photo by seher (@rehes) | rehescreative.com
This past weekend Devonté Hynes (better known as Blood Orange) put on an incredible performance at this year's Roots Picnic in Philadelphia (if you missed out don't worry, we've got you covered with a recap), ahead of his forthcoming third album, Freetown Sound.
Now, in a joint interview with Kindness,which aired today on RBMA Radio the Cupid Deluxe artist discusses his thoughts on Freetown, and the inspiration behind it.
"The last album was more 'this is me and the type of person I am amongst this certain corner of the world,'" Hynes explains in the interview. "And this album is taking a step out and being like, 'Oh, I am a black man living in America.'"
He also addresses finding comfort in his artistry and creating music as a form of therapy.
I started questioning a lot of things and I basically got to the conclusion that, if someone is a writer they write maybe for themselves at home, as a release, and maybe they write for an article, an interview, or maybe they write for something else more specific. I started to look at myself maybe like that and realizing it’s okay to make music that isn’t for people to listen to, if it’s a sense of therapy, myself.
You can check out the interview below. The self-produced Freetown Sound which drops on July 1, will be a 17 track release (the songs don't have any unique titles, with each one labeled as "Track 1"; "Track 2" and so on), and is named after the capital of Sierra Leone, where Hynes' father is from.
"I have just finished making an album about my life, my upbringing, being black in England, being black in America," Hynes wrote in a press release for Freetown. "...my movement to this country at the age of 21, the same age that my mother moved from Guyana to London, and my father from Sierra Leone to London. Freetown Sound, the name of my album, is taken from Freetown where my father was born."
