ‘Negro Swan’.
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Mxdwn Music
Negro Swan really opens the eyes of the listener to just how important it is to be nice to the people around you. His finished yet somewhat unfinished sound makes each song unique in a way that makes you want to listen to a specific song a few times over to make sure you catch every little aspect.
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Riffs and Rhymes
By the time the album is done, your spirit has swelled with pride. If not for yourself, then for someone else. Even then, there is this self love that is resonating throughout yourself. You never want it to end, so you press replay. And hopefully, when you break the replay button, it isn’t coming from the record anymore. It’s from yourself and you’re a little more fulfilled.
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Vinyl Me, Please
The album’s structure falls slightly outta tune with the third act’s more upbeat choices wedged between the bigger moments of resolution. Yet calling the album self-indulgent would neither disrupt its mission nor dispute Hynes’s brilliance; it is precisely the intention, to sort through the mess of everything. It’s what Blood Orange does: beautifully, gracefully, forward.
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The Reload
Hynes has created an intricate collage of samples and sounds taken from a deep introspection. The fragmented nature of the album shows us a slightly different side to the multi-instrumentalist. He etches elements of his own hopes, anxieties and mental state into a stream of consciousness that meanders both smoothly and abruptly throughout.
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WIUX Radio
Each song carries weight and provides insights into Hynes’ personal conflicts in life. Overall, it’s inventive, inspiring, and a great album.
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Earbuddy
The album’s songs sometimes begin and end with spoken word interludes, several guests join Hynes, and the album stretches out to a daunting length (16 tracks in 50 minutes). Maybe this wouldn’t be such a grind if the mood wasn’t so sad. However, Hynes warned us of much.
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KX 93.5
Negro Swan could’ve easily turned into an unfocused compilation of noises proclaiming self-love and nothing more, but it doesn’t with Hynes. Though at times certain tracks may stray too far, Hynes is able to balance multiple spotlights and genres of sound within his creative control. He never gives in fully to the darkness that plagued his childhood existence, nor does he accept blind optimism. Instead, Hynes finds freedom, realizing his healing will never be complete.
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The Star
What we can gather from 'Negro Swan' is that, despite Devonte Hynes' experimental nature, he manages to keep his latest project simple. Close your eyes and you can almost see exactly what the artiste's about.
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Traklife Radio
In an age where listeners want instant gratification with their music, this album thrives in simplicity and elegance. It’s a great album to vibe to drinking your early morning coffee or sitting beachside watching the waves crash on the sand (I say this because I have first-hand experience in both scenarios).
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Nada Mucho
Sonically, it stretches even further into the amalgam of afro-jazz, funk, rnb and art-pop that Hynes has been perfecting since his debut as “Blood Orange,” Coastal Grooves.
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UNF Spinnaker
A few seconds into the ambience, a distant bass fades in, guiding us into an album that’s as much a piece of Dev Hynes himself as it is a social statement for the marginalized.
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Giglist
Intricate, varied and unique, and over all too quickly.
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Cult MTL
The contrast of the lyrics and production — with infusions of experimental R&B, jazz, soul and grime paired with a warm, glossy electro production — is uniquely comforting and hopeful in how it shines light on troubled minds while also celebrating “black sheeps” that still reside on the margins of society.
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Outline Outline
It is difficult to pick out a track that stands out specifically because I really feel this album should be enjoyed as a whole. However, ‘Hope’ (ft Puff Daddy & Tei Shi) ‘Chewing Gum’ (ft ASAP Rocky& Project Pat) and ‘Nappy Wonder’ are particular favourites of mine. I also like the addition of speech/spoken word that is added in throughout the album as it provides an extra dialogue to what is already a very honest and raw outpouring of emotion through music.
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STACK
Devonté Hynes doesn’t take his responsibility as an artist of colour lightly; Negro Swan is a deep reflection on oppression.
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Spectrum Culture
Personal, searing and close to the bone.
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Noisey
‘Negro Swan' . . . marks another step in a musical universe that the singer and producer has been forming for years.
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Brooklyn Vegan
You can tell that Dev really pushed himself to try new things and get out of his comfort zone. The album might not be flawless, but it doesn’t seem like the kind of album that tried to be flawless. It sounds like it tried to be raw, honest music — imperfections and all — and it succeeds at that.
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The Fresh Committee
This is everything I could’ve asked from him. “Charcoal Baby” will remain one of the year’s best songs when December rolls around. “Hope,” “Orlando” and “Dagenham Dream” also deserve mentions. Here Dev demonstrates the beauty of divine diversion.
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Viberant
On Negro Swan, Dev Hynes manages to find solace and utter beauty within sadness and pain. His slick and sexy production along with soothing vocal melodies creates a serene atmosphere over songs that are far darker than they may appear.
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Heart Eyes Magazine
If there’s something to take away from the dreamlike, raw journey of Negro Swan, it’s definitely to appreciate your uniqueness. Sure, some people may want you to change, and you may even want to change yourself just to make others happy, but if you take Negro Swan’s lyrical and sonic approach at being different, you may just find that inner swan of yours.
