About—
Dev Hynes’ elegant new album, his first in six years, inhabits memories of an English childhood filled with joy, pain, and music. By the time Essex Honey came out, Dev Hynes was already more than a decade into blending genres into a concrete smoothie. Yearning R&B melismata. Breakbeats, boom-bap, and an exploration of other Afrodiasporic sounds with curiosity, but also curatorial restraint. Hynes knits more and newer collaborators into the Blood Orange posse. What once sounded futuristic now feels like a resolute Black outsider present. And as Essex Honey ends, hand percussion pans from ear to ear as if passed by on the street by Hynes himself. The progress may be incremental, but with Essex Honey, Blood Orange re-emerges as an institution, setting an example for making pop that is layered and personal.
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