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Secret Meeting
In many ways, Negro Swan is the most fully realised demonstration of Hynes’ DIY ideals – bedroom pop drum machines hold down busker’s saxophones, seemingly captured rattling through New York’s Metro tunnels on tracks that are sprinkled with dreamy melodies. It’s not a perfect record – but, in many ways, that makes it even more special.
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Metro News
His fourth LP is far more coherent than 2014’s sprawling Freetown Sound and although the impacts of Marvin Gaye, 1980s Prince and Michael Jackson, as well as conscious hip hop-soul, are still audible, mostly these plush, woozily seductive songs recall his peers The Internet (whose Steve Lacy pops up on the gorgeous Out Of Your League) and Anderson Paak.
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Beat
Luminary artist Dev Hynes, otherwise known under his musical moniker Blood Orange, delivers the heights of his magic on his new album Negro Swan.
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Standard
This sense of vulnerability is echoed in Hynes’ pastel-wash production, which lends an atmosphere of lucid dreaming to songs that variously orbit jazz, R&B, soul and hip hop. 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.
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Daily Trojan
“Negro Swan” is both the past, present and future of music, representing and paying homage to creatives who came before Hynes and inspired his sound, including Diddy. Simultaneously, the album remains socially relevant with themes of black liberation and sexuality paired with innovative productions that challenge the genres of pop and R&B. This album is Blood Orange at his peak; luckily for his fans, Hynes seems like he has more exploring to do.
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Mystic Sons
Dev Hynes truly shines on fourth full-length album.
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The Needle Drop
Blood Orange's latest is a dreamy, sensual, and holistic album with a message.
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Duke Chronicle
As a musical work and as a personal statement, “Negro Swan” is a success.
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Portland Mercury
Negro Swan is a meditative journey through Hynes’ most intimate thoughts, sung over minimalist drum beats, mellow guitar riffs, and spaced-out keys. It’s less an album of independent and disjointed singles—as so many hip-hop and R&B albums are today—as it is one continuous and slowly unspooling narrative.
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Under the Radar Mag
The ambition of Negro Swan calls to mind the vignette style of Frank Ocean's Endless and the conceptual vision of Solange's A Seat at the Table, but such comparisons only reveal how much sharper Hynes' writing needs to be. If we could hear the music inside his head; maybe it would make good on the promise of this album. For now, Blood Orange remains an artist who flirts with greatness but frustratingly continues to fall short.
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The Dartmouth
Topically, it’s a genre-crossing masterpiece, but thematically, the work leaves a carefully crafted and lasting impression. Ultimately, as the semi-acoustic ending track “Smoke” illustrates, “Negro Swan” is exceedingly honest, and this is what draws us in.
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Beat Route
Hynes writes from a place of deep awareness, both of self and of society; his music serves simultaneously as a diary entry and as a commentary on the world around him. But despite the hardships Negro Swan examines, the album is underscored by something brighter; within darkness, there is always hope.
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The Thin Air
Negro Swan is a stellar effort by an artist at the peak of his powers. It’s heartfelt, raw and honest examination of what it is to be marginalised, and the importance of belonging.
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Radio 13
Yes, there was occasional filler which disrupted the flow of the album, but that was also the case on Freetown Sound, maybe it is an R&B thing? Either way, Negro Swan is a solid return from Hynes and proof yet again why he is one of the most in-demand producers in R&B and pop.
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MELT Reviews
The combination of all of this leads to an “R&B” odyssey that isn’t afraid to experiment, and instead of being preachy, this album explores vulnerability in order to reach a point of self-acceptance, and it does so while creating feel good tunes. This album creates the community and family Janet Mock describes on “Family,” and this is a place where we’re all free from judgement.
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Fashion Industry Broadcast
Dev Hynes, better known as his alias Blood Orange, dropped his fourth album Negro Swan and it may be one of the most personal and influential works yet.
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Tauology
Blood Orange, some people call them Emotional Oranges, has a feel albums out but taking the opportunity to listen to Negro Swan was a great decision. Blood Orange made this album to talk about or touch on LGBT issues and love. The words and inclusion of Janet Mock gives insight and research material for listeners.
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Ben's Beat
Some of Hynes’ ethereal and psychedelic R&B tracks can tend to blend together a bit and make the album more one-note than its masterful instrumentation in other areas would suggest, but the real strength of Negro Swan is the degree to which Hynes expresses his message to the listener through a series of smart lyrical references that cleverly disguise lifetimes of sadness, not lingering on the past too long as he takes control of who he is in the present. The superproducer delivers some of his best production work yet here, and I’m going to remember Negro Swan at the end of the year.
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Gigslutz
Negro Swan is only to be listened to in full and unshuffled, in order to truly experience the masterpiece that Hynes has created; each track sets up the next and compliments the last.
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MCR Live
The album ends with the track ‘Smoke’, a complex yet simple addition, led by only vocals and an acoustic guitar. A space to reflect on the unapologetic, imperfect and relatable compilation that is Negro Swan.
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